In today’s world, a prevailing theme centers around the belief that everyone’s feelings are valid. The underlying message is clear: people are constantly grappling with emotional struggles, and the outdated advice to “suck it up and tough it out” is not only misguided but also detrimental to society’s collective mental well-being.

Things like clinical depression, and other depressive disorders can’t just be prayed or willed away. They are the result of something gone awry within the network of our minds, and should be treated with sympathy and science, not dismissive attitudes.

Families and friends alike should be more inclined to ask how their loved ones are doing. Not just out of politeness, but instead, out of a desire to help—to be an outlet for someone they care about.

But it’s important to do it in a way that’s helpful. It shouldn’t have a “suck it up” tone, nor should it be a deflection such as suggesting you both go get drunk. Let them know that you care about them, and you’re willing to listen and/or help—full stop.

This approach mirrors the fundamental principles of therapy practiced by psychologists, where empathy and understanding are paramount.

Yet, amid this push for acknowledging feelings, it’s essential to recognize the fine line between validating emotions and enabling harmful beliefs. Telling someone their feelings are valid implies that their emotional response aligns with the situation they are confronting, even when this may not be the case, especially for individuals dealing with disorders such as bipolar disorder.

The potential pitfall of validating feelings is akin to committing a logical fallacy known as the Strawman Argument.

A logical fallacy is an argument someone uses that suggests one thing MUST lead to another, when that isn’t true. This fallacy arises when an argument misrepresents someone’s position to make it easier to attack.

In the case of a straw man argument, an example would be if I say, “I like Coca-Cola.” Someone who hears this responds, “Oh, so you hate Pepsi? I can’t trust anyone who hates Pepsi.”

The issue should be obvious that in my statement, I didn’t even mention Pepsi. It’s entirely plausible I like both.

Yet the person arguing against me made an assumption that I hated Pepsi, and argued against that “straw man” of my argument, instead of my actual argument that I simply like Coke.

Make sense?

So why does this mean people’s feelings aren’t valid?

Imagine we meet someone who seems really depressing and cold to talk to. Our feelings might lead us to believe they’re a jerk. Now imagine, we find out this person just got news that they have terminal cancer. Do we still feel that they are a jerk, or do we now realize that we’ve misread the situation?

The fact is, too many of us make assumptions based on far too little information, because it’s uncomfortable feeling like we don’t know things. We think it would mean we’re stupid. So we make up our minds before having even remotely enough factual information to fairly do so.

Through these exercises of jumping to conclusions through false assumptions (the equivalent of straw men), we develop feelings that are often invalid. What’s worse is we often get those invalid feelings reinforced by a society that tells us our feelings are always valid.

We see this play out with people who have taken offense over something. If we are offended at someone, it should be based on the idea that they’ve been disrespectful to us or others.

But being disrespectful requires intent. It is an act of knowing someone wouldn’t like something, and yet doing it anyway. But what if the person who did the thing that offended us had no clue we’d find it upsetting. Maybe they thought we’d find it funny, or completely benign. Were they disrespectful to us? We shouldn’t be able to accidentally disrespect someone, that’s not how any of this works.

Hanlon’s razor is a good thought on this subject. It says,

The point being, next time we see someone on the internet upset about how disrespectful someone else was, we should first consider whether there’s an explanation that isn’t disrespectful, such as they didn’t know better.

It’s also important to consider if it’s really something to be bothered by in the first place. Society has become obsessed with having reasons for outrage. It makes sense, because the more upset we are about something, the more attention we’ll often get.

It could be because people already agree with us on other stuff, so they don’t want to disagree with us now.

As much as I hate to say it, maybe we’re attractive and people want to hook up with us, so they’ll support whatever nonsense we’re upset about.

I would bet at least $107, if you put an attractive woman on the internet, and have her talk about how all the hate that’s directed towards Nazi’s is wrong, you’ll have a thousand guys respond with an argument as to why they agree, Nazi’s aren’t that bad, they just have a different opinion than the rest of us, and people should be more kind to them.

The point of my post is this. Next time we find ourselves offended or upset by the actions of others, we should take a moment to consider whether there is a scenario where this was innocent. If we can think of at least one, then assuming it must be the worst scenario isn’t fair of us.

One option is to assume the innocent scenario, but that may also be wrong.

A better option is to ask questions of the person if we’re able. This isn’t always doable if the person is famous, but if it’s a friend or an acquaintance, making the effort to ask, “What did you mean by that?”, could be the difference between a fight versus an respectful and interesting discussion.

One of the biggest errors humans make, is the false dichotomy. The idea that there are only two sides and we have to choose one of them.

Maybe an interaction between a cop and citizen goes awry. If we think blue lives matter, we might assume the cop is in the right. If we think cops are bad, we might assume the cop is a serial rights violator. But there are at least two other options.

It could be that both of them behaved poorly. Maybe the cop was being a jerk, but instead of trying to deescalate the situation, the citizen decided to antagonize the cop and ended up making it worse.

The best reaction however, is to simply accept we weren’t there, didn’t see it all, we’re likely missing some context, and thus shouldn’t choose a side at all. Instead, being 100% ready to accept new information if it comes to light is the best way to think.

So next time we find ourselves with excessive emotions, unless a loved one has just died, or a national tragedy occurred, there’s a good chance our feelings aren’t as valid as we think they are. Especially if those emotions are us taking offense at something.

We are responsible for our emotions, not others. It’s up to us, to learn to let stuff go instead of stewing in a cauldron of rage which we lit the fire under.

Sometimes, we will benefit from just taking the time to analyze the situation with questions like:

Is this something I’m going to care about tomorrow?

If there another explanation for this that isn’t offensive?

Do I know this person intended to be disrespectful to me?

What role did I have to play in this situation going badly, and could I have handled it better? (Self-awareness)

Being full of rage requires a lot of concentration on that rage. The mere act of asking ourselves questions as I outlined above can often distract us from our rage, and push us onto a new set of train tracks from the rage train we were on, to one of emotional mastery. Not to mention the friendships we might save along the way, leading to happier and healthier lives.