Overcoming Invalidation

Overcoming Invalidation

Invalidation communicates that your thoughts, beliefs, values, or appearance are wrong or incorrect. When thinking of invalidation, it’s important to remember the possibility of it being dialectical: it can be both helpful and painful. 

When is invalidation helpful? 

When it corrects unfactual information and/or mistakes

When it opens your mind to other perspectives and boosts personal growth

When is it painful? 

When you’re being rejected or neglected

When something factual in your life is being denied or overlooked

When personal experience is trivialized or disregarded

When someone treats you as less than equal 

When someone repeatedly misunderstands you 

When someone misreads your intentions or misinterprets your actions

When you’re telling the truth and others don’t believe you

So, what do you do when you’re invalidated? 

Validate yourself the same way you would validate a loved one. 

Check the facts. Are your responses to the situation in line with the facts? 

Check with someone else whom you can trust to validate the valid.

If your response doesn’t fit the facts, acknowledge this. 

Also, acknowledge when your reactions make sense and are valid.

Work to change any invalid thinking patterns, actions, or statements. 

Remember that blaming a person rarely helps and try to let go of blame.

Be compassionate towards yourself. Practice self-soothing. 

Drop judgmental self-statements and practice opposite action.

Remember: all behavior is caused. Also, remember that you are doing the best that you can do at any given point in time.

Admit that it’s painful to be invalidated by others (even if it’s right).

Remember that being invalidated, while painful, is rarely a catastrophe.

Enter a supportive environment.

Grieve any traumatic invalidation and whatever harm may have resulted. 

Practice radical acceptance of those who have invalidated you. 

Mindfulness of Others

Your relationships will last longer if you are mindful of the other person.

Observe: 

Pay attention to those around you. Stay curious, attentive, and interested. 

Listen to the other person and practice GIVE even if you aren’t interested in what they’re saying.

Don’t multitask; give your friends your full attention when with them.

Remain in the present. Listen without planning what to say next.

Let go of focusing on yourself.  

Be open and willing to hear new information from the other person.

Notice any judgments you have and let them go. (Nonjudgmental)

Describe: 

Replace judgment with description. Focus on fact, not opinion.

Don’t assume or interpret what others are thinking. Check the facts. Ask questions. Remember that you aren’t a mind reader.

Avoid questioning other’s intentions, unless you’re given factual reason to.

Give other people the benefit of the doubt. Remember: everyone’s doing the best they can.

Participate: 

Interact with the people around you. Full participate.

Go with the flow; let go of control in the conversation.

Remain in the present. Pay close attention to the activity at hand and the conversation taking place. (One-mindfully)

Source: DBT Skills Training and Worksheets, Second Edition (x)

Abigail Adams: interracial relationships and immigration.

Everyone loves Abigail Adams, it is not difficult to conclude, and I do as well, however, I am a little concerned by the growing amount of people who seem to believe Abigail never did a single thing wrong in her life. She may of almost not done anything horrid but her views on certain aspects primarily concerning interracial relationships and immigrants are far from it. I have seen quite often historical women not being held accountable for their actions mainly, it seems, because they were women and facing injustices already for their sex. These women still held the same racist, xenophobic or sexist views we point to men of the time. It is a failure to recognize these regards especially those towards Abigail Adams. 

While Abigail never owned a slave in her life and was far ahead of her time when it came to the institution–she still was racist. On the 18th of September 1785 penned from her current residence in London while her husband, John Adams served in diplomatic missions, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her son-in-law William Stephens Smith. Having recently attended a London performance of Othello, Abigail Adams admitted her “disgust and horrour” at seeing the “Sooty” title character “touch the Gentle Desdemona.”

“I was last Evening however at Drury Lane and Saw for the first time Mrs. Siddons… She appeard in the tradegy of Othello, and acted the part of Desdemona. Othello was represented blacker than any affrican… I saw the sooty… [man] touch the fair Desdemona”

After the sentence above, she crossed out this text:

“but I So powerfull was prejudice that I could not seperate the coulour from the Man and by which means”

[…]

“That most incomparable Speach of Othellos lost half its force and Beauty, because I could not Seperate the coulour from the Man…”

To her sister, Elizabeth she wrote of the event:

“I lost much of the pleasure of the play from the Sooty appearance of the Moor… I could not separate the affrican colour from the man, nor prevent the disgust and hourror while filld my mind every time I saw him touch Gentle Desmodona.”

As you can see, even Abigail Adams who held a famous abhorrence for enslavement of slavery, still could not find in her self acceptance toward interracial relationships or discover a way she could put the races of these persons aside. Above she goes as far as to admit she could not separate the race from the character and held such a “powerfull” distaste at the performance that it ruined the entire night for her. It filled her with “disgust and hourror” to even witness a black touching a white. 

After the Alien and Sedition Acts were striding through Congress during her husband’s presidency, she grew embittered over the published public scorn against him and the Acts. She wrote fervent letters in support of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Until Congress passed a sedition ill, she warned her sister-in-law that nothing would halt the “wicked and base violent and calumniating abuse” of the Republican papers.” She added that in “any other country, Bache [in reference to Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of the founder Benjamin Franklin who authored a famous Republican paper titled the Aurora before dying of yellow fever in 1798] and all of his papers would have been seized long ago.” 

She hoped the Alien Act would be invoked to out the Swiss-born Republican Albert Gallatin, a leader in the House of Representatives after James Madison’s departure. She considered the immigrant Gallatin a traitor to his country. Abigail also distrusted immigrants, averting that “a more careful and attentive watch ought to be kept over foreigners.”

It is beliefs such as these that I frequently observe being swept under the rug. Abigail Adams was in no way pure and could not locate in herself a way to overlook race nor was she for immigrants, the very thing her country was founded upon. 

When Emotions Fit the Facts

Anger:

A significant goal is blocked or an activity you desire is prevented.

You or a loved one is attacked or harmed by others.

You or a loved one is bullied or threatened by others.

The integrity or status of your social group is offended or threatened.

Love:

Loving a person, place, or animal enhances your quality of life.

Loving a person, place, or animal enhances the life of a loved one.

Loving a person, place, or animal supports the achievement of a goal.

Sadness:

You’ve lost someone or something permanently.

A situation doesn’t meet your expectation or desire.

Fear:

Your life or the life of a loved one is threatened.

Your health or the health of a loved one is threatened.

Your well-being or the well-being of a loved one is threatened.

Disgust:

Something you’re touching could poison or contaminate you.

Someone you strongly dislike is touching you or a loved one.

You’re near someone who could harm you or a loved one.

Jealousy:

An important or desired relationship/object is in danger of being damaged or lost.

Someone is threatening to take away a valued object or relationship from your life.

Envy:

Someone else gets or has things you don’t have but want or need.

Shame:

You will be rejected by a person or group you care about it something about yourself or your behavior is made known.

Guilt:

Your behavior violates your own values or moral code.

Source: (x)

By all means, talk and raise awareness about depression. But please mention:

•Not showering or brushing your teeth for two weeks •Getting sick from a vitamin D deficiency because you haven’t been outside in a solid month •Getting lightheaded when you stand up from bed because you’ve been laying down for days •The body pains •Shampoo not bubbling because this is the first time you washed your hair in three weeks •Over stimulation •Pity from a distance •'Get over yourself, there’s people *in Africa starving, with cancer, homeless, living in poverty, dying, ect.’ •Massive weight gain •Massive weight loss •Both •Your body literally changing how it looks and deposits fat based on frequent weight gain and loss •Hair loss •Zero self esteem •Breaking out in acne so bad you can’t put your head on a pillow from pain •Being too depressed to commit suicide •Self imposed isolation •Stomach cramps •Nausea •Vomiting •'You’re so dramatic, it can’t be that bad’

If you don’t, I’m not saying you’re not raising awareness, but you definitely need to step up your game