On Oprah’s
final show, she made the following statement: “I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this
show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation. If I
could reach through this television and sit on your sofa or sit on a stool in
your kitchen right now, I would tell you that every single person you will ever
meet shares that common desire. They want to know: ‘Do you see me? Do you hear
me? Does what I say mean anything to you?’
Back in my graduate school days and a
painstaking 215 page dissertation later, I lived and breathed this topic. I researched the effects of chronic
invalidation of emotional experiences in childhood and it’s relation to later
emotional dysregulation, impulsivity and self-harming behaviors in
adulthood. How can being invalidated,
unheard, misunderstood, subtly dismissed, and criticized be so harmful, as
compared to verbal, physical and sexual abuse?
Because as a child, we are not born knowing what we feel. We do not know that sad is sad and happy is
happy. We have not yet developed a sense
of self. We internalize that of what we
see and experience. We learn from the
parents or primary caregivers in our life, and then also from our social
environment. If someone told you your
entire life that the blue sky is red, you would think that everyone telling you
it was blue was wrong…and crazy. Your
blue is red, that’s just the way it’s been.
Our attachment process begins with the parent’s
gaze we hope we have to connect to as infants, the reflection of a smile, of a
frown, of surprise, of concern. When
parents or caregivers reflect what we feel as little ones, we learn to identify
it, understand it, feel safe with it.
Then with the learning of language we give words to the weather of our
internal landscapes, and we learn if our landscapes are ok. Therein can begin a long blissful summer or a
relentless winter machine. When parents
can tolerate and contain the emotions of their little ones, they are given a
greater chance of then learning how to tolerate and regulate their own internal
worlds as they develop and grow up in a chaotic world. When our feelings in childhood are not met
with attunement and validation but rather they are chronically punished or
invalidated, it is like telling water it isn’t wet, or sky it isn't blue. It is telling someone that their private,
innermost experience is wrong. A young
person does not yet have the tools to differentiate and say, “Wait a second,
I’m ok, what I’m feeling is ok, this is clearly about them”. A child in an abusive home does not have the
ability to say, “Hey guys, I’m not taking this abuse, so I’m gonna be moving
out and paying rent down the street”.
Children manifest resilient defenses and coping mechanisms to deal with
whatever environment in which they find themselves, though these systems often
backfire in adulthood. And with chronic
emotional invalidation, their internal world begins to get distorted, and their emotional landscape may begin to look more like a fun house of mirrors that no longer reflects themselves as they truly are.
With the transition and individuation into
adolescence and adulthood, if we have received a pretty decent amount of emotional
reflection and validation along with some boundaries for our behaviors and a
secure attachment base from which to explore the world, we are likely more
equipped to develop a whole and regulated sense of self; a sense of self where
as adults we will be greater able to self-validate and not depend on those
outside of us to validate our experiences as we depended on as infants. We are more likely to feel differentiated and
secure and recognize our capabilities as adults, versus connecting with the
helplessness we embodied as infants. We
may develop a greater ability to be okay with ourselves when someone else isn’t
okay with us, without having to control others or make them feel something else
in order for us to feel something else.
That said, I must add a brief aside here and acknowledge that a child’s
genetic temperament and resilience can also be a significant factor in how the
dynamics of a family play out and take effect.
There is no perfect parent, parenting book, nor is there only one reason
or cause as to why we turn out how we do.
The interplay of nature versus nurture is ever present.
Once we navigate the sometimes treacherous
and often idealized, longed for launch into adulthood, is it then wrong to seek
validation? Not at all. As Oprah stated, it is the common thread the
majority of us share. The difference is
that we cannot depend on it to be ok. If
you experienced trauma growing up, if you feel empty or like you know nothing in
your life but wells that are dry, you have got to learn how to find places that
are full, you have got to learn to fill yourself up. Without this, you are creating a life of potential
anxiety as it depends on all that is external to you to bring you buckets of
water. We cannot control others and we
cannot expect others to be responsible for navigating our own internal
territory. Continuing to blame the past
for our current circumstances can create stuckness and resentment. We are no longer that helpless child in those
same circumstances. We can choose to do the healing work, to begin expressing,
releasing, repairing, forgiving. We can re-learn
new and adaptive ways of coping. We can
ask for what we need and we can share our feelings, but how we cope with what
we get is up to us. We are responsible
for the choices we make. When we base
our selves and our experiences on others, we run the risk of becoming enmeshed,
and enmeshment sometimes gets mistaken for love. Enmeshment equals wherever you go, I go;
whatever happens to you happens to me; whatever I feel you have to feel, or
else you don’t care. This is dangerous
and brittle, therefore breakable.
Enmeshment thereby equals reactivity, and when we live in a state of
reactivity, we live outside reason.
So, the task at hand is to learn to differentiate. That is just a big word for learning how to
maintain ourselves in relation to others. It is how we learn not to depend solely on
validation from others. “[Differentiation] is the process by
which we become more uniquely ourselves by maintaining ourselves in
relationship with those we love” (Schnarch, 1997, p. 51). In his book,
The Passionate Marriage, David Schnarch (1997) states that “differentiation
always involves balancing two basic life forces: the drive for individuality
and the drive for togetherness” (p. 55).
When we are continually seeking a source to validate our childhood
wounds, who we are, our sense of self, we end up fusing with another or desiring
an escape from the other; we live through a ‘reflected sense of self’, our
identity depending on relationships, leaving us prone to fragmenting when circumstances
change in our lives. “We’ve reduced
adults to infants and infants to a frail ghost of their resilience, reduced
marriage to providing safety, security, and compensation for childhood
disappointments. We remove our essential drives for autonomy and freedom”.
(Schnarch, 1997, p. 43).
So as we reach adulthood, our job is to
somehow reconcile the tales of our childhood that may have left us wounded;
vague reminders of play ground scars and the penetrating whispers of
generations. These attachments, these
internalizations are tapes that have to be re-visited and re-recorded,
thermostats that have to be re-calibrated, to reflect the capable adults we are
in the now, not the wounded child we were then.
Without awareness and attention and action that wounded part of us will
continue to seek out what is familiar –even if damaging - in an unconscious
effort to meet the needs that were never met.
Healing and the journey into wholeness will permit healthy relationships
to grow, as they will be based on the now, not on their residency in the void
of your past. Validate who you are,
every beautiful piece, in all of its glorious imperfection. Validate your existence, your experience,
your efforts. This acknowledgement and
affirmation allows for acceptance; it brings accountability, wholeness and
authenticity. It allows a fighting
‘for’, not a fighting ‘against’.
Acceptance in the face of adversity of ‘what is’ allows for change to
‘what can be’.
In conclusion, I will leave you with this….
Get conscious. Get intentional. Shut off your auto pilot and be
deliberate. Listen to your inner voice,
that inner dialogue. Make sure it’s
yours, make sure it’s accountable, and make sure it’s kind.
-
Georgina K. Smith, Ph.D.
Dr. Smith is a clinical psychologist based in Santa
Monica, California. She specializes in
treating trauma, addiction and eating disorders.
Works
Cited
1.
David
Schnarch. (1997). Passionate marriage: Keeping love and intimacy alive in
committed relationships.
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