All individuals have physical and emotional needs, and unfortunately for some, have grown up constantly feeling invalidated. It is more than just needing to be loved. Have you ever been told that your feelings did not matter or that you were less than for feeling a certain way? When we are actually validated by a parent or caretaker, this allows us to grow up feeling understood, seen, and supported.
Of course, we have physical needs, such as being fed and bathed, but we also have emotional needs that go way beyond our physical needs. Emotional validation occurs when a parent or caretaker understands and acknowledges our feelings and why we may have these feelings.
Parents must have emotional skills themselves and be aware of emotions in order to show emotional awareness to their children. For some parents, they may not even know that they are doing this to their child because they were not raised with validation either.
Being invalidated as a child can lead to many physical, emotional, and psychological effects throughout life. Did you grow up feeling unseen, misunderstood, or not validated in most ways?
Signs of Feeling Invalidated
- Your parents act like your friends instead of your parents. This behavior from parents leads to a lack of consequences and structure as a child, which makes it hard to have this structure throughout life. This can lead to making unhealthy or disruptive decisions later in life because of being unaware of the consequences.
- You had to parent your parents. Needing to be the responsible one causes too much responsibility and neglect of you and your needs as a child. This makes us put others needs before our own. This can also make us feel resentful or may have us wanting to be in relationships where we can be responsible and put that person’s needs first as well.
- You were treated as if you should not have feelings or needs. Were you ever told by a parent or caretaker that your feelings were wrong or did not matter? This makes us hide our feelings in fear of what others may think or say. This can cause unhealthy relationships in adulthood. This is also a form of emotional gaslighting from the parent or caretaker.
- Your feelings were ignored. When our feelings are ignored or not validated, this makes us build unhealthy boundaries. This can cause you to grow up thinking that your feelings are not important, which can lead to the neglect of feelings and emotional needs. This can be shown in any relationship when we are unwilling to show our true emotions and even ignore that our feelings even exist.
These experiences can cause individuals to overthink everything, feel bad for having emotions, afraid to show any emotion, become people pleasers, or even shut down easily.
Here are Ways to Help Manage and Overcoming Invalidation
- Identify your feelings
- Accept your feelings
- Set healthy boundaries
- Understand and realize consequences
- Be kind to yourself
- Create self-validation
- Seek social support from family, friends, or a support group
- Seek out a therapist for help
Can you relate to any of the above signs of feeling invalidated? Not everyone is raised with kindness, love, and validation. Be kind to those who may struggle with their own validation because of this. Be aware of how you treat your own family and children. If you grew up without proper physical and emotional validation, you could change how you raise and create validation for your own kids.
Therapy can help you create self-validation to change your future and the future of your family. The effects of physical and emotional invalidation can lead to many harsh effects throughout life. Do not be afraid to reach out to a trained professional from counselor or therapist for help, you are not alone, your feelings matter, and you are enough!
