Invalidation: It’s NOT a neutral position

I am so grateful this past Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend for an observable shift in understanding and responding to traumatic impact that I’ve been talking about here for years. Finally the invalidation that so many trauma survivors endure from others when they share what they went through is being named and its harm recognized.

In this link https://www.nicabm.com/traumatic-invalidation/?del=AbandonmentBlogtoUnreg  we see NICABM is talking about the originating traumatic impact and then the next traumatic impact that is your “group’s” invalidation of the experience and its effect on you. I also noticed other treatment groups suddenly talking about the “invalidation” experience as if it suddenly matters. Meanwhile I, along with Counsellor Tania Rochelle and Coach LiliBee have been discussing the secondary trauma of invalidation for years.

But I couldn’t help wonder why the treatment industry suddenly decided to “discover it.”

Then, I realized a book long in the making had been released. So, I ordered it and now I am reading Dr. Judith Herman’s book Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice. Dr. Herman wrote the most critical book on trauma in 1992 that changed everything for understanding and treating trauma. That book is called Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Violence to Political Terror. Dr. Herman’s new book picks up the next crucial topic in treatment and understanding  trauma; that is about the secondary impact of invalidation from others with whom a trauma survivor shares her story. Aha! Now I get the sudden currency of the topic of “invalidation” after decades of it being ignored by the treatment industry.

Dr. Herman’s research shows trauma survivors may not spend as much time agonizing over people from their originating trauma as they do agonizing over those who don’t acknowledge it happened or respond to their need for their “group” to validate the trauma. I know what this is and what invalidation means to people. It is soul-destroying. That invalidation isolates trauma survivors from families, friends, faith communities and from the treatment industry who before this didn’t seem to notice it, or perhaps didn’t want to notice it. Dr. Herman focusses on the repair needed between the trauma survivor and the “bystanders” as she sometimes calls them.

Who were your “bystanders?”  Parents? Siblings? Your spiritual leaders or faith community? Your therapist? Your friends? Your co-workers? Your Neighbours? Who were your bystanders—those who would not engage the truth of who/what/where/when/how you endured?

But before we tar and feather every bystander that comes to mind, let’s consider some factors that could have contributed to their invalidation of your experience. For example, I have compassion for people in these times who are overwhelmed by so much trauma uncovered and reported daily. There is a natural human longing to get away from it sometimes—to have a break or keep it at arm’s length. We live in a time when heinous truths are being told about how governments, spiritual leaders, family members, employers, educators, political leaders, celebrities, industries, harmed people and harmed the environment. We can only take so much. And we are not wrong when we think that. Sometimes people have reached their capacity for traumatic information. They can’t hear one more story. Or they can’t hear it from someone they know.

So much harm being revealed is terrifying. The need for people to insulate themselves also may be because of cowardice. There are always those who run from difficult/dangerous/critical things. It can be too much for them to entertain the ways your story will change how their world is arranged, and who everyone needs to be in that world. Sometimes they have responsibilities that will arise from your truth that are unpleasant to consider—like initiating a criminal investigation or professional review of your abuser. As long as they don’t yet know why they should, they would like to keep it that way.

But a third consideration is that their own unrevealed trauma, resonates with yours so deeply  that it comes to the surface in ways that are re-traumatizing for them. They avoid “negative” stories so they don’t engage their own. And there may be other considerations besides the ones I mention here.

Forces at work in the world and in our lives often work unnamed or unidentified. Some of the forces seem aligned with life to protect, affirm, and nurture all examples of it. Other forces seem negatively intent on gathering and hoarding resources of power to control people and the environment to serve their purposes and desires. There are consequences to both kinds of forces. “Bystanders” can be both privileged by them and diminished by them. It’s a hard truth all by itself.

Here is something that is also true: Our power to reach out to others and connect with them with compassion is a power greater than the negative powers at work in the world and in our lives. Our capacity may seem inadequate, our efforts may be clumsy, and we may feel afraid the whole time, but nothing cannot the defeat the power of choosing to care, to let someone’s story matter, or to be vulnerable yourself. In doing so great healing power is released into the place of original injury. And it is a power to end isolation for the trauma survivor. Every choice to hear the story someone tells about what happened to them diminishes the power of that story for ill purpose. Every act of validation to a trauma survivor gives them back the chance of community again.

The specific human sources of harm done to me rarely go “live” in my daily life now. That hard process of healing happened over years. But the isolation created by the silence I am required to keep in the various groups to which I belong is the enduring consequence of my trauma. It is a daily sorrow. I am too shaky to keep that silent deception up. I am no good at pretending these huge things of both harm and healing did not happen. I am changed by them forever, and I have tried with every breath left in me to direct those changes for good in this world. But I am still isolated.

This secondary suffering is in every voice of every client who tells me they just don’t know who they can trust to talk with about the mess they are in, who won’t burn the bridge after they do tell their story, who won’t choose to blame them or accuse them of exaggerating, etc. They just know that they might not survive any more brutality. So, they retreat and disappear themselves. They don’t participate. They rarely show up. They survive on the edge if they do. They quit their jobs. They don’t keep in touch with family or friends or do so very minimally and superficially. They cannot absorb anymore invalidation in the groups where they used to belong. They know they are isolated. And their survival depends on it.

Invalidation.

But here my clients and I have described the painful story of invalidation with complete disclosure. And many of us have been shamed, blamed, gaslighted, ignored, abandoned, benched, and more. I’m pleased Dr. Herman and her authoritative voice makes it impossible for other practitioners to ignore it any longer. We’ll have to wait to see what it means for them to deal with it now. Catching up takes time and effort. And a lot of these folks are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. How’s that for a little reverse invalidation?

But not to you. Your story is safe here. It has always been safe here.

With you,

Diane.