I recently posted the below meme that lists common ways we dismiss our own feelings. My intention was to remind everyone how important it is not to invalidate ourselves by believing our feelings are unimportant, stupid, or irrelevant. This is a concept I talk about a lot with clients.
After I posted the meme, I received a comment. The individual remarked “thanks for the reminder. I just realized I say all of these to myself.”
I was struck by the comment for two reasons. First, I love knowing I reached someone I don’t even know. Less happily, I was struck by the realization that I say all of these to myself too!
I do not want to file this advice under the category “do as I say, not as I do.” I believe too strongly in the importance of self-validation. I do want to acknowledge how easy it is to dismiss your own experience.
Self-validation is fully acknowledging your own internal experience, your thoughts, and your feelings. It doesn’t mean that you believe your thoughts or think your feelings are justified. We can’t always explain our reactions.
When we fight with our internal experiences, or judge ourselves for them, we only increase our emotional distress. In contrast, self-validation increases our understanding of ourselves, helps us regulate our emotions and builds self-respect. I like that idea much better!
The most common way I invalidate myself is with the thought “I shouldn’t be feeling this way.” I might be feeling down or anxious with no clear explanation. At those times, I am trying to talk myself out of my feelings in hopes of feeling better. Typically, that involves some form of mentally listing all the things that are good in my life.
Don’t get me wrong, the list is helpful. It keeps me mindful of the positive. The problem arises when I forget that I can be thankful for the positives AND acknowledge my current feelings as legitimate. As I once read, there is plenty of air to breathe, but we can still be out of breath.
The other distinction I sometimes forget to make is between “I shouldn’t be feeling like this” and “the intensity of my emotions doesn’t fit the situation.” The first statement involves telling myself I am wrong and that my feelings don’t make sense. The reality is that my feelings make sense given how I am experiencing something. They just aren’t always consistent with how someone else is reacting or experiencing the event.
In addition to invalidating myself by saying “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” I tend to tell myself “there is no point thinking or talking about this.”
For me, this thought pops up when there are issue bothering me that I don’t know how to fix. Yet, I know that fixing the root of our distress is only one method of coping. Moreover, I know that dismissing my thoughts and feelings in this way makes it far less likely to achieve resolution.
Even when resolution is truly not a possibility, we increase our distress by trying to ignore it and dismiss it. We don’t give ourselves the opportunity to be heard by others and possibly even validated. There have been plenty of times I kept these thoughts to myself only to find out others felt the same way, or that just expressing it allowed for meaningful conversation.
It is all too easy to dismiss our own experience. In doing so, the message we are sending ourselves is that our thoughts and feelings are less important and legitimate than those of others. It then becomes easier to think we, as a whole, are less important and legitimate than others. The first step in stopping this spiral is to increase your awareness of doing it!
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