What is validation? And how do you find it?

Maturing is realizing that the only person who can give you true validation is yourself.
 
I say this as a psychotherapist in New Jersey (and the United Kingdom) who specializes in working with complex trauma using somatic approaches, Polyvagal theory and EMDR. I sit every day with people who are accomplished, insightful, and deeply relational, and who still feel a quiet, persistent ache for reassurance. An ache that doesn't disappear when they succeed or when they've are finally loved. Or when finally someone says that they are enough.

That ache isn't immaturity. It's adaptation.
 
When you grow up with chronic miss attunement, emotional neglect, or environments where love was inconsistent or conditional, your nervous system learns to orient outward it learns to scan for cues: Am I OK? Am I safe? Am I accepted? Validation becomes oxygen. Without it your system tightens or collapses.
 
And here's the hard truth no one wants to say: No amount of external validation can repair an internal absence.
 
CPTSD and the search for approval
 
Complex PTSD isn't just about flashbacks or anxiety. It's about a nervous system shaped in relationship. It's shaped around the absence of reliable mirroring.
 
Many people with CPTSD learned early that their feelings were too much, not enough, or irrelevant. They adapted by becoming agreeable, exceptional, invisible, or hyper competent. They learned to in earn safety through performance.
 
As adults, this can look like people-pleasing, over-explaining, perfectionism, or a deep sensitivity to rejection. Even when relationships are healthy, the nervous system may still wait for the other shoe to drop. The search for validation makes sense. But it comes at a cost.
 
When your sense of worth depends on someone else's response, your nervous system never truly rests. It stays alert, braced and contingent.
 
Why insight isn't enough
 
Most of my clients understand this intellectually. They know where their patterns came from. They've read the books. They've done the work. And yet, when someone pulls away, disapproves, or simply doesn't respond, their body reacts as if something vital has been lost. This is where somatic approaches matter.
 
Validation isn't just a thought like I'm worthy. It's a felt sense of solidity, of being anchored inside yourself. And that sense lives in the body, not the mind.
 
You can repeat affirmations all day long, but if your nervous system doesn't experience safety and trust those words, it won't land.
 
Polyvagal theory: from external to internal safety
 
Polyvagal theory helps us to understand why validation from others can feel regulating. And why it's never enough. When someone attunes to you, your nervous system shifts into a ventral vagal state: Connection, safety, ease. That feels good. It's supposed to. Humans are wired for co-regulation.
 
But when that's the only way you access safety, you remain dependent on external cues. Maturity doesn't mean you stop needing others. It means you develop the capacity to self-regulate when validation isn't available. That capacity is built slowly, through experience. It is not built through willpower alone.
 
Somatic work: learning to be with yourself
 
Somatic therapy involves a radical shift: Instead of asking Do they see me?, you begin asking, Can I stay with myself right now? This might mean noticing the tightness in your chest when approval is missing. Alternatively, it might mean noticing the urge to explain yourself. Or it might involve noticing the collapse that follows perceived rejection.
 
Instead of overriding those responses, we listen to them.
 
When you meet your own experience with curiosity and steadiness, something new happens. The nervous system begins to internalize a different kind of relationship:
1. Where you are not abandoned, and
2. Where you are uncomfortable.
 
That's self validation in its truest form. Not hype. Not self-esteem slogans. But presence.
 
EMDR and repairing the internal witness
 
EMDR can be especially powerful in this work because it helps reprocess moments where validation was absent or conditional. In EMDR, we don't just revisit memories, we track how the body holds them. With bilateral stimulation, the nervous system can integrate experiences that once felt overwhelming or unresolved.
 
Over time, clients often report something subtle but profound: they stop needing the same reassurance. Not because they've hardened, but because they've internalized an observing, compassionate witness. They become someone who can say, I know what I felt. I trust myself. That's maturity.
 
A final reflection
 
Maturing is realizing... that no one failed you by not validating you perfectly. They were limited. Human. Sometimes wounded themselves. But maturity is also realizing that you don't have to keep waiting. The only person to give you true validation is yourself.
 
Through somatic work, Polyvagal-informed therapy, and EMDR, that truth can move from concept to lived experience. From something you understand to something your body knows. And when your nervous system knows it, really knows it, you stop asking the world who you are. You start answering that question from the inside.
 
I hope this made sense to you. I would love to explore this more with you if you would like to work with me. You can contact me here or you can book online for a callback from me.
 
Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist serving the whole of New Jersey
www.exploretransform.com