Link – Childhood Trauma: Overcoming the Hurt of Invalidation

“Invalidation is triggering. It makes a white hot anger rise up inside. We want to defend ourselves the way we couldn’t when we were young. At the same time, we lean towards self-doubt because we’d all rather believe the abuse didn’t happen at all. Invalidation makes healing slow down and we feel like we don’t have a right to share our story anymore.

In the end, we can’t control other people (or the things they say). We can only control our behavior.

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching”

This is very true, and is something I try to mention often when we talk about whether a survivor should tell their story. I’m all for any survivor who wants to tell their story, but that survivor should also be prepared to deal with people who don’t respond very well. OR not deal with them, as the case may be. In the end, our healing doesn’t require those people, it only requires ourselves. So even if the response is invalidation, you continue down that path, and validate yourself.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2016/07/26/childhood-trauma-overcoming-the-hurt-of-invalidation/