The most common forms of invalidation include blaming, judging, denying, and minimizing your feelings or experiences. Invalidation isn't just disagreeing, it says: I don't care about your feelings. Your feelings don't matter. Your feelings are wrong.
Emotional invalidation can look like blaming, name calling, and problem-solving before understanding the other person's experience. Playing down another person's experience is another way to invalidate.
By definition, invalidation is the process of denying, rejecting or dismissing someone's feelings. Invalidation sends the message that a person's subjective emotional experience is inaccurate, insignificant, and/or unacceptable.
Instead of getting angry or defending yourself against this invalidating behavior, try not to accept the invalidation. Let them know calmly using "I" statements how you feel, and be prepared to end the conversation if they do not hear you or want to hear you.
The most common forms of invalidation include blaming, judging, denying, and minimizing your feelings or experiences. Invalidation isn't just disagreeing, it says: I don't care about your feelings. Your feelings don't matter. Your feelings are wrong.
It's when your emotions are downplayed by others because they either lack the time or insight to understand you and your emotions. Aside from not understanding your emotions, when you are invalidated by others, they judge you for what you feel and ridicule you for not feeling the same way as they do about things.
Gaslighting is a form of emotionally abusive and manipulative behaviour. It may involve denying a person's emotional and physical reality. Typical forms of gaslighting include denial, minimizing another person's experience, blaming, invalidating feelings, and questioning decisions.
Invalidating means telling someone they shouldn't feel a certain way. Gaslighting, on the other hand, makes someone believe that they do not actually feel that way. A combination of the two could have long term effects such as self-doubt, paranoia and anxiety among other traits that display a lack of confidence.
Invalidation can sound like:
“I'm fine.” “I really don't even care about this.” “I think I'm just too sensitive sometimes.” “I don't have a reason to feel sad right now.” “I need to get over it.”
Gaslighting requires one partner to dictate another person's emotions by dismissing their feelings. This fills them with self doubt and will make their partner feel unimportant—even crazy.
Being emotionally vulnerable involves the process of acknowledging your emotions, especially those that are uncomfortable or painful. It is less about acknowledging hedonically pleasant emotions, such as love and joy, and more about unpleasant emotions, such as anger, shame, anxiety, loneliness, and others.
Most people aren't mean or malicious– they're just wrapped up in their own world and problems. Usually, you can fix that problem by just being direct and assertive, such as “I feel like you're invalidating the way I feel. I don't need you to fix it or judge it. I just need you to listen to me right now.”
Invalidation is the product of an absence of empathy, hence being a natural space for the pathological narcissist to operate from. It is the act of purposefully denying, rejecting, minimising, negatively judging, and/or ignoring your expressed experience, thoughts, actions, or emotions.
Emotional invalidation often occurs when we express our feelings or talk about an experience. The truth is that most people invalidate because they are not able to process the emotions that the other is transmitting to them. Emotional validation involves a certain degree of empathy or empathic resonance.
Keep It About You
The fact that your partner isn't validating your emotions or connecting with you in the way you want doesn't mean they're “doing things wrong” or are “bad at relationships.” It simply means you're looking to connect in ways different from what they may be used to.
Conversely, invalidation is one of the most damaging forms of emotional abuse. What's scary, it can be one of the most subtle and unintentional abuses. Invalidating a person's feelings and emotional experience can make them feel like they're going crazy!
If you feel like you are walking on eggshells around your partner, fearful that you will 'overreact' to something and set them off, or fearful that you will get into a fight and they will project on to you, then this is a sign that you are being gaslighted.
Stonewalling, one of the Four Horsemen, is Dr. John Gottman's term for one or both partners shutting down when feeling overwhelmed during conflict. Rather than confronting the issue, someone who is stonewalling will be unresponsive, making evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, or acting busy.
Invalidation is a form of relational trauma which, over time, harms the brain and nervous system, and also results in the disintegration of any healthy bonds of connection, and dissolution of trust in others. Healing requires the slow, ongoing work of diligent growth in character, self-awareness, and love.
Learn to give yourself self-compassion and start exploring and identifying how you really feel rather than relying on the words of others. Only you know how you feel. Engaging in self-care and finding healthy and supportive people in your life is a good step in recovering from invalidation.
What Validation Is. To validate someone's feelings is first to be open and curious about someone's feelings. Next, it is to understand them, and finally it is to nurture them. Validation doesn't mean that you have to agree with or that the other person's experience has to make sense to you.
Emotional validation is the act of tuning in, acknowledging, and accepting another person's feelings, even if they're negative. It involves listening to others express their emotions without ignoring, dismissing, belittling, rejecting, or judging them even if you do not agree with their emotional response.