Agreed, experience is incontrovertible. Curious as to what you mean by "validation"? I think: (1) it's both absurd and dehumanizing to tell people what they did or did not experience, as you say; (2) people can draw wrong conclusions from their experience, which everybody ought to acknowledge; (3) yet people's conclusions should be unconditionally respected, since we (other people) have not gone through that experience; (4) still, it's not wrong for us to have an opinion about someone's conclusions if we are respectful about it; and (5) respect is necessary when we need to come to group decisions.