By Olivia Provost-Walker M.A.
All our lives are filled with various events and situations that will produce a range of emotional responses. When we experience emotions deeply, these natural emotions can be particularly intense and painful, and in turn, we can develop patterns of secondary responses to block or reduce these painful emotions. Self-invalidation is one example of a secondary response that increases our emotional suffering in the long term.
What is self-invalidation? Self-invalidation typically shows up in the form of self-judgements. Thoughts like “I don’t have a right to feel sad right now” or “I’m overreacting” are examples of self-invalidation. These thoughts block the primary emotion but also cause a cascade of intense guilt and shame.
In contrast, self-validation is how we acknowledge, allow, and understand our emotional responses in a non-judgemental, self-compassionate way. This might look like:
- Paying attention to the physical sensations in our body, our emotions, and the current situation. For example, we might practice validating how it makes sense that we’re noticing tension in our body leading up to an important work meeting.
- Labelling the emotion and allowing ourselves to feel it. For example, we can acknowledge that an emotion is present, label it, and ride the emotion like a wave, allowing it to pass without suppressing or denying its presence.
- Looking to our individual histories and contexts to understand why we are experiencing the current emotions. This can mean recognizing the ways we’ve been invalidated in the past and the impact of chronically invalidating environments and structures.
- Taking our emotions seriously and responding accordingly. This can look like self-soothing, treating ourselves kindly, or taking physical steps to resolve or acknowledge the problem. Essentially, behaving in a validating and effective way.
Mastering the skill of self-validation takes effortful practice, and it’s a practice that is worth undertaking. Self-validation is key to experiencing and respecting our emotions without being controlled by them.