Invalidation

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I struggle with this, and I keep wondering why it seems so important to make a judgment on other people's intentions.

Recently in my job, I was putting together a metal display in a busy store. I had to do some finagling to get it adjusted correctly (because it was a piece of s**t that was poorly designed, but that's another story). I had to stand back a few times to look and see if it was balanced correctly. It might not have looked like I knew what I was doing, but I did.

While I was in the process of that, several male customers, one after another, attempted to "help" me and did so in a way that was really invasive to my personal space. I never asked for their help, and none of them asked me if I wanted help. They didn't even address me at all verbally. They just came up - from behind my field of vision - and started grabbing at the display, trying to jerk it this way and that. It was NOT helpful and at one point it came really close to injuring me.

Each time I said something like, thanks but I don't need your help, and stopped to wait until they accepted it and moved on. However what I REALLY wanted to do was rip their f*****g heads off. lol

This kinds of thing tends to happen in certain stores and certain neighborhoods, and it's very much an old south, cultural thing which I don't relate to. These guys have probably been "trained" to act that way since they were kids. They were probably brought up by mothers, and/or have wives at home who wouldn't lift a finger to do certain things, who expect men to jump in to help without even being asked.

I have seen some of this in my own family, but I personally wasn't brought up like that. I was encouraged to do things for myself and never shy away from something just because it's something men normally do instead of women.

Anyway what I am getting at here, is none of them really said anything to me, in words, yet the messages were very clear: Your personal space isn't respected. You look like you need help. You must be unskilled because you are female. I can do this better than you can. I won't ask if you need help because I already know you need it. I know better than you what you need. I don't believe you when you say otherwise.

And the irony is that these men are probably not intending to make a power play on me...in fact, at home with their families it might be the other way around. But when they encounter me, maybe they are projecting a lot of assumptions on me, so they are interacting with me as if I'm someone else. That makes me feel like I'm invisible.

It causes me a lot of stress because people getting in my space like that could cause an injury, and also because I have to stop what I'm doing and think about how to respond and how to handle the situation. Over time, the stress and anxiety builds up to the point where I really dread going to places where these things happen.

So the last thing I would want to hear someone say at those times is "I was just trying to help." It just sounds so petulant and selfish and clueless. If I have been patient up to that point, that might finish me off.

I base my response off intent. Was there an intent to invalidate?

My response to intended undermining will be different to thoughtlessness. One is aiming to hurt, the other simply does not know any better, but I do.

There will always be thoughtless actions, automatic responses, like men helping without thinking about boundaries. Personally I see that as an action coming from a simple adherence to the correct social norm, the desire to do the right thing in a given situation. Its much easier to walk past someone than it is to stop and help, the intent is not malicious.

I can be annoyed by these norms, because I have stopped to think about them, but I cant be annoyed by someone following them, they most likely have never stopped to think about these things, their lives and ways of being are unaffected by the things that impact on my way of being.

I do lots of things too that many women around here would never do for themselves, I remember a few years back, when Gas stations stopped providing attendants, and I was passenger with a woman in her 40s who did not know how to use the pumps, this reality blew my mind as I stood outside doing it for her, how had she survived til this point? Reliance and a pretty face. Quite normal apparently.


Yes, almost prole-like, blissfully unaware, just going through the expected motions.



It is clueless, I suppose I would empathize with the cluelessness, and not give them a hard time over it. Cant change the world type of thing, its too significant an issue to communicate its significance or achieve a progressive outcome in a brief encounter.

Intent to invalidate will elicit a different response from me (esp if they continue to do it after I have explained), we are on the same level, they know what they are doing and I know for certain that they are doing it maliciously. Different rules.

So, in dealing with the anxious phone answerer, yes you may have not invalidated them in the first sentence but at some point you have.

I was watching Criminal Minds earlier and the end quote was:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_de_La_Fontaine

BTW, I still don't answer my phone unless I know the ID, I also don't answer my door unless I have prior arrangement either by phone or txt.

If I were such a person, I would feel invalidated by many of your comments even if you did patronise me with the first sentence! But I'm not, and as usual it comes back to intent, and if I know your intent is good then the language shouldn't matter, especially if it inhibits you from saying anything.

How many of us have (have not?) experienced invalidation of reported (and experienced) illness symptoms by doctors at one time or another?

Maybe the doctor "had good intentions" (let's say) but did that lessen the impact for you of having your experience of your own body dismissed/discounted/ignored/invalidated?

Gender bias in medicine is very real and well researched; the field that I am most familiar with where this happens is women with heart conditions. Presenting with matched symptoms, men with repeated episodes of angina are far more likely to referred for evaluation/further testing; women not infrequently have their symptoms dismissed as anxiety/indigestion.

Invalidation can be life threatening (see the very good blog Heart Sisters if this has happened to you and you have concerns in that area).

...

Kraftie, referring back to cutting for a moment - it is far, far more complex than "anger at oneself"; researchers have noted that damage to self-esteem by constant invalidation from others is recognised as major trigger factor. It needs to be evaluated in context.

It's not malicious, but it can do damage, like in the example I gave I might have had my hand crushed inside a wire rack. I think when a person has a really genuine intent to help, they put a little more thought into it.

In my job, I have people approach me randomly for all kinds of reasons. I try to be polite, but I don't have time to really care about each person and evaluate their intentions. I just have to be prepared for what they might do, what consequences it may have and how I am going to handle it. It's a lot to think about. I've learned to put my own physical safety first above all else, but it's hard to keep that in mind when I am overwhelmed with job tasks.




Well, it's not my responsibility to empathize with everyone I meet in my job. They may not understand, but sometimes I have to just get on with things.

Dianthus that is fair enough, we have had different experiences in life.
Its possible that I haven't hit my lifetime quota for being invalidated, or its happened so much that I don't have a regular reaction to it.

I don't think that empathizing with every random person is appropriate, with questionable statements/actions I try to understand the 'whys' and unless I'm certain about intent, I give the benefit of doubt, its a quick one question check before I respond. Yeah it leaves me open to intentional invalidation, but it allows me to shrug off the unintended invalidation with a rationalization. I view this as preferable to expending the energy required to be on guard all the time. Ill tackle the malicious type when I recognize it.

B19 I understand your point, good intentions can indeed cause harm, I am just perhaps having difficulty joining what I view as two separate things under the one category of 'causes harm regardless of intent', need to think about it.

This thread is invalid.

I feel like this is kind of a hopeless thing sometimes, especially lately. My husband tried to kill himself less than 2 years ago and ever since then, I've felt like I'm being held responsible for his happiness and it f*****g sucks, honestly. I do understand how invalidation is harmful and like I said, I really am making an effort to say the right things, but it feels like to me that because my husband can't help having anxiety, if he hurts me (which he does, a lot), it's not his fault and I should be compassionate and understand how hard it is for him, but if I am too stressed out by the fact that I'm raising two severely disabled kids practically on my own and don't say the right thing to him for once, it is my fault and oh hell I'm a horrible person. I'm not a super-human, you know. I know I'm stepping on dangerous territory here since this thread is primarily being contributed to by the invalidated and I would probably be an invalidater. Maybe you're holding other people to too high of a standard sometimes I guess that's what I'm getting at. (Maybe you're not though, I'm talking about my personal experience with invalidation only). I hope I don't offend anyone too much but I felt compelled to say it.

B19 re invalidation by doctors: not sure if this counts, but when I was pregnant with my second child, I went into the hospital in labour and they told me to wait in the waiting room. They were very busy. I told them that I was almost giving birth...and they said "no you're not" without even really checking. Finally I got someone to come back and she looked and sure enough, there was his head! LOL

Invalidation is not a big part of my life and never has been.
If someone intends to invalidate me, I probably won't notice unless it is really blatant.
If I notice, I probably don't let it affect me and go on with my day and life.
I have not been invalidated by medical doctors regarding symptoms of physical illness or injury.
Psychologists have been generally helpful too.
Teachers helped me too, I didn't notice any pattern of invalidation, ackshuly some teachers/professors/school officials went out of their way to help me.
My parents let me be my own person and not worry too much about outside validation from others.

I have noticed invalidation from ASD people as well. My husband's health condition was invalidated by people on I2 and I have seen people here and elsewhere in autism Facebook groups and other autism forums invalidate parents being stressed out raising autistic children at the severe end of the spectrum.

I think you need to validate him how you're able to, but to the extent his anxiety and depression are causing him to behave in ways that invalidate you and your children, I feel it would be unfair to consider your negative reaction to his invalidating you to make you a bad person. You can't do more than your best. And it seems like your best is a lot.

I have a severe stutter and pretty much all responses to me mentioning it are some degree of "It can't be that bad." or "Don't worry about it."

When you have something so outside of the norm, you come to realize that people really can't imagine it. It's literally beyond their comprehension to not be able to tell jokes, long stories, or have a single conversation where you're confident your speech will be fluent. The idea that a phone call could submerge your self-esteem into the depths of the deepest ocean is genuinely unthinkable to them.

We want to believe other people will somehow grasp what it's like to be us, whether in general or a specific situation, but more often than not they can't. That's why there is so much judgment and mockery in the world. Because people aren't able to understand what it's like for others. If they were then I highly doubt they'd be so quick to hurt and isolate other individuals.

Of course, the other sad truth is, there may not be much else to say except an invalidating remark. Like if someone told me I'm a good person and just need to stop being shy... well, they probably mean well. Even if it's like telling a disabled person to just stop being disabled or an autistic person to stop being autistic. It's the only thing they can think of to say. Deep rooted and/or complex issues don't have a simple solution so people don't know how to respond to them. There may not be a good response at all.

It seems to me that a significant percentage NTs clearly show a marked "theory of mind" deficit when it comes to understanding people who are different from them. There is little said about this because of what you could call the tyranny of the normal..

Thanks. I don't feel invalidated though, not exactly. We have a problem (obviously) but I don't think he invidates me. I think if I said, "I'm depressed and I wish you'd help me out" he would believe me that I'm depressed. The reason I can't talk to him about my feelings anymore is not because he doesn't believe me, but because it might make him feel bad and he might kill himself. If I tell him I'm depressed and he kills himself, then I'll still be depressed but now I'll be responsible for his suicide because I invalidated his inability to help me due to anxiety or whatever. I'm having a hard time explaining it but I don't feel invalidated. now I'm thinking I definitely shouldn't have posted that here, for the same reason really...so I'm sorry to whoever read the last thing I wrote and was offended.

I don't know if you meant me, or someone else. I wasn't offended. I'm sorry if I misunderstood. I feel invalidated when I can't lean on an adult and it seems to be a permanent thing that they lean on me but I can't lean on them, is all.

I might be more susceptible to feeling invalidated, it's clear to me reading the thread that each of us has a different threshold. I'm glad you are not feeling invalidated by your situation!