In many of my blogs I discuss the topic of invalidation, specifically in the context of the narcissist. As a way to gain and retain control over people, the narcissist will gaslight. Part of gaslighting includes invalidation by the narcissist. The narcissist will make it seem as if you are wrong in your assessment and expression of your own thoughts and feelings. By doing this, they create doubt in you, and you question what is real and what isn’t. This could be thoughts or emotions directed at you, or the narcissist. For example, you might express concern to the narcissist that they are cheating based on texts you saw; however, when you bring this up the narcissist will tell you that you are crazy or imagining things. The narcissist tries to control the narrative in their favor. This is invalidating because you then question what you saw, whether you misinterpreted it, or something else. The narcissist invalidates to keep you guessing.
But the narcissist is not the only one doing the invalidation. People will sometimes invalidate themselves. What does invalidating yourself mean?
When you invalidate, you consider something as not true or make it unacceptable. You may have a positive thought about yourself, but then quickly shoot it down by finding everything negative you can. This is invalidating yourself. You find something wrong or negative about a thought that is otherwise positive or even neutral. When you invalidate, you deny and reject something.
So, why does it matter if you invalidate yourself? It is one thing to have someone in your life that invalidates you, but to invalidate yourself leads to you having low self-confidence and lack of trust in most things. You can’t believe and trust in yourself so who can you trust?
When you invalidate yourself, you can never believe what you are thinking and feeling because as soon as you have a thought or mood, you turn against yourself and try to convince yourself how it is wrong. No, this doesn’t have to be an active process against yourself where you consciously sit down and work through everything wrong about you. It can be passive, but this passivity can make it worse because it means it is happening in the background and out of your awareness. The process of having a thought and then invalidating the thought becomes a loop you get stuck in. You think one thing, invalidate that thought, have a new thought to counter the invalidation, and then continue this cycle of invalidation. It can be quite frustrating!
How do you even know if you are invalidating yourself? If it is out of your awareness, and something you do without thinking, how do you know it is happening?
One thing you might say to yourself that suggests invalidation is telling yourself that something negative which has happened could be worse. For example, your partner has yelled at you and called you names but you tell yourself that is better than them hitting you. Or, you don’t get your dream job and tell yourself at least you have a job and to appreciate what you have. When you try to make yourself feel better by telling yourself it could be worse, you are invalidating the experience you are having. You are, in essence, telling yourself the thing which was upsetting shouldn’t upset you. The problem is, if you tend to always tell yourself it could be worse, that means you will find a reason every time to invalidate your experiences. It ends up nothing is ever enough of a reason for you to feel sadness, anger, disappointment, or any other negative emotion.
Along these same lines, you might invalidate yourself if you tell yourself you shouldn’t feel a certain way. You might have a negative experience and feel upset, but then tell yourself that you shouldn’t feel upset. You may tell yourself to get over it and forget about it. What this does is prevents the opportunity to work through your emotions and thoughts about the situation and nothing gets resolved. All you are left with is feeling angry and resentful because you got upset, and don’t address the issue that made you upset.
When you invalidate yourself, there is a lot of self-blame happening. You tell yourself that your experiences are wrong or unacceptable, and this makes you feel worse about yourself. Instead of acknowledging how you felt, and working through how to not feel that way in the future, you tell yourself you are wrong. You often have little control over how others treat you; however, you do have control over how you treat yourself. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself and if you find you are invalidating your experiences, find someone to talk through this with as a way to feel more connected to yourself and those around you.