Validation vs. Valuation

I recently found myself reflecting on the difference between validation and valuation, and I realised that although the words are often used interchangeably, they point to very different things.

Validation, at its simplest and most innocent, is a form of support in the moment. It says: you’re seen, you’re heard, you’re not alone right now. In practical terms, validation is important — we validate work to ensure it’s safe, correct, or fit for purpose. In relationships, it can be reassuring and kind.

But validation has a shadow side.

When validation becomes something I need in order to feel whole — when my sense of self depends on it — it quietly shifts from support into something corrosive. In its more sinister form, validation can become manipulation, or an inadvertent tapping into a core wound: without your approval, I don’t exist. At that point, validation no longer supports identity — it erodes it.

Valuation is something else entirely.

Valuation isn’t about what I do in a given moment, or whether I’ve met a standard, or whether I’ve pleased someone. Valuation is about who I am. Positive or negative, valuation is a confirmation of identity. It says: this is you, and you matter enough to be known as you are.

This distinction became especially clear to me when I thought about my mother.

The value my mother had for me wasn’t merely validation. It wasn’t contingent, transactional, or dependent on performance. It was bonded. It existed outside of moment-by-moment approval. It didn’t prop up my identity — it witnessed it. That valuation didn’t replace my sense of self, and it didn’t demand that I dissolve into hers. It simply confirmed that I was real, distinct, and loved.

That bond sits outside the validation economy altogether.

I’m increasingly convinced that many of the wounds we carry come not from a lack of validation, but from the absence — or distortion — of valuation. When we’re validated without being valued, we can feel praised yet hollow. When validation is withdrawn as punishment, identity itself feels threatened.

Valuation, by contrast, anchors. It confirms existence rather than behaviour. It allows support to be received without self-erasure.

So I’m learning to be careful with validation — both in how I seek it and how I offer it — and to pay closer attention to valuation: where it is present, where it is absent, and how deeply it shapes who we believe ourselves to be.

It’s a subtle difference, but a profound one.

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