invalidating ourselves through justification & excuses

Many of us have learned behaviors of invalidation. When we have felt invalidated by others often enough, we don't believe that our feelings or experience is valid. So we learn to invalidate ourselves, too.

One of the ways we invalidate ourselves is by justifying, excusing, or even over-validating others. This can look many different ways.

If someone forgot our birthday, maybe we justify their actions (or lack of actions) by saying "I'm sure they have a lot going on."

If our friend canceled plans on us at the last minute, maybe we excuse their actions by saying "I wasn't really feeling up to hanging out anyways."

If a family member says something unkind to us, maybe we over-validate their experience by saying "I know they had a really rough day at work."

These behaviors neglect our experience & keeps us from validating our feelings: that we felt forgotten, unimportant, or mistreated.

When we catch ourselves justifying someone else's actions, we can reframe it as well-intended empathy. Then we can extend the same empathy to ourselves.

Our friend forgot our birthday? Maybe they have a lot going on. AND we can acknowledge that we also feel forgotten that we didn't get a happy birthday message.

We don't want to lose that generosity we are extending to others' experiences. We also don't want to keep it from extending generosity towards our own experience, too.