Invalidation: The Root Of All Evil?

[ms spock]

Hi Ms. Spock, Yes, they are getting old. I know if either one of them passed away, I wouldn't attend the funeral.

I think you are very strong to make the decision not to go to your parent's funeral.

That is good to be clear on. If, at the time, you are somehow hoodwinked take spouse (with a spouse support i.e. family or friends) and take a posse of girlfriends - or anyone from a support group that is attuned to group dynamics that can help you protect yourself - or chatty people who will run interference.

You will not be surprised that upon occasion I have simultaneously run interference and managed dysfunctional family dynamics (it is sooooooooooooo much easier when its now your own family.)

So Plan A = Not going to the funeral of dead parent which sounds like a sensible option to me.

So Plan B = Got hoodwinked in to going - so arrange a posse now - just in case. Taking up a couple of people can be enough - once we went with ten of us and all took aside the troublesome family members and listened to the war, medical and dog stories. If there are children take a badmington set, a croquet set, balls etc - playing with the children is a great way to avoid the rest of the family.

That won't go over well with my siblings, I guess.

No but in these situations you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. At least if you don't go to the funeral you can't be blamed for all things that go wrong at the funeral. So you can say "I stayed in the frying pan because I have spent way too much time in the fire."

I am 39 and trying to start my own family. I think making my own is the best way to have a family. But I am starting late, and I have a lot of fears connected to pregnancy and motherhood. I want to move forward and not look back anymore. I have a wonderful spouse. I just have to get my courage up. :)

I wish you the best. May you get the family you want, need and deserve.

In Australia, two of my friends (a couple) can't have children so they have adopted and been adopted by some refugee families that they are involved in helping out. These kids have seen people shot dead in front of them. So gentleness and kindness and lots of fun and laughter are just the ticket. It wasn't the way my friends saw having children, and having a family, but nevertheless they have tons of them now. You know they proudly boast of about those children, and the children left the house in a mess and those children giggled when I said this and one even did this and so on and so forth. They really sound like parents and get all that back door bragging about "their" kids.

 

[ms spock]

I wrestle sometimes with the desire to try and build something with them, I always come back to this realisation that therein would lie more madness.

It is strong drive of us as primates to want to be with our family groups. In our cases we need to create other family groups or friendship networks because I truly understand what you say building something with your family would lie more madness.

It is hard enough dealing with all the trip wires and sore points which flame up when pushed. It is hard enough to deal with all the pstd symptoms than add their fire blowing you each time you go and see them.

That's why it's so good for me on here, to hear from others who are open and not in toxic denial that anything ever happened to them.

I find it helpful as well. There was a time with one of my sisters that I got to talk about what happened and how it happened and she remembered stuff. It took a whole wait off me.

What I want to know is, if they're from the same family and the same dynamics, (although not scapegoated and ??abused,) if they can't bear anything to do with it and react with rage at any hint of it.... how come they aren't in pain/truth searching/ever missing or wanting anything from me???

Denial is one feature to the answer of this question.

The other thing if they can use you as the family scapegoat and/or garbage bin then they don't have to feel those scary feelings! And as well all know it is hard to feel the scary and terrorfied feelings.

Do they still, after 40 years, still believe that I'm so terrible??? That seems exceptionally childish and plain weird to me. Sadly, in a way, not being able to see them and observe their behaviours and beliefs and level of functioning, I am in some ways stuck in a time warp and, at best, trying to understand things that I can't examine or question with the benefit of more healing.

It is weird but it is what happens in families with lots of trauma - you come to symbolise the trauma and they project their stuff on to you. That way you carry all the stuff and are ostracised because seeing you is seeing all their unfinished business and pain.

It is difficult to have no mirror of family to hold yourself up to and examine in contrast - but they are too crazy and disordered.

The crazy world of my family.

I suggest get your passport and make your way to another world. That is what I am trying to do.

ms spock

 

[ms spock]

I just think it seems like making a family, having a baby, is so natural for everyone else.

It isn't easy or natural for everyone else - there are whole groups out there dealing with those types of issues.

Please be kinder to yourself.

 

[Gamereign555]

I did 'get over it' and guess what? I still have symptoms.

 

[ms spock]

The people who deny it do more damage to other members of their communities in a number of ways, particularly their children I have observed, their co workers don't have a picnic in the park and I am keeping away from those people as much as possible.

 

[Abstract]

I have a theory, based on nothing other than my own observations and deductions, that human beings, even very young children, are relatively resilient and can tolerate a lot in the way of physical/emotional/psychological pain and suffering without significant long term harm, as long as there are a couple of circumstances in existence... and one of those is the presence of a safe, supportive other who can vallidate (help the victim make sense of) their experience at or close to the time, and hence circumvent that process of internalisation of the invalidation that Junebug so eloquently identified in the previous post.

s I said, this is my view of the world only, but I do strongly believe that the presence or absence of validation of our experiences is one of the critical determining factors as to whether or not a negative experience becomes a clinically traumatic one.

No voice', followed by no right to a voice, followed by no desire or ability to have a voice.

I haven't read this whole thread but thank you both for your eloquence. I totally agree. I know this probably won't sound great but I almost feel that I found invalidation truly traumatic in some ways. But regardless it reinforced and was part of what created the trauma I think. I hope that makes sense.

 

[Abstract]

Did anyone ever feel invalidated to invisibility? Where "you" have withdrawn so deeply into yourself, it is hard to find yourself? Always looking for outward clues and the responses of others, because you feel vaporous?

Yes, intothelight. Often in my life. Two versions of this are more extreme. One where I feel I have no impact on the world and am like a ghost and not there. It is a dreadful feeling of annihilation. The second is that I can feel and see my body dissolving and my molecules separating from each other. Invalidation seems to directly trigger intrusive stuff or flashbacks for me. Thanks for sharing.

Personally, I believe that complex trauma results from the constant invalidation of a persons emotions

I totally agree. And I think it is why those who don't understand this keep injuring us as they don't fully appreciate how deep invalidation wounds can go.

Now...I agree. ...and I can't stop doing it to myself. Those abusive self-harming mental invalidations are all that seems to fill my head, or silence. ...and the silence feels like abandonment.

Bloom, I sadly relate. :(

I believe a normal response to being told to "get over it", would be to realize the individual who stated it had not gone through the same event that you had. You would therefore internally invalidate their response, and not invalidate your own.

This is very wise.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

This is an excellent and educational thread for me. I have learned so much from reading all of the responses. I have a better grasp of the family dynamics that were at play. Out of four kids I survived the best. I had the most stability and normalcy.

I was ignorant of the family dynamics and am just realizing so many things, but invalidation was all I had ever known. It was normal to me. No wonder I had such a hard time with other people through the years.

I had been thrown out of my home of my family of origin two weeks before I graduated from high school. I was the only that graduated from high school. I remember my mom begging me to drop out of high school after I had been gang raped by boys at school at a party I went to where I was drugged and drunk.

I had no common sense. I had everything to figure out. I never recieved comfort from my parents. I loved them but they did not love me. I was the scapegoat. Then after I left they picked my sister as the scapegoat.

I had to cut off communication with my family of origin. I was so messed up. I missed them and recontacted them. I cut off communication with my dad in 1985. My mom was killed in a airplane crash when I was nineteen years old.

I was the responsible one. The one the parents left in charge at the age of nine. If they did something wrong I got punished for it. I had no training to be left with that kind of resoponsibility.

I have had alot of healing over the years. My symptoms are not as bad as they used to be. I still have alot of anxiety which is attributed to being a caregiver for my husband who has dementia. He is fading fast and I do not have the support I need.

Invalidation has sure impacted my life. I am practicing not self abusing myself with my self talk anymore. I can validate and see the good in other people but I am not so good at doing it for myself. I need to work on that.

Thank you so much for this thread. It has taught me so much I did not know. Now alot of things make sense to me. Much appreciation.

 

[aka]

Thanks Abstract for bring up this thread. I have been trying to figure out why the lack of validation from others has me more upset then the actual abuse. My memory of actual abuse is very limited but I remember many times not being given validation by teachers, "friends", parents of "friends", church leaders, and sometimes by my own parents. This I believe is the source of most of my trauma or as I think of it a "multiplier" of the original trauma.

In grade school I was lucky to have more than one person in my grade with me. My teacher would have to oversee 4-5 different grades in the same room. It was almost impossible to get one to one with her so I depended on those in my grade to teach me since I always was having trouble with the material. This of course was sometimes humiliating and degrading since both my classmates and teachers would get frustrated with having to help me.

The teachers (there were two) would almost never supervise us when we were out for recess. The school had kids grades 1-9 so there were big differences in ages not to mention that my abuser (outside school) went to school with his siblings (one being a friend). So I learned to watch my own back since I usually did not have anyone looking out for me. I even try to look after the younger kids including my two young brothers but I was very inefficient since I would not usually go near the group of older boys who always caused me much anxiety (included abuser mentioned earlier). I remember of one incident in which I was in the climbing tree on the main branch about three feet off the ground. Some of this group came up to the tree for no reason and one of them kicked my foot making me fall (lucky feet first) out of the tree. A teacher after being told by a classmate came out and asked if I was ok, and that was it, no real concern for me nor anger at the kid that kicked me out of the tree. I actually didn't tell my parent of this incident until years after because I assumed that if it the incident was important the teachers would have told them.

I can come up which many more examples of times I got no validation for my feelings. My conclusion as a kid was that the adults new better so I was in the wrong for feeling that way. I know now this conclusion was false but I still doubt that my feeling are valid sometimes. I am just now dealing with the feelings I had all those years ago and am trying to express them so I can let the memory stop haunting me.

 

[ms spock]

Did anyone ever feel invalidated to invisibility? Where "you" have withdrawn so deeply into yourself, it is hard to find yourself? Always looking for outward clues and the responses of others, because you feel vaporous?

Oh yes intothelight, I have withdrawn so deeply that it is hard to find myself.

 

[JustBe]

That is me. Indecisive to the point of immobility.

 

[InHell11]

Invalidation has certainly had a negative effect on me its one major reason I put off really trying to get help for the PTSD, I thought the only option was to you know get over it and move on...not let it hold me back. Well that doesn't work with PTSD at least in my case.

However its not just in relation to the PTSD I am likely on the autism spectrum so as a child and even now except more so because of the PTSD I am very sensitive to the environment I am in. I have always been extra sensative to light, noise, if its too crowded and chaotic ect so yeah a lot of times when I was in real discomfort I was told to quit complaining about the normal lighting, noise levels and if it got to be too much and I started getting upset from being overwhelmed I heard a lot of 'you're just making a big deal of nothing.' I mean it wasn't exactly intentional from my family they just didn't understand one could possibly be that sensitive to things still didn't help though.

As for kids at school and some teachers I got singled out for my differences and some particularly mean kids liked taking advantage of my sensitivity and trying to basically annoy me in a settle manner to the point of reacting and getting in trouble with the teacher. So yes I knew invalidation all too well even before the PTSD.