Looking back over posts here....with regard to validating feelings.....
I never got the message that we should
skip validating feelings from Rubin, or anyone here.
I got the message that we should validate
and encourage each other to think about
self care too.Why would it be helpful, to a divorced woman, to belong to a group of other divorced women.... still feeling their pain as fresh and keenly as the day it was wrought with no thought as to paying bills or moving through the pain, even after years of feeling it at the same level?
Spending time ONLY on validating pain, so it remains fresh, seems counterproductive to me.
In my opinion, we can validate
and talk about the logistics of healing and improving our lives.
I don't see them as mutually exclusive and I'm pretty sure, without going back to peek, that Rubin didn't say they were.
I guess we could ask..... how long is it appropriate to feel the deepest depths of our pain and stay with it, without interruption or any input, aside from validation?
Is that the question?CB..... I'd love to see that paper on resiliency if you come accross it. I'll google it when I get a chance, anyway.
I can remember teachers standing out for me, not bc they mentored but bc they asked me to step up to the plate and befriend other students..... to please go and tutor socially challenged children who were struggling.
Believe me, I wasn't a stellar student I can't imagine being asked to tutor

.
Why me?
I didn't bother asking.... I helped and I received a different view of myself.
It certainly took me out of my selfish narrow child's view of the world. It never occurred to me that Mentally challenged Rhonda F needed a friend. That socially awkward painfully peculiar Jerry M's life would be impacted forever by the kindness of another student.
I can remember the moment of stopping and turning my head
into those thoughts, though they weren't that well thought out.
It was a lightbulb going off for me.... I wish I could remember more about how I handled the befriending.... I remember tutoring very well. How odd I can't remember helping Jerry and Rhonda. Maybe I didn't.... that would be so sad.
What if I'd had a true mentor? I didn't even have grandparents after I was 7, not in State anyway.
I certainly would want them to help expand my horizons.
I never felt validated by the teachers..... I was a very private child.... I never would have asked to be validated.
I see no value in
extended validation, if not joined with honesty and encouragment to move beyond our bonds of pain and self doubt.
I think being challenged and meeting challenges is what makes us survivors?
Having our pain validated isn't in question, it's necessary.
I'm not disputing that.
It's
to what extent and
in exclusion to what, IMO.
It shouldn't exclude all other input..... that wouldn't be something I can identify with and believe me..... I've heard different versions of "get over it" and "you got yourself into to this, sorry" so I don't think I'm advocating that in any way.
Acknowledging the trauma over and over, for the purpose of
remaining in deep pain, (like the divorced woman in Rubin's example) doesn't appeal to me, never will and, like Rubin, I don't discern any benefit.
I also have to throw a red flag on the use of the word 'whine.'
Who's used that word against someone on this board, or in Rubin's book?
I haven't seen that word used here, but again I don't read every post.