Invalidation, Understanding, Depression, Education, and Killing

The other day I was chatting with someone and I said, "I don't have any motivation or inspiration." She replied, "Yes you do. You just have to find it."

This stopped me from wanting to say anything else to her. I thought to myself, "What am I supposed to do? Argue with you? Say 'No, I don't'?

I felt invalidated, but more than that I didn't feel understood. I want to be understood. Understanding is a major need of mine. I want to understand and to be understood. At that point I felt understood maybe 1 out of 10. The reason I would say 1 instead of 0 is because she knows that I do have a lot of motivation and inspiration at times. But at that moment I wasn't feeling it. I was feeling depressed. This is another reason I couldn't debate with her. I remembered something I realized a few years ago: feelings aren't debateable.

I thought of telling her this, but I didn't have the energy. I was too depressed. I have been beaten down time and time again. I have had my ideas mocked and ridiculed, beginning in my own family, in particular with one brother and one brother in law, both of whom I admired and looked up to in many ways as I was growing up. But now I see how different I am from them and how unaccepted and judged I feel, and how different my values are. So their invalidation and lack of understanding doesn't hurt me as much now. I don't want to be like them and I don't place much value on their opinions about me. But this was someone close to me, and someone who I want to be understood by.

Depression is a time of low energy. So when someone invalidates you or attacks you, it is less likely you will be able to defend yourself or even say "I feel invalidated." So I just remained silent. I could not even type the words, "I feel invalidated." I just sat there and stared at the screen, with many thoughts going through my mind. I don't remember what my friend said next but it wasn't long before she left the chat without waiting for me to say goodbye. She said something like, "I can tell when I am not wanted." So I was hurting, then she hurt me more, then she felt hurt because I was not talking to her. Her pain was too great to stay around, so she left. Then I felt abandoned on top of feeling depressed, not understood and invalidated.

Later I wrote to her and said I had felt invalidated. She wrote back saying she realized it about five minutes after she had done it, but she felt so bad that she didn't know what to say. So both of us sat there in silence for a while, then the silence and perhaps the guilt was too painful so she left. I might sound a little bitter and blaming. I suppose I do feel that way a little. But more than that I feel sad. Sad that we were never taught how to communicate our feelings and how to help someone feel understood and how to avoid invalidating someone. We were both taught a lot of useless stuff, to put it nicely, but we weren't taught some of the most important things. What frustrates me is that we could have been taught these things in school. For all the time I spent in school there was very little of it that taught me anything about the most important things in life, such as love, understanding, compassion, forgiveness and empathy. I have the ability to learn. There is no doubt in my mind about that. But I simply was never taught these things or even exposed to them.

The other day I asked a class of counseling students how many of them had ever heard that anger is a secondary emotion. Two people out of twenty raised their hand. But if I had asked how many had learned what an isosceles triangle was, probably everyone would raise their hand. Then if I asked them how many remembered the definition or how relevant this bit of "knowledge" was, I would guess there would be few if anyone raising their hands this time. I also asked them how many knew the meaning of the term invalidation. I think three people raised their hand, but even then they couldn't explain it very well.

We could be teaching children and teenagers about the important things in life. We could be getting them involved in highly relevant discussions about their lives and relationships. We could be giving them skills which would be useful in marriage and parenting. But we are too busy teaching them the things we think they need to be "successful." I want to say again though, that I was successful. And miserable. I would not wish the kind of success I had on anyone. I had money, cars, houses, wives, girlfriends, sexual conquests. These things did not fulfill me or meet my emotional needs. I was not taught what the human emotional needs were and I was not helped to identify how mine were different than someone else's.

Along with not being taught about compassion, forgiveness, empathy, anger, and invalidation, I was not taught about conflict resolution and restorative justice. But I could have been, had enough people been aware of their importance. And so could a lot of people. I can't help but wonder how the world might be different today if someone had taught these things to a few little boys named George, Osama, Saddam, Johnny, and Tony.

S. Hein
April 22, 2003