Validation Method®
Reading Naomi Feil’s books and becoming a Certified Validation® Worker, Certified Validation® Group Practitioner, and Certified Validation® Presenter changed the trajectory of my career. It taught me how to successfully interact with older individuals with cognitive change and disorientation like nothing else. I highly, highly recommend learning all you can about Validation and becoming certified yourself. You can go on to become a Certified Validation® Teacher as well. We need more certified practitioners on every level. Carmen Bowman
The Validation Method® as Trauma-informed Care that diminishes Stress: Better than lying, ignoring and only redirecting
Know what to do without lying or only redirecting older disoriented people seeking to finally address old trauma. Learn how the Validation Method® is a means for successfully communicating with persons with dementia, something desperately needed by them, their caregivers and family members. Validation replaces the outmoded and person-devaluing methods of redirection, diversion, reality orientation, and the therapeutic lie. Validation teaches how to exquisitely listen, empathize, move into the disoriented person’s world and validate feelings. Using Validation boosts self-esteem, builds trust and rapport and often assists the person to no longer need to resort to the past by creating a warm and welcoming present. Validation is trauma-informed care, helping caregivers to know what to do and what not to do to help older people with what psychologists call old trauma. Data from nursing homes which participated in community-wide Validation education and implementation shows decreased episodes of distress, abuse reports and abuse allegations. A 12-month curriculum with committed homes makes the most difference so all team members know how to diminish stress. Teams have seen documented episodes of stress for people served diminish!
Carmen is a Certified Validation® Worker, Certified Validation® Group Practitioner and Certified Validation® Presenter and loves
No more lying no matter what we call it – therapeutic lying/fibbing, truth therapy – it is lying.
No more ignoring in the form of redirection. When we redirect we ignore. Feeling ignored makes one feel unloved and uncared for.
No more arguing, convincing or correcting. Get equipped to serve people better. Thank you Naomi Feil.
Learn more at Validation Training Institute
Naomi Feil, Founder
Naomi Feil was the developer of Validation. She was born in Munich in 1932, and grew up in the Montefiore Home for the Aged in Cleveland Ohio, where her father was the administrator and her mother, the head of the social services. This unique background gave her insight into the world of older disoriented people. They were her neighbors and her friends growing up.
After graduating with a Master’s degree in Social Work from Columbia University in New York, she began working with older adults. Between 1963 and 1980 Naomi developed Validation as a response to her dissatisfaction with traditional methods of working with severely disoriented old-old people.
In 1982 she published her first book, Validation: The Feil Method. Her second book, The Validation Breakthrough, was first published in 1993. Feil and her filmmaker husband Ed made many films and videos about aging and Validation. Since the mid-1970s, Feil has taught hundreds of workshops in the United States and Canada, and even more in 1000 workshops in Europe and Asia.