Bounce Back from Feeling DISMISSED or Undermined - In 10 Ways

Today I'm gonna talk about emotional invalidation. I'm gonna talk about what you can do if you feel like your emotions have been invalidated by somebody, whether in the past or in your present. Hi, I'm Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. In this podcast, I help people to recover from the emotional or psychological side of comfort eating, which means that I actually help you to deal with a lot of different emotional difficulties. Today is about having your feelings invalidated, which I know is a very common experience for the average comfort eater. Comfort Eating in itself is an invalidation of how we feel because often there are feelings that lie behind the comfort eating that trigger an episode, and so simply by eating them down, we're invalidating how we feel. Emotional invalidation refers to the experience of having our emotions denied, dismissed, or undermined by someone else, And it's actually pretty common. It happens when someone responds to our emotions in a way that suggests our feelings are just not warranted, not important, or even incorrect. This can come in lots of different levels, from outright denial and ridicule to more subtle forms of disregard or minimization. Mostly this is unconscious. Sometimes it's conscious. Next week I'll be talking about codependency and narcissism, where emotional invalidation is more intentional. But either way, emotional invalidation can have a profound effect on an individual's wellbeing, relationships, and the course of their life. Often people invalidate someone or deny how they feel simply because they can't process what that person's emotions are. They might be preoccupied with their own thing or just not know how to respond to this type of emotion, most likely because they dunno how to respond to that within themselves. But the danger of it is that it undermines the fundamental need for empathy and understanding. Being emotionally invalidated can look like blame name calling, problem solving, or playing down another person's experience. You might hear words like,"you are too sensitive". "Just let it go". "You shouldn't feel that way". Slow down" or"how do you think that makes me feel?" Whether this was intended or not the effect of emotional invalidation can be profound. When our emotions are invalidated repeatedly, we start to doubt ourselves. We doubt our feelings, our experience, and our ability to navigate ourselves. It can erode self-esteem, lead to a sense of isolation and contribute to anxiety and depression. Over time, it will affect our relationships and create barriers to authentically communicating and connecting, which means we form pretty unhealthy relationships. Because everyone's emotions deserve acknowledgement and respect, but saying something like,"you make a big deal out of everything", or" I don't see the problem", sends a powerful message that the person's feelings are not important. Or that they shouldn't be feeling a certain way. And so shame and self-questioning is set up particularly with an empathic kind of a person. In relationship. This emotional invalidation erodes trust and intimacy. And it creates a cycle where people become hesitant to express anything about how they feel, fearing that they'll be invalidated or dismissed. So what can you do in this situation? In relationship, it's important to work out if the person meant to invalidate you, in which case it's important to establish empathy and a willingness to validate the other person's feelings as soon as possible. You may need to calm down before that is possible. But sooner or later, it should show whether the person intends to help you with this. So in this case, it may be helpful to express your feelings directly to the person who you felt invalidated by calmly explaining how their response made you feel and the impact that it had on you. And then wait for a response. You know that if you don't get one, that the person can't handle how you feel. And if you are the one who's been accused of invalidating somebody, why not practice active listening and empathy? This really does make most things right, make a concerted effort to understand the other person's perspective, validate how they feel, and avoid any judgment, dismissal, or trying to explain yourself. We all can learn to create a safe space where emotions are honored and respected. And many of us have a lot to learn. We are complex human beings, and we have unique experiences, and our emotions are an integral part of our humanity. As I've been explaining in the last two podcasts, denial of how we feel. It just means that those feelings aren't dealt with, and as I've been saying, your emotions matter. Processing them makes a difference and you deserve to be heard if only by you. I promised last week that I would take you through the process that I go through when I'm processing how I feel. I am gonna do that today, but I'm also gonna put alongside that the experience of one of my clients because the sequence of this process, gives you some fantastic tips for how to deal with emotional invalidation with this fantastic client. We came up with 10 ways that she can feel better about herself and move on from a difficult situation. The first one she said is that she asks what I would do, And typically what I would say is "come back to your body" and I've gotta say, this is the first port of call for me as well. As I've been explaining your inner sense, your feeling of your physical sensations, what's actually happening in your body when you feel something, the images that you get, the memories that come up at that time. All of this is incredibly useful information, and just focusing on your body can help your nervous system to calm down. An important thing to distinguish here is that you're not getting lost in the feeling. You are observing it as if you're a step away and you're making a choice for yourself what to watch. The next thing that we came up with was that I often say"this is not you. This is your nervous system. You are triggered." And again, this is one that really helps me too. If you know you are triggering, if you know what your core wounding is, if you know how you've been hurt, and all the belief systems that came out of that, and if you know how the nervous system responds when you feel threatened or frightened, It is really helpful information to just recognize that you are physiologically triggered back into that wounding feeling. Emotionally invalidated. Say if someone says to you,"you are overreacting" or"stop making things up", is likely to send a lot of people over the edge. It is potentially a reminder of how you were or how you felt put down as a child, how you learned to feel that you were worthless. A fourth thing that we came up with is that it's temporary. This feeling will pass. Everything passes. Everything is temporary that we experience. Again, this sometimes helps me. Do you often feel that your emotions might last forever? Your bad mood, your difficulty, the pain that you experience often feels like this is something we're gonna feel for the rest of our lives, but we don't. It only comes in waves. The fifth thing that I would often recommend is refocusing on yourself rather than the other person. This is a massive one because this is about whether you validate yourself or not. If I'm feeling triggered, I'll often focus on something that will make me happier. I'll stop working so hard and I'll find a friend, or I'll go out for a nice walk. Or I'll listen to some music that makes me happy, whatever I choose to do. It's about focusing on my own pleasure and my own sense of self. Which leads us onto the next one. Take an inventory of all the things that you like about yourself. I. Or that you feel you have to offer in relationship. One of the loveliest parts of my jobs is listening to people list these things. Often they come up with empathy, kindness, and loving and humor. I have a lot of really funny clients, which I feel absolutely blessed about. In session, I would ask you to embody this place, what this feels like to feel good about yourself, to enjoy those qualities that you have. Remembering times when those qualities have been appreciated by other people, and truly learning to appreciate them about yourself. You can't be any other way. This is who you are. Incidentally, those are all qualities that I appreciate about myself. I would add on top of that, that I have an insatiable curiosity. For understanding people and a real passion and dedication to connecting on a deeper level. This is something that I really value and that no one can take away from me. Shelley Treacher: Another thing that we came up with is allowing yourself to be miserable. This is super important. If you're feeling invalidated. I experienced that myself recently when I was feeling angry. I realized that I had to let myself be angry. And partly that felt like standing up for myself. So I needed that anger. And I needed exactly the time. It took for me to work out where I was with that situation. We can often feel that we should cheer ourselves up and that we shouldn't be feeling as we do. But often just allowing yourself a few extra days, minutes or hours, just to feel miserable. Or angry or grumpy, whatever it is that you feel. Often that can be healing in itself and all blow itself through. The second to last thing that we came up with was meditation or mindfulness actually slowing down. So when someone's telling you to slow down, it's actually a good idea. However, the empathy must come after that. I often listen to meditation as I go to sleep or meditation if I'm finding something difficult. I found myself extremely angry recently about something and it kept coming back to me. Meditation leads me away from the anger and more into observing the anger and being interested in it. For me, this allows me to express myself in the way that I want to. And the final offering that my client came up with, and absolutely my favorite, and not the first time I've heard this, she said, I think about what would Lizzo do. Don't you just love that? Lizzo has an incredibly. Healthy sense of entitlement and an empowered way of expressing yourself. honestly, if you are feeling down on yourself, I challenge you to listen to a Lizzo song and not feel better by the end of it. So today I talked about emotional invalidation and what that experience is like, how it might affect you and your relationships. And I offered you 10 ways that you can cope with this. One thing that's not mentioned there is to surround yourself with individuals who do validate your emotions and who understand your experiences. If you've experienced emotional invalidation, it's essential to practice self-care and to seek support. Because your emotions are valid and they do deserve acknowledgement. Thank you so much for listening today. I have some exciting news, exciting for me anyway. I've been telling you for a long time that I've been creating a community, creating an app, trying to get my online course up and running. I have finally got my app approved by Apple and Google. The community is in its very infant stages right now, but I would welcome you into that with open arms. Come and help me shape and guide this community of people who understand what you are going through. Also on there, you'll find my beginner's introductory course in what emotional eating actually is and how to uncover what the emotions might be behind your eating. Both of these are on a ridiculously low price because I just wanna get the ball rolling. So please look me up on the app stores under underground confidence, or if you wanna go to the web app, which would be my preference, and you'll have access to many, many more of the features. Please go to underground-confidence.passion.io it's free to have a look and there are a couple of free lessons in there as well. As I say, next week I'm gonna start talking about narcissism and codependency together. This has been Underground Confidence with Shelley Treacher. I'll see you next week.