How Invalidating Environments Intensify Distress

As I covered in my recent discussion on what emotions do for us, one of the three key functions of emotions is to communicate our emotional world and needs to others. This is biologically wired into our brain for survival. 

Yes, sometimes we need to learn to regulate those emotions so we can still behave in effective ways, but the act of feeling an emotion and showing that in our expressions to others is inherently valid. It’s what we’re wired to do, for good reason.

As such, it absolutely makes sense that invalidating environments can affect us as deeply as they do. They are a living contradiction of everything we feel. Everything we know through our bodily experiences.

If you are someone that experiences particularly intense emotions or has a low tolerance to distress, it can be helpful to understand the role that invalidating environments might have in perpetuating that. So that’s what this guide is about.

What are Invalidating Environments?

Invalidating environments are environments where someone’s emotional experiences are dismissed, minimized, or criticised. Invalidation can come in many forms, whether it’s dismissive statements like “Get over it” or “There’s no reason to feel that way,” or more indirect invalidating actions, like ignoring or even punishing displays of emotion. 

To identify invalidating environments, we can use mindfulness skills like DBT’s WHAT and HOW skills to observe the facts of the situation. Signs of invalidating environments might include:

• Repeatedly being told you’re “too sensitive” or “overreacting”
• Having your emotions dismissed or mocked, even subtly
• Being praised only when you’re calm, quiet, or not expressing emotion
• Punishment or withdrawal of affection when you’re visibly upset
• Being ignored, talked over, or brushed off when you express distress

How does DBT define invalidation?

In Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), invalidation is defined as any response (verbal, non-verbal, or environmental) that communicates to a person that their thoughts, emotions, or behaviours are wrong, inappropriate, exaggerated, or unjustified, especially when those responses are real and valid given the person’s past experiences.

Marsha Linehan (the creator of DBT) also proposed that the development of BPD (associated with episodes of intense distress and emotional dysregulation) occurs within an invalidating developmental context. This invalidating environment is characterised by intolerance toward the expression of private emotional experiences, in particular emotions that are not supported by observable events.

How Invalidating Environments Intensify Distress

We feel how we feel, and we know that we feel it. When others contradict this and tell us we don’t, shouldn’t or otherwise invalidate our lived experience, it confuses our nervous system, especially when we’re young and we learn everything from our caregivers, but yes, also as adults.

Invalidating environments send us a powerful message that our feelings are “too much”. They’re “wrong”. They “don’t belong” here. When this occurs during an intense state of emotional distress, it disrupts our relationship with our emotions. It can lead us to doubt our own emotional experiences, further intensifying emotions and contributing to a cycle of maladaptive behaviours that at their core serve as attempts to cope with or mask these emotions.

Invalidating responses, particularly in our early years or for prolonged periods of our lives, can also contribute more long-term to inner emotional myths, building deeper beliefs that our feelings are invalid, excessive, or even shameful and fueling a cycle of emotional dysregulation. 

Emotional Dysregulation as a Learned Response

When we talk about emotional dysregulation, it can sound like a diagnosis or a defect. But it’s more helpful to see it as something we have learned to help us cope. It’s a natural outcome of two things: our biology (how we’re wired to feel) and our environment (how those feelings were met when expressed).

For instance, if we’re naturally emotionally sensitive and then raised in a world that punished or ignored that sensitivity, we adapt to that contradiction. We find ways to cope with what we were never taught to manage. This might look like numbing through alcohol or food, self-harming to release that internal pressure, or impulsively trying to soothe an unmet need with something harmful. These are not signs of failure, they’re signs of pain that hasn’t yet been given a safe space to heal.

Here’s the key: these behaviours, while harmful, make perfect sense in the context of our lived experiences. At the same time, once we bring awareness to and validate these internal responses, we get to start working towards a more balanced approach to coping with our emotions.

How to Handle Invalidation

Learn new ways to cope

If dysregulation is learned, so is regulation. We can learn to soothe ourselves in healthier ways. We can build emotional safety from the inside out.

It starts with validating what we feel, even if others don’t. It continues with small shifts: naming an emotion, taking a mindful pause, reaching for a healthier tool when the old one calls our name. It’s not linear, and it’s not always easy. But it’s possible.

Don’t play the blame game

We need to remember that understanding how invalidation affects us doesn’t necessarily mean we can stop it. People are going to disagree, say the wrong thing, or otherwise invalidate us at different times in our lives. 

Validating ourselves is not about blaming others, “calling them out” or finding a new avenue of projection. It’s about holding our own sense of self and inner validation that what we experience is real and makes sense, even if others don’t understand it. That doesn’t mean act on all of our impulses or “f*ck everyone else”. It means building a resilience to invalidation when it happens with less harmful responses.

Assess the environments around you

Having said all of that, if you are consistently being invalidated by an environment in your life, it may be a sign that the relationships there are destructive for you. For me, invalidating environments were not only holding me back from healing my responses to complex trauma, but they were actually re-traumatising me the longer I spent in them. 

DBT teaches us some really useful things about destructive relationships and how to end them if we have noticed they are present. 

DBT’s interpersonal effectiveness module defines destructive relationships as those that harm your well being emotionally, physically, mentally, or morally or damage your ability to care for yourself or the other person. It goes on to define interfering relationships as those that block you from reaching important goals, enjoying life, maintaining other relationships, or supporting loved ones. The ending destructive relationships skill includes to:

• Use Wise Mind, not Emotion Mind when deciding to end a relationship.
• If the relationship is important and not destructive, and there’s potential for change, try problem-solving first.
• Cope ahead by rehearsing and preparing for how you might end the relationship.
• Use DEAR MAN, GIVE, and FAST skills to communicate clearly and effectively.
• If you’re in love with someone unhealthy or unsafe, practice the opposite action for love.
• Prioritise safety. If the relationship is abusive or dangerous:
  • Call a local domestic violence hotline or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
  • Visit hotpeachpages.net for international support directories and help with safety planning.

Ending Destructive Relationships – Little Guide To DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills

When is Invalidation Helpful?

It’s important to note that not all invalidation is harmful. Sometimes, what might feel invalidating at first can actually be helpful in the context of growth, learning, or safety. The key difference is intent and timing, and whether we feel respected and heard, even when being challenged.

Challenging unhelpful beliefs and urges

Sometimes we need to gently question beliefs that are based in Emotion Mind, not fact. For example: if you say “I always ruin everything,” a DBT therapist might say: “I don’t see it that way. Could we look at the facts together?”

Alternatively, if you want to avoid distressing emotions by shutting down, a gentle push toward using a DBT skill like distress tolerance or opposite action may feel invalidating at first, but it reinforces long-term progress towards your goals and is actually more helpful for you.

Interrupting dangerous behaviours

In moments of crisis, especially when someone is engaging in self-harm, suicidal behaviour, or substance use, a clear boundary or intervention might feel invalidating but is ultimately life-preserving.

Supporting emotions vs accepting behaviours

Sometimes we all need reminders that having emotions is valid, but not all emotional behaviours are effective. DBT teaches us that validation is not approval of all behaviour, you can validate emotion and still coach someone to act differently or set boundaries.

One More Thought…

If you’ve ever wondered why you struggle to “just cope,” please know this: there’s likely a reason. And that reason is not that you’re “broken”, it’s that you’ve adapted to survive in an environment that didn’t know how to hold what you felt. Now, you get to learn how to hold it yourself.

Lizzie 🤍