I know some people who seem (to me) more concerned with receiving VALIDATION for their mental health issues than solving them.

They seem to care most about other people BELIEVING their problems are real.

I'm curious about this.

Like, it's more important to them that people know how debilitating their anxiety is, than to overcome the anxiety.

Or it's important to them that others believe that they're actually depressed, not "just sad."

Or they want people buy into the narrative that they've been traumatized, and might be something like offended if someone minimizes that.

What do we make of this?

1. One possibility is that if solving the problems seems hopeless or even just really hard, you need external support to be able to cope.

If no one cuts you slack because of your mental health stuff, maybe you're in a really bad place, so you need people to believe you.