Wow! TOTALLY invalidated last night!

Passenger wrote: in trying to point out that my experience with her is different from theirs, sometimes I was making judgmental statements---and even if I just made a statement of fact like, "What you don't know is that she did X," they may make a judgment about that behavior that's irreconcilably at odds with their view of her. In a way they might feel they're being forced to choose between invalidating themselves or denying the truth of my statement.

Thanks. I have a football forum I go to. I do exactly that. Everything is a win/lose. I feel so invalidated every day that when I am valid, I like to prove how wrong they are to invalidate me. I just makes me hard to get along with.

Validation has to come from within. We're different. The outside world invalidated us to begin with. When you look at the chicken or the egg here on invalidation/defensiveness, we got defensive BECAUSE we were invalidated, not the other way around. Once we got defensive, the invalidation got worse, but we are invalidated quite a bit just for being us. Time to get over it. They don't know what's going on in this world any more than we do.

So pretty much, we're different. The outside world has never validated us. We have to feel good for who we are. Looking out there is a big waste of time. Plus, there's no reason. You guys/gals are some of the coolest people I know. We validate each other! There's just fewer of us, so we have to stick together at places like this.