20 ways you can emotionally invalidate someone
Emotional invalidation is particularly a problem when you’re dealing with an emotionally sensitive person, like someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I have a long list of emotionally invalidating phrases from which this list is derived. Emotional validation is the opposite of invalidation. You can learn how to use emotional validation to connect with a person with BPD by reading my book When Hope is Not Enough. 1. Ordering the person to feel differently Cheer up. Don’t cry. Don’t worry. Don’t be sad. Stop whining. 2. Ordering the person to “look” differently Don’t look so sad. Don’t look so smug. Don’t look so down. Don’t look like that. Don’t make…
Long Presentation on DBT from Shari Manning
Shari Manning, the author of Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, presents family DBT skills. It’s long (2 hours+) but worth watching: No related posts.
Ambiguity is the greatest threat
In 2009, I attended the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ISSPD) in New York. Dr. Glen Gabbard, MD, a psychiatrist and clinician that treats people with Borderline Personality Disorder (#BPD). About halfway through his presentation, Dr. Gabbard said: “Ambiguity is the greatest threat.” He was speaking in the context of a clinician treating someone with BPD. Many studies have show that people with BPD react to neutral facial expressions as if the person is angry. People with BPD interpret neutral faces as angry. I once saw a woman with BPD view a picture of a neutral face and she said, “He’s angry with me.” Dr. Gabbard was suggesting to…
Levels of validation
Karyn Hall at the Emotionally Sensitive Person blog has another great post on the levels of emotional validation… Self-Validation: What Do You Do? By KARYN HALL, PHD Validation is like relationship glue. Validating someone brings you closer. Validating yourself is like glue for fragmented parts of your identity. Validating yourself will help you accept and better understand yourself, which leads to a stronger identity and better skills at managing intense emotions. Being out of control of your emotions is a painful experience and damaging to relationships. Knowing how to self-validate is important to learning to manage your emotions effectively. Self-validation means you can accept your internal experience as understandable and…
DBT Skill of the Day: IMPROVE the moment from the Distress Tolerance Module
Many of us have distress and frustration in our lives. Your car keys are lost. You don’t have enough money to pay the bills. A friend rejects you when you ask to go out on Saturday night. You get a flat tire on the way to a big meeting. Stuff happens in life. Sometimes you can do something about it. Sometimes you can’t. The IMPROVE DBT skill is for when you have to tolerate the distress or frustration that you’re facing. It’s for those times when you can’t do anything about the crisis at hand or can’t do anything right away to solve the problem. When there is no immediate…
Validation and Empowerment: The necessary balance for self help
Steven Stosny has a (fairly) new post on “Validation and Empowerment” which covers emotional validation vs. the empowerment necessary to change for the better. I like Stony’s work quite a bit and I agree that there is a balance between emotional validation and empowerment. When dealing with people that have been emotionally invalidated, it is my opinion that the balance initially should be tipped toward emotional validation. This is why DBT adds acceptance to the mix. If everything needs to change all at once, the thought of changing everything seems overwhelming and nothing changes – there’s no empowerment to improve and become effective. Instead, the person is stuck in helplessness. In my…
