Are you being emotionally invalidated in your relationships?

So let’s start out by explaining what this is first. It is when someone negates, does not accept, does not understand, does not believe, or offers you their alternative belief about the way you feel about something or someone.

Are you emotionally invalidated? Here’s what to do 

There are some extreme and obvious ways, but also there are some covert ways too. I personally always find the covert ways the worst, because they are far more insidious and leave you in a far more bewildered state. 

Either way, however, this or they, leave you with a residual feeling. This is that your feelings aren’t acceptable either in general or to them.

This residual feeling of discomfort itself, l have found often, is the clue that you have been invalidated. 

As if somehow what you think, what you feel, what you choose and what you pursue or believe in, isn’t important, isn’t relevant, doesn’t matter, and is additionally somehow wrong and you need to go back to the drawing board of who you are and how you are because you are defined as wrong. 

Your existence alongside all this, is questioned and replaced by another’s version of your heart, your head and all that goes with you. 

Others can have of course views and feelings different to yours, but if the exchange is healthy there will be room allowed, respected and acknowledged by the other person and this will be felt by you.

It is unusually your own gut that will tell you when invalidation has taken place because it will feel uncomfortable. You will not feel that “your” feelings matter to the other person. Because they don’t. Theirs have taken precedence. 

It’s really insidious too. It kind of lives on beyond real time eroding your self-esteem and individuation.

Emotional invalidation is a felt experience even when it is not known.

Some examples

Intentional invalidation

This is when someone has an agenda and very common in relationships with narcissistic people because their intention is ultimately to vanquish you, more explained about this in many other articles l have written on the vagaries and red flags of having a relationship with a person who either has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) or narcissistic traits. This can show up as:

• gas lighting 
• denying your feelings to erode your self-esteem
• shaming 
• laughing at you 

Doing this to such an extent that you lose total sense of who you actually are and what you like, as whatever you choose or express as a feeling, is denuded along with your self of self and reality. 

I have had patients come to me for therapy that are really diminished by this form of invalidation. It also is very common in families and so-called friendships. More written by me on that too, and these are totally maintained and bolstered by something called intermittent reinforcement, which runs alongside the invalidation please refer to that article.

Those who intentionally invalidate your emotions can also covertly make you feel almost depersonalised which is a fear response. 

Unintentional invalidation

This usually happens accidentally in healthier relationships whereby someone just can’t understand why you feel something because THEY can’t identify with it. 

When you catch yourself doing it, because we can all do it from time to time, the way to go is to say, so sorry and own the way you behaved. I caught myself the other day finding something difficult to understand but l very quickly realised what l was doing. If l hadn’t been aware this might have just gone over my head, but it would still have been felt by the other person, and it is easy to do when you genuinely want to be part of someone’s “solution”. 

You can always offer another point of view and perspective, but whilst also taking into consideration that the other person’s feeling state is not and never should be something to override with your own. This denies someone their sovereignty, and they will not feel you are a comfortable harbour for their own future disclosure.

So if you are invalidated, how do you behave or respond?

Do you defend or soothe?

Do you become defensive or do you try and soothe the other person by taking on their view and altering your own?

Those of us who are struggling with self-esteem issues, and wanting to “fit in” will, or can often find themselves soothing the other person by “agreeing”. The cloud of doubt can descend when you are with either someone who is shaming or bullying, as well as with someone who is covertly insinuating that your feelings are impossible to identify or empathise with. 

Either type of response is felt as shame and sometimes even felt as fear. This is because the imagined threat of being left out, looked down upon, or rejected is very primal and felt as a threat. Because when we are excluded our survival is touched upon and threatened.

You are not responsible for someone else’s emotions or their emotional response, they are. You are responsible for your actions in relation to their response.

This is in fact quite a relief. If you dignify their feelings above your own, you put yourself in a place that lacks equal standing and their beliefs before your own. Here you cannot truly belong because you are complying, and when you cannot individuate you fall into victimhood on many levels.

Holding up your own feelings and beliefs lets others know where you are and who you are.

In summary. If you feel your relationships are mostly with people who invalidate you emotionally you will most likely be feeling nothing that is good unless, of course, you choose to “jump your own emotional ship” in exchange for fitting in with another.

What can help stop repeating this pattern of behaviour? Find those who both honour and value you. Explore and read more about why you might be doing this, and what caused it.  The more you are aware, the more you will learn to uphold yourself and your own feelings and beliefs, and that feels so much better.