Invalidation

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I came across a really good webpage on emotional invalidation

http://eqi.org/invalid.htm#Introduction

Those things are trying to help you. You are allowed to accept all feelings good good and bad vital if you allow yourself to be In a bad way for too long then you die

I have hear most of the list.

These expressions can and often are a legitimate attempt to help and invalidation

I have said many of the things on the list and have many of them said to me. And I'm glad for that. Excising everything from that list leaves "I'm listening" or "oh my" or other remarks deliberately devoid of content to avoid invalidating. If all people should do when somebody is venting is nod and agree, then communication ends. One person becomes the venter and the other becomes the non-judgmental but also non-engaged wall they vent at.

It's perfect for a therapeutic environment but not for anywhere else. Therapists aren't supposed to judge and are supposed to just let the patient's feelings flow freely. But they also aren't supposed to be emotionally engaged with the patient. So this bland wall of validation works just fine. But when the relationship is something other than patient/therapist I don't think it's a good idea to encourage people to just blandly validate. You can't actually converse and you definately can't emotionally engage if you police your own feelings so severly that you are non-reactive to whatever the other person vents. Therapists should do that while working with patients but I don't think it's healthy to do outside the therapy office.

Luckily for me I am not related to or friends with any therapists so people in my life say these things to me and I'm glad for it. When my husband says "it's not worth getting that upset over" (one of the items on the list) he isn't invalidating me. He's reeling me back in so we can work on solving whatever the problem is. If he just sat there mm-hmming validatingly I would just get more and more worked up until I was exhausted and miserable. Thank goodness he never saw this list and took it to heart.

A therapist must have come up with this list.

That's a helpful list. Although I think many of the statements are fine, and a little bit of questioning can be as easily termed reframing in a more positive way, rather than only seen as invalidating, reading it I definitely recognize some patterns people use to control and manipulate.

It's true that invalidating someone's misery can help them feel less miserable, but yes....too much invalidation is very difficult.

Invalidation that is intended to "help" is a way of trying to fix the other person, and/or for the person doing the invalidation to stop feeling their own uncomfortable emotions that are triggered by the other person. It's a form of escapism or denial out of what is really going on in the moment.

Another good quote from the page:


Defensiveness and Invalidation
All invalidation is a form of psychological attack. When we are attacked, our survival instinct tells us to defend ourselves either through withdrawal or counter-attack. Repeated withdrawal, though, tends to decrease our self-confidence and lead to a sense of powerlessness and depression. On the other hand, going on the offensive often escalates the conflict or puts us in the position of trying to change another person.

One sign of both high self-esteem and high EQ is the absence of either of these defensive responses. A healthier response, one which is both informative and assertive, without being aggressive, is to simply express your feelings clearly and concisely. For example, you might respond, "I feel invalidated," "I feel mocked," or "I feel judged."

How the other person responds to your emotional honesty will depend upon, and be indicative of:


(a) how much they respect you

(b) how much they care about you and your feelings

(c) how insecure and defensive they are

(d) how much they are trying to change or control you

All of this is information which will help you make decisions which are in your best interest.

Your head must be so far up your behind... go out and think about how you can serve others,,not how others are 'so unfair' and 'invalidate you'. You are equal to every gum an being your your not special. We will not treat you like royalty just because you think your better than the rest of us

I appreciate your post very much dianthus and it makes a lot of sense to me in a way that I don't usually see things. Thank you.

Tied into this idea is that lots of people have no idea that one's actions are always and only judged by someone else. If you think your actions aren't hurtful, judgemental, unappreciated etc, but the person you're interacting with does, then that's you causing harm to that person, not the person you are harming being childish, stupid, selfish, etc.

For someone to tell me something like 'it's not worth getting that upset over', and you actually want to discuss why that's the case, you'd better be in for hours of talk. Most people are not, and even if they are, they will not have a lot of basic perspectives and experiences of life that you have such that their 'advice' (if you can call that sentence advice in and of itself) is not valid anymore.

please, no personal attacks.

Yeah that's why I said please don't make personal attacks. . .

no matter what I say or don't say it is taken as an affront somehow, so I just don't say anything to anybody.