The worst way to handle emotional invalidation

Have you ever shared an emotional feeling with a friend or a colleague or a partner or even a family member, and instead of having them acknowledge what you're feeling, they shut you down? They say things like, "Oh, you're too sensitive," or, "You shouldn't feel that way," "I think you're overreacting," and your first instinct is to defend yourself. You start explaining why you feel the way you do, trying to justify your emotions, hoping they'll finally understand, and they don't. They just keep pushing back at you, and they make you feel even more dismissed, even more alone, even more unseen and unheard and unloved. So what do you do when someone emotionally invalidates you? Well, there's a wrong way to handle it, and most people do that without realizing it, but there's also a right way as well. And in this video, I'm going to teach you both. In my 40 years, I taught people how to handle emotionally charged situations from corporate boardrooms to maximum security prisons. And in this video, I'm going to give you the exact 3-step technique to handle emotional invalidation in less than 90 seconds. So if you find this valuable, hit the subscribe button. Let's get started. So why is it that defending your feelings always fails? When someone says, "You're too sensitive," your instinct is to prove that you're not. So you explain, you justify, you build a case why your feelings are valid. And it never works, not once. Here's why: you're fighting the wrong thing. You're responding to their words as if this was a logical disagreement. It isn't. It's an emotional one. And the emotion isn't yours. It's theirs. Emotional invalidation is not a statement about you. It's an unconscious response to the discomfort the other person feels being in your presence when you're emotional. We invalidate others because We were invalidated ourselves and it has become habitual. When someone says you're overreacting, they're not analyzing you. They're reacting to something in your emotion that's triggering them. Here's the thing: feelings are facts, even if they are fleeting. But trying to address someone's emotional state with logic confuses them, saddens them, or makes them even angrier. The more you argue for the right to feel what you feel, the more entrenched they become. You cannot outlogic somebody whose brain is in threat mode. So who is actually dysregulated here when you're being emotionally invalidated? Here's what nobody tells you: the person who invalidates you is the person in emotional distress. Not you, them! They're overwhelmed by your emotional expression and they don't know what to do with it. They're defensive because something in your emotion has triggered them. It feels like blame. They feel like it's their fault. They're afraid of conflict. They're afraid of being wrong. They're afraid of losing control of the situation. Their dismissal is a coping mechanism, not a verdict on your feelings. So if they are the dysregulated one, your job is not to defend yourself. Your job is to de-escalate them first. Once their nervous system settles, the conversation you need actually becomes possible. And this isn't a concession, it's the only move that actually works. The wrong goal is to get them to acknowledge that your feelings are valid. The right goal is to calm their emotional state so they become capable of hearing you. The difference sounds subtle, but the results are completely different. By the way, most of us were taught the wrong way to communicate when emotions run high. I put together a free guide that breaks down the 5 biggest myths about listening and what actually works instead. Check out the link in the description. And what's the most hurtful thing anybody has said to you about your feelings? Let me know in the comments and I'll let you know how to stop that from happening in the future. So what do you do when somebody invalidates you? The first thing you need to do is read them, not the situation. Stop focusing on what they said and ask, "What are they feeling right now?" 5 states almost always drive emotional invalidation, and one or more of them are present when it happens to you. People are defensive. They feel like you're blaming them for something. They're overwhelmed. Your emotional intensity is more than they can handle. They're afraid. Vulnerability and conflict trigger their own threat response. Frustrated. They want to fix it, they can't, and dismissal is the release valve. And finally, they feel powerless. Your emotions make them feel helpless, and dismissal restores their control. Your response to emotional invalidation is very simple. Once you identify it, reflect back their feelings with a "you" statement. What you don't want to do— what most people recommend, which is use "I" statements— you don't want to say, "I just want you to understand how I feel." Those are triggering statements, and they're taken as blame, not as an attempt to understand. You do want to say something like, "You're overwhelmed and don't know what to do with this." "You're frustrated because you want help and you can't." Keep it short, calm, and entirely about them. So what happens when you do this? You're going to notice that their posture shifts, their defensiveness drops. Sometimes they'll give you a verbal response, or "Yeah!" or "I just..." without realizing the conversation has changed to become about them. That's the signal. Their nervous system is settled and real dialogue is now possible. Only now are you able to say what needed from the beginning. Sometimes people will push back at you. They'll say something like, "Why are you psychoanalyzing me? Stop being my therapist! Don't do that to me!" What's actually happening when you get this pushback is that you're de-escalating properly. They're testing whether you're genuine or running some kind of script or technique or manipulating them. They're checking, "Will you stay regulated or will you eventually crack?" So what do you do in response? Don't defend the approach. Don't explain what you're doing. Just reflect the new emotion. They say, "Stop psychoanalyzing me." You say, "You're frustrated when I say that." Stay in the emotion every single time. This works because the underlying need to be seen, to be heard, to be validated hasn't changed. Every time you reflect accurately, you're meeting that need. Many people will de-escalate within 90 seconds because the emotional cycle finally completes. They run out of escalation because you keep giving them the one thing they actually need: to be heard, to be seen, to be validated themselves. By the way, if you want to learn the science around why conflicts escalate. I've made a guide on that. It's completely free. Check out the link in the description. Okay, let me give you the story of how I discovered this. And that story is a perfect example of what I've been talking about. Back in 2005, I was called into a mediation between ex-spouses, and we'll call them Susan and John. That's not their real names. $18,000 was at stake. Each side had spent $50,000 in attorney's fees. They didn't just hate each other, they despised each other. And as they were sitting here screaming vile epithets at each other, I said, "What am I supposed to do with this?" And then the thought came to me out of the blue. Name the emotions. So I stopped them and I facilitated them telling a story while the other person just named emotions. We did this for 3.5 hours. And finally, John looked across at Susan with tears streaming down his face and he said, "That's the first time you've listened to me in 25 years." They settled the case and walked out of the room holding hands. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I knew what I'd done, but I didn't know why it worked. And And 2 years later, the science finally caught up. So the key here is that they didn't agree with each other, not even a little bit. But when she said, "You feel disrespected," she was not agreeing with him. And when he said, "You feel misunderstood," he was not agreeing with her. They were simply validating each other's feelings. And that's when they changed. So if you found this helpful and want to go deeper, I have 2 things for you. First, I run a free community called the De-Escalate Academy. We practice these techniques together. There are classes, courses, Q&As, video sessions, and lots of people who are learning these skills together. The link to join the, the De-Escalate Academy is in the description, absolutely free. Second, if you want personalized coaching, I work one-on-one with people and couples to help them master this. The link is in the description to book a call with me. And if this video helped you, please subscribe. Okay, that's it. We'll see you in the next video.