Not Your Therapist

#21 Validate Yourself in 3 Steps and Build Confidence

• Kayla Reilly MSW, LCSW • Episode 21

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 14:19

Send a text

Ever hit a milestone and still feel... kinda hollow? Or find yourself needing everyone else’s opinion before you can trust your own? Been there. And spoiler alert: It’s not because you’re broken.

It’s because most of us were raised in homes where self-validation wasn’t modeled—so now we second-guess everything from our feelings to our freaking lunch order. In this episode, I’m breaking down why learning to validate yourself is the foundation for real confidence, calm, and clarity.

We’ll talk about:

  • Why “outsourcing your reality” leaves you anxious, resentful, and stuck
  • How your inner critic got installed (and how to replace it)
  • Three self-validation practices that actually work—no journal prompts required

This isn’t about toxic positivity or pretending everything’s fine. It’s about naming what’s real, responding to yourself like someone who actually likes you, and learning to separate past triggers from present-day truth.

If you’re done twisting yourself up trying to be palatable, likable, or agreeable—this one’s for you.

Ready to become your own biggest ally? Hit play. Then send this to the friend who needs to hear, “You make sense. You’re doing great. You don’t need permission to feel how you feel.”

This podcast is meant to be a conversation — not a lecture. 🖤

Have thoughts, questions, or a topic you want covered? Or want to share how this episode supported you?

Email me at kayla@evolutionwellnessnc.com
or find me on social at @itskaylareilly. I genuinely love hearing what you’re navigating. ✨

Speaker 1:

What's up friends? It's Kayla. I'm a licensed therapist, I'm a group practice owner and I'm a cycle breaker, and this is Not your Therapist podcast and I'm so freaking happy you are here. On this podcast, we talk about all things mental health, all things mental health because it's important and mental health is health All right. So I've had a lot of stuff going on lately. I have been working on an online course for individuals who are healers. So if you are a healer and you have a private practice or you're trying to grow a private practice or you're thinking about going into private practice, I've been building an online little bootcamp, a little business bootcamp, if you will. So that's pretty exciting. That's on my website. I have also been working on posting more on the gram, because social media is the way to get more people to listen to the podcast and more people to check out my website and the services I offer. I have created a really awesome coaching package. It's three months long, it's an intensive and you get Voxer support in between sessions and all these amazing things. Anyways, I've been creating all this stuff to offer y'all because I want to help people, I want to serve people and if you want to hear more about my offers, hop on over to KaylaRileycom.

Speaker 1:

But I digress. I'm not here to talk to you about that. I'm here to talk to you today about why self-validation matters. So many of us struggle with an inner critic voice, or the little part of you that says did I just say too much? Why do I always sound so needy? Am I overreacting? Am I crazy? Why don't I look like that? I should be doing more? Whatever, it might be that little voice of somebody who's never been taught to self-validate, or somebody who knows how to self-validate but just isn't doing it enough. But for most of us, we were raised with emotionally immature parents and we never were taught how to self-validate, nevermind validating others. We got to start somewhere right. Start with yourself. You deserve it.

Speaker 1:

So today, on this episode, we're going to unpack why validation from others is never going to be enough y'all. If you're the person who is an overachiever because you think that's how you're going to feel good about yourself, you're wrong. You can achieve everything in the entire world and still feel like cuckoo, poo, poo. You can have the marriage, you can have the house, you can have the white picket fence, you can have the babies, you can have the dog and you still might feel like shit, and part of that is because you've been seeking external validation your whole life and you've never learned how to give it to yourself. Well, I'm going to talk about it, let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So self-validation matters because if you grew up being ignored, mocked, told to calm down or your emotions were just invalid, maybe for a lot of men you were told that you know, don't cry about that. Like, be tough, grow up, right Things like that. Or for women thinking about taking care of others, like, oh, we don't have time to sit down and process. Or for a lot of us, don't be lazy, sitting down and journaling is foo-foo. Well, that's crap, but a lot of us were raised that way. A lot of us were raised by a generation who didn't have a lot of psychology. Therapy was not normalized, there wasn't the internet, where so much information is being shared about the quality of relationships and how to improve relationships and how to improve our mental health. So we're in this beautiful state of the world where that's becoming better known, that's becoming more popular, more accepted.

Speaker 1:

So that's your sign, y'all. It's your sign that it is time to develop a better, stronger, loving, compassionate, soft inner voice towards yourself. And let me promise you something If you can do this for yourself, you're going to have better results, relationships. You're going to be a better parent. You're going to be a better everything boss, employee, colleague, friend You're just going to be better. Because when you can show up for yourself emotionally and validate yourself, you're going to build that self-esteem and you're building the capacity to show others compassion as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so if you grew up with this invalidating voices around you, this emotional immaturity from your family, it's going to create self-doubt, it's going to create anxiety. It's going to create a habit of outsourcing your reality, right, and what I mean by that is looking outside of yourself to see how you should feel, instead of looking within yourself and knowing how you feel and allowing yourself to feel. So, if you're always looking for someone else to say you're okay, you're doing great, wow, great job. But what if you could be the one to say that? Wouldn't that change so many things? Wouldn't that take away performance, anxiety, stress, overextension, right, like there's so many things that this takes away? Now let me tell you something. This doesn't solve everything. However, it's a really freaking important first step.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about what self-validation actually is. Self-validation is the practice of acknowledging what you feel without needing someone else to co-sign on it. It doesn't mean that you don't want connection. It doesn't mean that you're going out. You know you don't care about work anymore. You don't care about how your partner feels, you don't care about. That's not true. Acknowledging how you feel and giving yourself permission and validating your own reality doesn't mean you're disconnecting from others, right?

Speaker 1:

So what does this sound like in your brain? It's going to sound like things like this. Your thoughts might sound like this feeling is real, even if they don't get it, and they're minimizing it. It makes sense why I'm hurt or I'm feeling disappointed, and that makes perfect sense. Or I understand why this is hard for me. I understand why this experience is hard for me and painful because of my past, and I'm going to give myself some grace.

Speaker 1:

Can you imagine if your inner dialogue sounded like that? It's something we can all strive for. I know a lot of us in the beginning of this journey, when we're trying to overcome anxiety or depression or stress, or being spread thin, or trying to be the best mom ever, ever, or trying to deal with a crazy ass family. Our inner dialogue does not sound like that. And a lot of times I ask my clients who is that inner voice? It wasn't you that created that. Who carved that path, that pathway in your brain? Whose voice is that? And a lot of times they will say, oh, it's my critical mom, or oh, it's my selfish father, or my narcissistic sister, whatever.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's talk about three quick self-validation practices that you can actually start today that are easy and are going to change everything. Remember that when we start to heal, there's ripple effects on everything else. That's why healing takes time. It's a marathon, not a sprint. This is a really important first step. So first, you're going to name your emotion without judgment.

Speaker 1:

I feel anxious, it's as simple as that. I feel stressed, I'm feeling hurt. It's as simple as that. And if you don't have the language I've said this before, I'm going to say this again you have to build a vocabulary, because language is power. If we don't know how to define something, it's very, very hard to process. So what I want you to do is go on your phone and Google emotion wheel, take a screenshot of it and set it as the background of your phone and start practicing. Every time you unlock your phone, identify what you are feeling right and try to get more specific and build a range of vocabulary to try to determine how you're feeling.

Speaker 1:

A lot of us are like I'm either anxious, I'm pissed off or I'm calm and that's about as far as it goes. No, no, no y'all. There's an emotional spectrum and you're probably feeling it, but you have to be able to label it and allow other feelings to exist. So naming emotions really does help regulate them, and shame festers in silence, all right. Step two respond like a safe parent would. So. A lot of us didn't have this, so we have to make it up or listen to Unruffled, which is a podcast of this woman who has this beautifully soft voice and she talks about parenting toddlers. But I assign that as homework to my clients who are doing some inner child work to learn how to develop a kind voice even if they don't have kids, because a lot of us don't have the example. No one modeled it for us, so we have no idea what that sounds like. So if you want to check out Unruffled and utilize that to help you create this inner dialogue, great, but you're going to.

Speaker 1:

Step one name your feeling without judging. Step two respond like a safe parent would. So you're going to channel the inner voice you wish you had heard growing up from a parent Say things like hey, I'm here, I've got you. It's okay to feel this way. You know, being heard is normal, it's a part of life. Or wow, you're angry, I understand that. Or hey, you're feeling really nervous about this social event. I'm here for that, I get it. I'm not going anywhere. So use mirror work or voice notes if that feels powerful to you. Use the podcast Unruffled to develop this voice. If that feels powerful to you, talk about this with your therapist. Hire me for coaching. I've got an amazing three-month intensive program called the Rewrite Intensive. Check that out on my website, kaylareillycom, if you're really into that. But anyways, okay, name without judgment, respond like a safe parent.

Speaker 1:

And step three, reflect on the root, not just the reaction. Ask yourself, when have I felt this before Y'all? Healing happens when we face it, trace it, erase it. So you're facing it by naming the emotion. Yeah, now this part is tracing it, understanding where this comes from and why this feeling is ingrained into you. Right, this is probably a feeling that's familiar to you and that's why your nervous system is reacting to this feeling familiar to you and that's why your nervous system is reacting to this feeling. It also helps you separate the now from the then, because a lot of times, 80% of what we're reacting to is our trauma from our past.

Speaker 1:

And a lot of people that I work with say, well, I don't have trauma. And I'm like, oh okay, so tell me about your parents growing up and eventually they share with me that their mom was super critical and judgmental of others. And I'm like, oh, okay, so tell me about your parents growing up and eventually they share with me that their mom was super critical and judgmental of others. And I'm like, hey, you know, I need you to start to understand that is a trauma. Trauma is just a learned reaction that something is dangerous. Right, that's all it is. Something felt dangerous to you that really wasn't and you've learned it and now it's in your system and a lot of these experiences we have. You can call it whatever you want micro traumas, or little T, big T, whatever you want.

Speaker 1:

There's lots of different terminology in the psychology space, but the important thing to know is trauma doesn't always look like being in a car accident. Trauma doesn't always look like a parent hitting you or a parent hitting another parent in front of you when you were a kid. Trauma can be being emotionally invalidated, being minimized, yeah, so when have I felt this before? It helps you separate the now from the then, so that you can respond instead of react. A lot of us react to emotions instead of calming down and taking a time to really process. Hey, I'm going to name this feeling, I'm going to respond to myself like a safe parent would, and then I'm going to reflect on when have I felt this before before I take action. That is validating yourself. So self-validation is the gateway to healthy boundaries of confidence, emotional stability. It really is a stepping stone to all of the beautiful things that you deserve. You deserve it. It really does take practice, but the more that you do it, the less you're going to twist yourself into a knot and try to seek external validation and all that nonsense.

Speaker 1:

If you loved this episode or you know somebody that needs to hear it, please share. Please share. Help others. Assign it to your client. Share it with your therapist I don't know Whoever you are. Share and hey, you make sense. I see you. You're doing a great job. Hop on over to my website, kaylarileycom, to check out some of my free resources and I will catch you next Monday. Bye.