Where does the self doubt, that was exploited by Sandusky come from? While we are busy finding monsters in the Sandusky Penn State scandal, the purpose of this diary is to expose a facet of humanity, that makes each and every one of us, susceptible. If you were looking for an indictment of the evils of Penn state, this diary is not that. Instead it is a chronicle of my own self doubt as a survivor of trauma, and also a way to understand and perhaps solve the problem when whole institutions and non perpetrators look the other way. To look at Nazi Germany and say "those weak Germans!" does nothing to solve the problem. This diary is about understanding "invalidation" as a variable in human nature with real consequences to society. Invalidation is the opposite of accountability. And whole nations and cultures can be invalidated. Lets see if we can have a discussion about invalidation and it's consequences in regard to war, sexual abuse, child abuse, neglect, human trafficking and torture. It's the river that runs through it all.
The following is the definition of an invalidating environment as defined by Dr. Marsha Linehan. Dr. Linehan developed a highly effective treatment for people with Borderline Personality Disorder. (BPD) In doing so, she changed the prognosis for the disorder as well as our understanding of BPD. My theory is that this treatment also gives us insight into a facet of the personality that exists in all of us. Insight into a potentially invariant truth about invalidation and it's consequences for all of us. (not just those with BPD)
“An emotionally invalidating environment is any environment in which a person’s emotional experiences are not responded to appropriately or are responded to inconsistently. For example, in an emotionally invalidating home environment, a child who becomes frustrated and cries may be told 'stop being such a baby'.
In extreme examples, a child may be physically assaulted for expressing feelings. ” (Linehan 1993)
Environments can be wholly invalidating or partially invalidating. They can invalidate certain emotional reactions or many emotional reactions. The human being learns what is valid by watching the emotional reactions of others. We make ourselves real through validation by our parents. We make our reactions real by matching our personal experience to the environment around us. We learn to trust our gut, by how well we were validated by our own mastery and by how well our personal experience is validated in the environment.
Invalidation can teach us to ignore or deny whole parts of ourselves or only some aspect of reality. Emotional invalidation teaches us to ignore our emotional reactions. Men in general are often invalidated emotionally. Soldiers are often emotionally invalidated in basic training. Furthermore, in a home where violence occurs, there is often the behavior "minimize, deny and blame". This behavior allows the violence to continue and is present in most homes where domestic violence or child abuse occurs. Violence in this case is treated as unimportant and insignificant. Accountability for the violence is given to the victim. "If you wouldn't have talked back, I wouldn't hit you". (not "I didn't regulate my temper when you talked back") The perpetrator who uses minimize deny and blame, basically hands accountability over to the victim. The same occurs with sexual assault, sexual abuse. (she/he asked for it) Most perpetrators minimize, deny and blame the abuse on the victims. This adds perhaps the most destructive component to abuse. It's not the abuse, it's the invalidation that makes us crazy. My sexual assault was uncomfortable, humiliating in some ways, painful. But what pained me for years to come was the invalidation.
The disorder BPD was for many years considered to be a diagnosis with very poor prognosis, until Dr. Linehan developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy. (DBT) According to Linehan's work, most folks who develop BPD have been sexually abused as children (but not all) and most of those who have been sexually abused were also physically abused as children. (but not all) What she found was that physical abuse alone did not predict who would end up with the personality disorder. Sexual abuse was a better predictor of who would end up with BPD. (most invalidating) Her theory is that it is not physical abuse or sexual abuse that causes BPD, but invalidation. And every therapist has had at least one client with the disorder, who was not abused at all, but was perhaps very invalidated. (perfect families with high expectations, who do so much for their children that the child feels they cannot do it themselves) People can develop BPD, without having any physical or sexual abuse.
Her use of the concept of invalidating environment and it's consequences may have broad implications in understanding the environment surrounding Sandusky, Penn State, The catholic Church and even Nazi Germany, slavery, human trafficking. We could look at these tragic situations and see each of them as a big strange monster, different from us, unfamiliar, or we could see the commonality that runs through it all. In each case, in order for these perpetrator behaviors to continue for years on end, collusion by social systems had to occur. In each case, the social system that ended up supporting or colluding does so with very little insight about the behavior. We all know that we are supposed to report abuse and yet, we have ample examples of perhaps hundreds and thousands of people who do not trust what they saw, deem it valid, and follow through. We get hung up when we doubt what we saw, when we try to balance the damage of telling with the damage of staying quiet, when we worry about whether or not is was important enough to say something.
So, why is it that people who were so horribly abused as children, and swear they will never do to their children what was done to them, so often do abuse their children? (not always but far more than is comforting) And why is it, that a child growing up in domestic violence swears they will never hit their spouse but then does it? Or swears they would never marry someone violent, and then does? Why is it that a child who is sexually abused often goes on to sexually abuse others even when they felt their experience was awful? Why then do people who were sexually abuse so often marry perpetrators? Why do children grow up in alcoholic homes and marry alcoholics? There is a blindness that prevails. In order for these behaviors to continue, to be perpetuated an invalidation is taking place. A truth that is missed and ignored. Why does war create a cycle of violence? Because we are blind to the truth. We are emotionally invalidated and unable to trust what we experience, see and feel.
There are two important components or outcomes to invalidation. One is that folks who are invalidated severely often have a sequelae of life consequences. And secondly, invalidation perpetuates powerless. They have been rewarded and reinforced for not paying attention to their feelings or personal experiences. If we look at these two component or outcomes of invalidation we can easily see why apathy may not really be apathy but blindness and powerlessness. This is not meant to defend, Nazi Germany, or those who were blind to the horrors of slavery, but to lend understanding to the mechanism by which whole societies find themselves colluding with terror. Now more than ever we need to understand this mechanism.
The sequelae of life consequences have very serious implications for all of us. Those who have been invalidated in regard to fear, often fear things that cannot hurt them, and deny the danger of those things that can. Here is a list of the consequences of severe invalidation (per Linehan 1992) :
1) Emotional dysregulation: When emotions are denied, suppression occurs. Suppressed emotions cannot be regulated effectively and mood disorders develop. Anxiety, and depression result.
2) Interpersonal chaos: If we can't trust our emotions, or regulate them, how do we know who we love, how do we regulate our responses to the world around us?
3) Cognitive dysregulation: When we don't trust our thoughts, we look to external mechanisms to help us define truth. Things are good or bad, right or wrong. We define ourselves by associations, not by our personal experiences. Dichotomous thinking rules, and these rigid thoughts feed the emotions in endless cycle of powerlessness.
4) Impulse dysregulation: It's mighty uncomfortable to live with emotions you can't regulate, relationships that aren't working well, and thoughts that serve only to fuel more emotion. We start to seek ways to feel better. We try to regulate emotion through drugs, alcohol, compulsions, obsessions, sex, shopping, gambling and greed.
5) Dysregulation of self: The final insult in all of this is that we don't trust ourselves, our personal experiences, we are no one if we are alone. Without associations outside ourselves we have no definition, and yet, our lives are so unmanageable that when we try to define ourselves by our associations we come up empty. We can't stand to be alone, we have no purpose and we are powerless to change it.
The more we are abused, neglected, blamed for our injuries and wounds, the more we witness a lack of accountability, the more we become powerless. The deeper we go into invalidation, the more blind we become. It is a continuum and it is chronic. Some of us have been more invalidated than others.
The truth sets us free. The solution, to all of this is to be compassionate to those who cannot see. Hold them accountable with compassion. Set the boundary with compassion. There is a thin line between victim and perpetrator. That is why compassion to self and others is the only real answer. The more we fear the truth, the more we avoid the truth, the more we rage over the way it is, the less we move to the solution.
Once while participating in a diversity seminar, I asked a group of native American's which they would prefer from the United States government money or validation for what was done to them. They all agreed that what they wanted most was validation. Imagine that there were no consequences to slavery, or to child abuse, or to sexual abuse? The consequences must be validated, made real, and it is through our mental health disorders that we make the consequences real. We can be free of the dysfunction once we realize how to validate what has happened by living the truth, seeing what we were blind to see, realizing how we have been invalidated.
While we must hold Sandusky and all those who turned a blind eye accountable, I hope we will do so with compassion (because to do without compassion is to blind to the consequences of hate) and self awareness. Maybe we can all take a minute to ask ourselves what we would do in a similar experience. Would we trust what we saw? Would we be certain of our experience? Instead of a knee jerk reaction ask yourself if you recognize your feelings, if you regulate them well. Ask yourself if you deny reality in any areas of your life?
Years ago one of my sons exhibited a behavior that suggested to me that he might have been sexually abused. Because of my abuse, I agonized over what to do. You would think it would have been easier for me to see what I needed to see. I finally did call the pediatrician who confirmed my worst fears, but to this day, the whole situation makes me uneasy. I kept asking myself if I really saw what I saw, if I made it up, if I made more of it, than it was. It was awful. It was the catalyst that got me to therapy for myself but I will never forget how hard it was for me to believe myself.
2:25 PM PT: Thanks for the community spotlight!