PSA: Were you chronically invalidated while growing up? If so, please read.

Who grew up being invalidated? Show of hands?

That basically means having absolutely no one you can really turn to for validation, for understanding, not even your parents. Being bullied in school. Having a parent or parent(s) with a PD. If you were not safe, especially at home, to voice how you were feeling, this means YOU.

This is a cut and paste. Hopefully the original recipient doesn't mind. My PD needs satisfying, so here we go...

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So. What happens is...you're a kid and your emotions never get validated. In fact, you probably found it dangerous to express your emotions at home. You took that to heart. Then you go out to school, probably middle school and high-school, and everyone invalidates you there. You take it all personally. And all that invalidation causes you to end up with a personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder is a common one. Narcissistic personality disorder is a common one. There are others, like Schizoid personality disorder, where you go and live in your own imagination to escape the world and have validation from imaginary people. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which is like a lite version of real OCD and being a real dick to the people you manage at work.

They're all manifestations of the same thing: invalidation. Chronic invalidation.

What's a personality disorder? It's when your ego gets so crushed by chronically being dismissed, ignored or dangerous to express that it gets seriously wounded. It's a frail thing that takes ANY threat to it seriously, and kicks in your fight or flight response. Your brain sees it as a real life-threatening thing and makes you explode or retreat with yourself to deal with it. Mama bear or scaredy cat, depending on your disposition and what has and hasn't worked in the past.

Go read up on the various personality disorders on your own. You'll find they all come from this one common root.

Do pardon my tone. I have a headache, and I hate repeating myself. Hence why I really need to put up a post about this. Seeing how common this thing that happened to me is on this subreddit is getting to me. I'm really starting to get pissed off with the world. That's the rage one of my PD's puts me in when I see the kinds of injustices I put up with growing up.

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I've repeated this three times today. Many more times over the past few days. Someone posts about their problem - specific behaviors - and I ask if they were invalidated. Then I end up writing this out in one form or another. My PD doesn't like me having to repeat myself. Everyone needs to read this and understand it, if they answer "Yes" to being chronically invalidated.

Welcome to our sick society, people, where people intentionally victimize you when you're growing up, just so that they and every other user/abuser/toxic person can also use and abuse the victim.

Don't let them win. Don't give them what they want.