validation!? for me? 🥹 👉👈

bpd (Erin’s Version), self-validation + talking to myself

Sep 28, 2023

let’s catch up 👯

I have written anything here in a few weeks. I tried but my brain was on the turbo part of the wash cycle and I couldn’t create a single whole thought.

In the last few weeks, I started a Dealing with Emotions group therapy programme. (I had a wee mental health crisis earlier this year and while that was unfortunate and harrowing, it means I now have access to these potentially life-alternating resources – like this group.) I saw a private psychiatrist for the first time to unpick my whole mental health, medical and medication history and see what we find (or don’t find) and try and figure out what we can do from here. I competed in the Pan-Pacific Barbershop Contest in Auckland. I went to Rarotonga.

All of these things gave me a lot to think about. I have approximately one hundred thousand things I want to write my way through, process, unpack, honour and understand better (at least I’m getting content out of it? The hustle never stops 💯) and I’m unsure where to even start.

I am now in week five of the group therapy. I have my next psychiatrist appointment coming up soon. The timing of these two things, how they feel paired together, as a set, is not lost on me. Neither is the common thread between the two.

At it’s most reductive and basic, what they both offered me was validation. Whether it was literally just the psychiatrist pausing during my dramatic and performative retelling of my treacherous journey through the public health system to say, wow there’s a lot going on here, or talking about the experience of intense emotional dysregulation in group therapy, both made me feel seen and heard and understood.

validation and bpd 🤝

Since being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, I have understood and been able to articulate the importance of validation in a way I couldn’t before. How so often as humans our problems cannot be easily fixed or answered, and when we talk to a friend about our struggles or issues, we are asking, subconsciously or not, for space, not solutions. Space to say here it all is. And for our friend to say, I’m sorry, that’s terrible, you must be feeling awful. How that gentle, seemingly unhelpful acknowledgement is sometimes the most powerful and affecting response of all.

I am someone who is incredibly sensitive to invalidation. It is a key part of the BPD experience for many people (my recent crisis assessment included the astute observation that the patient is very sensitive to perceived invalidation). I have often found myself careening, panicked and fragile, from person to person, desperate for someone just to acknowledge how hard I am fighting. How well I am doing to be alive. I feel like shouting from an irrationally high vantage point, look at me continuing the battle! Look how well I am managing! But obviously yelling look how well I am managing from a literal ledge implies the opposite.

I hate this feeling. It’s intolerable. And the worst thing about it is I know it’s desperate and panicked. And I know what I am searching for. But that awareness, that knowledge, doesn’t stop it. It doesn’t even enable me to ask for it from the people I know would be able to give it to me. And it certainly doesn’t enable me to give it to myself. Maybe my lack of identity/unstable sense of self (a common BPD symptom and one very prevalent in BPD – Erin’s Version) makes this need even stronger. Without that foundation, I am fully dependent on others for confirmation of anything and everything.

validating others 🫵

One small and simple grace: all of this, my extensive and intimate experiences of this feeling and being able to understand and articulate my own needs, means I am getting better at validating my friends. At asking what they are wanting or needing when they talk to me. (It is hard, and my distress at seeing people I love in distress is hard to overcome. The need to fix things is a desperation of its own kind.) I try to make that moment of acknowledgement – I see you and I hear you and I’m sorry – my first response. It’s something I’m still practising but I think even the practice of it, the holding of this knowledge, makes me a better friend.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, because after Pamela died, he promised himself that if anyone told him the smallest, saddest story, he would answer, I’m so sorry. Meaning, Yes, that happened. You couldn’t believe the people who believed that not mentioning sadness was a kind of magic that could stave off the very sadness you didn’t mention—as though grief were the opposite of Rumpelstiltskin and materialized only at the sound of its own name.
– Elizabeth McCracken, Property, a short story from Thunderstruck

self-validation 🏋️‍♀️

The fact that I struggle so much with validating myself and my own experiences makes my life harder. It makes me fully reliant on other people. And the level of distress I feel, mixed with the need to involve other people, means I am making my own symptoms worse. I have known for a long time that I have needed to work on self-validation, but that is easy to say and difficult to enact.

One of my recent group therapy sessions was entirely on self-compassion and self-validation. When someone minimises or dismisses our problems, when they blame us or tell us we are wrong, we feel worse. Research shows that validation decreases emotional intensity. My group therapy notes say, “it quiets defensive and fearful emotions so we can problem solve; and it allows us to let go of the pain and exhaustion that comes from constant self-justification, self-judgement and self-doubt.”

And who is the best person to validate your experience? Who knows it best? Is always there? Who knows exactly how hard the fight has been? Intimately knows every obstacle you have overcome? You do.

how do we do this?

I have been validating myself recently by talking to myself a lot. Sometimes even in third person.

“It’s understandable that you’re very anxious about packing for this trip because you want to make sure you have everything you need and can perform well and confidently in the contest.”
“It makes sense that you are hurt by that person snapping at you because this relationship is really important to you.”

Or even (!):

“It makes sense that you snapped at that person because you haven’t slept enough the past few nights and that means you are feeling more sensitive and irritable.”
- (Self-validation is non-judgmental! Self-validation isn’t approving or disapproving of an action or feeling! Self-validation is simply stating the feeling and why it is valid! Maybe you’re tired or haven’t eaten! Maybe your past trauma is triggered! Maybe it’s a particularly infuriating situation! Maybe you are stressed about something else! There are lots of reasons!)

Other ways we can be kind to ourselves and our experiences:

talking to yourself as though you are a small child;
talking to yourself as you would talk to a friend;
write yourself a letter;
recognise that there is a mathematical certainty that you are not alone in this feeling – life is challenging for everyone at times; and
take advantage of the fact that we are mammals and are hardwired to respond to things like warmth, physical touch and soothing sounds.

here is my homework 🤓

(lean into the discomfort with me pls)

It makes sense that I want people to validate my struggle as I live with invisible illnesses and disabilities and I appear healthy to the people around me and that can feel dismissive and isolating.

It’s understandable that I took time off writing in this space as I was focusing on other things that are very important to me and then taking time to relax.

It makes sense that I feel anxious at not sticking to a deadline I set for myself because achieving goals is important for me and makes me feel accomplished.

It’s understandable that my mind is whirring so fast it feels like it’s liquifying because I am taking in a lot of new information that I am trying to understand thoroughly.

Your turn. You deserve it. You’re worth the discomfort.

Thanks for being here. See you next week.