Feelings and Seeking Validations
All feelings are valid
There has never been a time in my life like now when I have felt so connected to my mum, grandmums, cousin sisters, nieces, mum’s friends, aunties, girl friends, young women, little girls or any other woman in the world. This may be because I feel the most connected to myself now. :)
When I was in my home country during holidays this time and was having a conversation with my mum about all random things in the world. I told her a story one of my aunty told me. That aunty is another woman in my family and is like mother to me. I almost cried hearing that story as I related to her story. I have had same feelings in a similar set up in my life too. I told my mum the story and what my aunty used to feel when those things use to happen in her life. For some reason, my mum knew the different version of that story. You know it happens in family like different people have different versions of a same story. Also, this is something which happened decades ago, so it is possible that different people remember different versions now. When I told my mum the story, I did tell her I have felt the similar in my life too. But my mum declining the story made me so upset and angry. I couldn’t understand what exactly made me that way. My mum was surprised too that why I am feeling bad, it was someone’s else story. We couldn’t figure out at that time and I just went to my room to look at some stuff on my laptop. My dad came home after half an hour and we didn’t talk about it again that day.
When I picked my diary to do my journaling at night, I decided to write about it as it was kind of bothering me. While writing my feelings I understood that my mum declining the story felt like she is declining my feelings and that’s why it hurts me. She had no intentions to hurt me or invalidate my feelings. She was unaware of the fact that I was so onboard with the story and feeling it as it was of my own. I also noticed that when we can’t validate ourselves on something we have felt in the past or feeling now, we look for similar story of someone who has been through something similar and felt like us and that’s kind of gives us the validation we are seeking. Or we go extra mile for that validation, we take their story in front of others for our validation. My goodness, we are so complex. We have layers and layers over us to understand and shed.
As we all know, no feelings are right or wrong, all feelings are valid. But it’s very normal to not able to validate our feelings by our own and reaching out to someone who you think can validate it for you. But we also need to understand that the other person might not be able to validate your feelings based on their mental capacity at the time when you are talking to them. It is best to ask them if they can do it for you today before opening up. I know that’s not always possible as sometimes we don’t even know what we want out of a conversation, we just know we are feeling something unpleasant and need to talk to someone about it. If it feels like no one understands what you are feeling, then think of booking a therapy session for yourself.
So, what to do when our loved ones unintentionally invalidate our feelings? Give them grace and understand they might be processing something of their own today. Don’t take it as a sign that they don’t love you. They might need help too, especially with your parents. My parents have never come to me saying that they need to talk or they might need any help to process something. I know, even on the days when I don’t like myself, my parents will always love me. I hope you all are doing good. Thank you for being here.
Lots of love and healing,
Harneek