Why Invalidated Pain Hurts Twice

When the people around us can't—or won't—make room for what hurts, the loneliness can become its own kind of wound.

Someone recently asked me, "What kind of suffering makes you lean forward in your chair? Not because you enjoy it, but because some part of you immediately understands it."

For me, there’s a particular kind of pain that results from invalidation: having your pain dismissed, minimized, or rejected by the people around you. Sometimes, the result is that you end up carrying it alone.

There is the original pain (losing someone, being betrayed, experiencing trauma, ending a relationship, struggling with depression, surviving something frightening).

And then there is the pain of having that experience invalidated (“You should be over it.” “It wasn't that bad.” “Why are you still talking about this?” “Other people have it worse.” “You're dwelling on it.” “Can't you just move on?”).

The second pain doesn't erase the first.

It compounds it.

Pain is difficult enough to carry. Being told that your pain is no longer legitimate can make you carry it alone—and can make you question whether you were ever allowed to hurt in the first place.

Four months after my mother died, I was still grieving. Of course I was.

I was surprised, though, to discover that some people seemed more uncomfortable with my grief than I was with carrying it. “You’ve got to move on.” “Why are you still not over it?”

With these words, I was indirectly told that I was grieving incorrectly—and when someone tells you that you're grieving incorrectly, eventually you start wondering whether you can trust your own experience of what happened.

You start thinking,

Am I grieving too much?

Am I taking too long?

Am I making other people uncomfortable?

Is there something wrong with me?

Invalidation doesn't just hurt. It can destabilize our sense of reality.

When the people around us repeatedly tell us that our experience isn't as painful, important, or legitimate as it feels, we can eventually start outsourcing our own understanding of what happened to us.

Invalidation can cause someone to question:

Am I overreacting?

Was it actually that bad?

Why can't I get over this?

Why am I still affected?

Maybe something is wrong with me.

Maybe I need to hide this part of myself from other people.

And there's a particularly painful paradox:

The person needs connection because they're hurting, but

their attempts to seek connection are what get rejected.

So they withdraw.

Then they're alone.

Then the loneliness becomes part of the suffering.

This is one of the reasons grief can feel so isolating. The loss itself is painful, but so is discovering that the people around you have limits on how much of your grief they're willing to witness.

Sometimes those limits are understandable. Other people may not know what to say. They may be uncomfortable with death, sadness, or emotions they can't fix. They may genuinely believe they're helping when they encourage you to "move forward."

But good intentions don't necessarily make invalidation less painful.

Sometimes what a grieving person needs isn't advice.

They need someone willing to sit beside them in the reality of what happened.

When clients come to see me for grief and bereavement, I often lean forward in my chair. I want clients to know:

I believe you.

It makes sense that this hurts.

You don't have to make your pain smaller so that I can tolerate hearing about it.

Maybe what happens when someone finally feels safe enough to stop defending the legitimacy of their own pain.

They lean forward.

They let themselves be witnessed.

They tell the truth.

And for a little while, they don't have to carry it alone.