Invalidation is a Trust Killer

Connection and trust happen when one heart meets another. Invalidation wipes out the other heart and closes it off. Think of the contexts of life that change when a person has the ability to connect with someone else. In business, deals are won and sales are made. In personal relationships, marriages are healed when a closed off spouse finally hears and understands what the other person has been feeling and experiencing. Wayward children are won back when they feel that their side of things is finally listened to, and vice versa. Extended family and adult children situations are restored when each begins to connect with the other. There is not a context of life where listening and connecting with the other side’s reality and experience is not helpful.

The sad thing is that most times the people who invalidate other people’s experience are not aware that they are doing something destructive. In fact, they often think they are helping.

We have all seen those instances where someone (maybe even ourselves) has said something negative like, “I’m such a loser,” and someone immediately comes back with “Don’t say that! You don’t really feel that way!” or some other attempt to help that only drives the person further into hopelessness. The reason is that he now has two problems instead of one. He has the initial problem that he felt so negative about, and then he feels that he is all alone and has no one who truly understands. That is why people who try to help others by talking them out of what they feel are usually no help at all. It is also the reason why research has for decades proven that you can help desperate people immensely by giving them no answers at all, and only giving them empathy.

Further, other research has shown that emotional invalidation is the basis of many character disorders that lead people to psychiatric illnesses as well as poor performance in academics. It has been shown to be a factor in almost all that is wrong with people, physiological and organic causes notwithstanding. “Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!” does more than make a child be quiet. It disengages the child from her own feelings and inner states. As a result, she can develop a host of impulse problems as well as emotional and relational issues that affect her functioning.

The real reason for that breakdown lies in the breakdown in the structure of the relationship itself. This is where we get all of our capacities for performance. As the child disengages from the parent or caretaker, he or she has lost connection with the source of the functions that he needs to learn and internalize. So, impulse control, discipline, empathy, reality testing, emotional regulation, hope, trust, judgment, and the other things that children get from caretakers have all become unavailable as the connection is lost. The child is now alone, and without the capacities he or she needs.

In marriage, the spouses who connect find ways in the connection to control their destructive impulses, get to a higher sense of function in their conflict, and transcend whatever issue was driving it. By restoring the connection through empathy, they are elevated to a higher level of functioning. From childhood to corporate boardrooms, connection is key, and invalidation is a cancer.