Attempting to validate ourself.

Triggers for invalidation, I guess?

Ourself is how I like to refer to us. I know we are one "self," but it is ours, not mine, not any one part's.

For so long, I have been controlled by a need to deny not only the history that is partially responsible for our origins, but the very fact of how I experience my life. This need to deny is not my need, however. It is a need I have been holding for at least one, probably both, of my parents for many years. In seeing how horribly one of them is still in denial about the state of one of their children (not me), I realized that I have to stop denying. I will likely never confront them. If it would change anything, I would, but it will only lead to more invalidation and abuse. I cannot validate myself to the people who took away my right to even know myself, because what parts of me remembered and thought and felt were threatening to their own images, meticulously split to survive their own wounds. However, I can refuse to continue exercising that abuse inside myself.

In that vein, I have edited my signature to include names and ages. I will leave it up if I can. I will trust that, as an adult, I have the right to share this information with others...a right that was taken away from me through threat many times in the past. I will trust that even if I am not believed, it cannot change the subjective truth of my experience of myself. This is who we are. Maybe everything isn't remembered perfectly, but there is no doubt we were deeply wounded by multiple people in many ways. No one's memory is perfect and being unable to prove every moment of my past or justify every thought or feeling that surfaces does not mean I have to cower in confusion and isolation. It just means I am a human, like anyone else, who (albeit as a collective) remembers and thinks and feels a variety of different things. The ambivalence I experience as a threat is simply a human experience magnified by unbearable circumstances in the past.

It is mostly safe to know who I am, who we are, now. If I let others, who still believe we are stuck in unsafety, continue to isolate us from any validation or support or care we might receive (e.g. here, in therapy), I will only be allowing the neglect and abuse that crippled us to continue. We will keep living our life as if the present is some sort of minefield or labyrinth, when the truth is, I left those places behind long ago.

It feel great anxiety saying all this. It feels like I don't have a right. But, I have to say it. If I can't lay claim to my humanity for myself, how will I ever help those I love who still live in that war zone?

So, this is me...

Feel free to ask any questions, I guess.

I will try not to freak out and go poof!

congrats congrats congrats on being so brave and coming to these realizations and making huge great progress!! even if you do go "poof" or your signature goes "poof" later, this is still a huge success and step forward and you still achieved opening up, even if only for a time period, and you should still be proud of yourself!!

it's so nice to read about you and learn more about you just with the signature! thank you for being brave enough to post this, and again, congrats!

i don't have any questions (or maybe i have too many to tell), but i'm very happy reading this and reading your signature and i'm so glad you posted this!

(also, i hope that i can get cassandra out here to read this, because it might help with her denial and stuff as well).

so thank you!


- cassie (age ?)

Thank you so much for posting this and sharing your story. I have been going through a rough patch lately and I really needed to read this.

You are so brave to do this You are taking great steps towards self acceptance and you are indeed validating yourselves. This is amazing Thank you for sharing this and making us all a part of your journey towards healing.

Thinking of all of you

So, yeah, I did the whole validation thing, and immediately after, the forum broke...

Then, my insurance came back with really bad news om coverage, which means they are messing us around again (quoting one level of coverage, then providing about half of that), which means that we'll have to continue fighting for ourself, so triggering, and might have to cut some therapy.

Then, at the same time I got that news, T completely forgot a check-in call he was going to give on his way home, since we've been in or near crisis this week. I never take "on the way home" calls, because I get so scared he'll crash, but we have been in the danger zone and it was the only time he had. So, when I worried that, LY started sobbing and begging God for T to be OK. A couple hours later, found out he just spaced out on his commitment, for like the first time ever. He is getting over being sick, and swamped, so I understand. He was profusely apologetic, acknowledged the fault and skipped other commitments (which in all fairness, he hadn't wanted to attend) to talk to me. We absolutely forgave him, but were so triggered from insurance stuff and worrying he had an accident that we pushed him away the whole call, feeling toxic to him from being in crisis.

The magical thinking still held by some young, internal-rule holding (or abiding) parts causes us to think all these things were the result of trying to validate ourself.

So, errr, sorry for breaking the forums yesterday.

I don't have much of a voice right now but congrats on the superpowers

Amazing what you are doing. Good to read.

So, errr, sorry for breaking the forums yesterday.

We thought we broke it so we know the feeling

You are so strong to keep going and not let this break you. We're thinking of you all

Thank you very much for sharing. Your words really reflect how I've been feeling but have been to scared to voice. I only recently came to a similar conclusion that trying to force an abusive parent to acknowledge what was done or admit their part of it is just not helpful. I guess she has her own reasons to deny it, and maybe someday she will be able to face it. But I can't count on it and feel I need to accept I can still be okay without that closure. I can't keep letting people abuse me just because I'm scared of how much worse it might be or by excusing them.

I still love my mother very much, but I no longer blind myself into believing her invalidation.

So again, thank you for sharing, it helps me feel I'm not alone and maybe I will someday be strong enough to find my own validation.


- Kat

You guys crack me up, thinking you personally broke the forum yesterday. The person who did that is the guy who programs this thing. Geez, we were seeing raw SQL line errors. That had nothing to do with us!

Lol, thanks for the commiseration guys.

Una - It's not so much that there is a real, intellectual belief in such things being my fault. However, it's not surprising that someone raised primarily by a narcissistic individual would develop a sort of reverse narcissism, wherein the world revolves around you in a bad way. Everything bad is your fault. If my therapist sighs, I apologize, as whatever is on his mind is obviously my fault. If something bad happens, regardless of whether or not I did anything to cause it, I often feel guilty and responsible. It's just the result of being scapegoated too much, most likely, and an inability of responsible parties to take responsibility. So, when I "broke a rule" inside, and the forum went down with the SQL error, even though I knew it had nothing to do with me, there was this, "Of course, that makes sense" feeling of responsibility inside. Then when the insurance news came back bad and we thought T got hurt (but only forgot to call), it was like, "Yep, that's why it's bad for us to share." So, while I know that's not true, there is this sort of felt magical thinking inside that must come from very young parts who hold the rules that I am breaking.

-- Sat Mar 16, 2013 12:43 pm --

Edit: To further exacerbate this problem, we were told that if we ever told what it was like at home or when we were called into the counselor's office, for example, even though we told him nothing was wrong...we were told that we would cause our family to lose our home and be split up or something like that, because my mother was on housing assistance. Fast forward to the future, I start sharing my feelings and long buried secrets, and my family does lose our home to foreclosure (as a result of therapy costs, and my inability to work enough, mainly). So, whenever bad consequences result, we pay big attention to that, even if they're probably unrelated. We probably don't pay enough attention to the times we fight through fear to share and nothing bad happens, or something good happens (e.g. T's validation). It's unfortunate.