{"quotes":[{"text":"How do I validate him in the face of such profound personal loss and the outrageous denial by the medical community?","author":"Mary Dimmock","tags":["denial","invalidation","medical-neglect"],"id":141163,"author_id":"Mary+Dimmock"},{"text":"I cut myself up really badly with the lid of a tin can. They took me to the emergency room, but I couldn’t tell the doctor what I had done to cut myself—I didn’t have any memory of it. The ER doctor was convinced that dissociative identity disorder didn’t exist. . . . A lot of people involved in mental health tell you it doesn’t exist. Not that you don’t have it, but that it doesn’t exist.","author":"Bessel A. van der Kolk","tags":["denial","dissociative-amnesia","dissociative-disorders","dissociative-identity-disorder","invalidation","mental-health","mental-health-bias","mental-health-stigma","mental-illness-discrimination","mental-illness-stigma"],"id":147494,"author_id":"Bessel+A.+van+der+Kolk"},{"text":"Life is fundamentally a mental state. We live in a dream world that we create. Whose life is truer, the rational man of action pursuing practical goals of personal happiness and wealth or the philosophic man who lives in a world of theoretical and metaphysical ideas? We ascribe the value quotient to our lives by making decisions that we score as either valid or invalid based upon our personal ethics and how we think and behave.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["behavior","dream-world","happiness","invalidation","life-is-a-dream","mental-state","mental-states","metaphysical","metaphysical-philosophy","metaphysical-quest","metaphysical","metaphysical-truth-reality","metaphysics","metaphysics","mind-power","mind-set","mindset","mindset-mastery","mindset-matters","mindset","personal-ethics","philosopher","philosophical","philosophy","philosophy-of-life","philosophy","practical","practicality","quotient","rational","rational-thinking","rational-thought","rationality","self-assessment","self-mastery","self-mastery","self-referential","self-reflecting","self-reflection","validation","value-of-life"],"id":165884,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive.","author":"Danielle Bernock","tags":["captive","childhood-trauma","healing-the-emotional-self","inner-healing","inner-self","invalidation","lies","love-heals","pain","personal-development","scream","silenced","silent-pain","trauma"],"id":194280,"author_id":"Danielle+Bernock"},{"text":"Attitude Is EverythingWe live in a culture that is blind to betrayal and intolerant of emotional pain. In New Age crowds here on the West Coast, where your attitude is considered the sole determinant of the impact an event has on you, it gets even worse.In these New Thought circles, no matter what happens to you, it is assumed that you have created your own reality. Not only have you chosen the event, no matter how horrible, for your personal growth. You also chose how you interpret what happened—as if there are no interpersonal facts, only interpretations.The upshot of this perspective is that your suffering would vanish if only you adopted a more evolved perspective and stopped feeling aggrieved. I was often kindly reminded (and believed it myself), “there are no victims.” How can you be a victim when you are responsible for your circumstances?When you most need validation and support to get through the worst pain of your life, to be confronted with the well-meaning, but quasi-religious fervor of these insidious half-truths can be deeply demoralizing. This kind of advice feeds guilt and shame, inhibits grieving, encourages grandiosity and can drive you to be alone to shield your vulnerability.","author":"Sandra Lee Dennis","tags":["attitude","bad-advice","belief-in-self","betrayal","blind-to-betrayal","demoralizing","emotional-pain","false-perspective","guilt","half-truths","insidious","intolerance","invalidation","loss-of-belief","mental-health","positive-attitude","ptsd","responsibility","shame","stigma","stigmatization","suffering","trauma","traumatic","traumatization","traumatized","unsupportive","victim-blaming","victimhood","victims"],"id":212111,"author_id":"Sandra+Lee+Dennis"},{"text":"Sometimes, this disapproval of how you are managing your pain crosses over to disbelief that you are in as much pain as you say you are. They don’t believe that your pain is a legitimate enough reason to rest or nap or cry or take narcotic medications or not go to work or to go to the doctor. They might think that you are making too big of a deal out of it. They doubt the legitimacy of the pain itself.This kind of stigma is the source of the dreaded accusation that chronic pain is “all in your head.” It’s as if to say that you are making a mountain out of a molehill.","author":"Murray J. McAlister","tags":["accusation","all-in-your-head","analogy","chronic-pain","chronic-pain-stigma","debelief","disbelief","invalidation","it-s-all-in-your-head","judgemental-people","lack-of-compassion","marginalized","narcotics","opioid-use","opioids","pain","pain-killer-pills","pain","pain-relief","painkillers","physical-pain","questioning-your-reality","stigma","stigmatization","stigmatized"],"id":243564,"author_id":"Murray+J.+McAlister"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":6,"pages":1}}