emotional invalidation Archives - Wholesome Badass: A Work in Progress

Black-and-white illustration of a girl saying, “What you said was hurtful,” facing a large shield covered by a receipt titled “Good Things I've Done.”

After All I’ve Done for You.

October 19, 2026

May I Remind You? Different people. Different circumstances. Continued familiar patterns. A few months ago, I said to my neighbor, “Hey, when you said X, it hurt my feelings.” Her response? “May I remind you…” followed by a list of ways she’d been helpful to me. I still don’t know why her response stunned me. It was entirely consistent with a familiar archetype: the person who expects things to automatically go their way and has no tolerance for frustration, disappointment, or anything that challenges their preferred version of themselves. And 100% of the time, with this archetype, my direct expression of hurt is received not as information about my experience or how our connection has been affected, but as an accusation to defend against or a claim to debate. I never responded. Interesting, though. We’d each been generous and helpful to one another. But I’d never considered my generosity protection against accountability. I’ve read about rejection sensitivity and narcissistic traits, particularly the need to be right, entitlement to having things their way, and the insistence on a narrative in which they can only be the hero or the victim. I’m increasingly interested in recognizing and understanding the patterns rather than proving anything about specific people. Since when does being helpful mean you can’t also have been hurtful? Both can be true. And similarly—Have you ever known someone who would only say “No” to a request along side listing all of the things they’d done for others or everything they “had” to do? Or who offered a reluctant yes or vague maybe when they already knew the answer was no?But with no thoguthful pause to genuinely ask, “Can we figure out a time that works for both of us?”Also, I do not discount that going to the gym and getting your hair done are legitimate needs. I find the long narrative that presents them as both the heroically generous and the overburdened victim to be unwholesome.

Two people sit apart on a couch. She imagines them steering a boat together. He imagines himself steering a boat labeled “MY PREFERENCE” along “THE FLOW,” dismissing her suggestion with, “Why can’t you just go with the flow?”

Expecting to Matter

October 17, 2026

In my family and marriage, my emotional and sensory sensitivities were treated as unreasonable burdens and acts of defiance. Rather than information worth considering, my preferences and limitations were interpreted as resistance. I struggled to navigate these relationships, which I experienced as structured around coercion and submission, where consideration wasn’t a shared value. Expressing individual needs was treated as not being a team player—a punishable offense. And when those needs were accommodated, they were logged as personal favors and evidence of fairness, further reinforcing the power imbalance. When a person can only tolerate having their way, even the possibility of not getting what they want can create considerable tension. Despite my best efforts, I found no way to remain under those rules of engagement. The only healthy option was to surrender the relationships rather than submit to unfavorable terms or keep fighting for better ones while being treated as though their proximity was a privilege, easily revoked. Fuck that. No, thank you.

A reflection on how appearances shape credibility, character judgments, and the recognition of harm.

The Art of Concealed Cruelty

October 17, 2026

The ability to engineer someone else’s downfall while appearing to have had nothing to do with it. I’m intimately familiar with calculated hostility. What I still cannot fathom is the level of executive function required to provoke someone, anticipate their reaction, and use it against them while presenting as entirely uninvolved. For someone as highly sensitive and reactive as I am, with my nervous system pretty much on the outside of my body, that kind of calculation is incomprehensible. My long game and executive function were scorched by ongoing unresolved trauma. As a child, I was frequently crying, throwing up, having meltdowns, and reacting intensely to things that seemed not to even register for others. In my family, my reactivity was met only with shame and punishment. I was judged ungrateful, negative, too sensitive, thin-skinned. I suppose the hope was that enough callousness might eventually toughen me. My skin never thickened, but I learned to be mean. Vicious even. Sometimes it offered a momentary release. The relief was fleeting. The guilt and shame were not. Contempt was standard fare, but some people (audibly clearing my throat) seemed instinctively savvy about rules and skills that eluded me. They could deliver a devastating strike with complete self-possession and have it pass for teasing, a misunderstanding, or a reasonable response to someone who had displeased them. My reactions were unmasked, unbridled. Obvious, undeniable, and punishable. And I was bewildered. Wasn’t I doing as my family does? My sister, seven years older, seemed to have mastered the poise I lacked. Provoking and baiting could pass as harmless while leaving me visibly distraught. Whatever provoked my distress— became secondary to my reaction. My emotional reaction could be counted on to steal the show and seal the case. Poise posed as evidence of good character; my reactivity, evidence of bad. I was innocent only of understanding the rules. Now, nearly 60, with language and recovery, I think the unspoken rule I couldn’t metabolize wasn’t that ridicule and belittling were wrong. Apparently, they were perfectly acceptable, even applauded, when directed at someone considered deserving, provided they were delivered with composure. Only recently have I begun to identify concealed hostility. Diminishing remarks disguised as observations. “Brutal honesty” that is more brutal than honest. Provocations. The ability to degrade or discredit someone while appearing calm, unaffected, reasonable. Have you ever been provoked into a reaction that was then used as evidence against you?

Black-and-white cartoon of Wholesome Badass in a jujutsu stance, holding up a glowing shield against dark arrows and scribbles. A speech bubble says, “But here’s what also happened.”

The Power of an Incomplete Truth

September 27, 2026

In my tagline, I reveal myself as navigating the storm of neurodivergence, trauma, and toxic family systems. For the archetypes with whom I have navigated strife or rupture, I imagine this perspective may feel unwelcome because it adds context to a much simpler explanation: I was just bad. Difficult. Crazy. Selfish. Unreasonable. Context provides nuance that the simpler explanation leaves out. Whatever may have been said or done to diminish me was charged to me: I caused it, deserved it, exaggerated it, or imagined it. The tagline isn’t an attempt to excuse myself, but the closest language I have found for an experience I spent decades unable to articulate. Naming neurodivergence, trauma, and a dysfunctional family system does not make every choice I have ever made harmless, good, or right. It allows nuance into a story where my context was effectively disregarded. And I can’t help but ask, in all earnestness: if my “craziness” was the explanation for every instance of hardship for me, why wasn’t anyone’s response concern, curiosity, or support? What I am chasing is not agreement but a fuller record. More of what actually happened allowed into the room. Other people’s explanations have passed for the complete story, while mine were categorically rejected as inadmissible. If I asked questions, I was manufacturing chaos. If I offered context, I was making excuses. If I remembered something differently, I was rewriting history. I was seeking a clean signal—clarity, cohesion, some way to sew the pieces together for a story that makes sense, even if what emerged was painful or unflattering to me. Apparently, asking clarifying questions seems to threaten the prescribed narrative. Providing context is recieved as equally troublesome. So I am left trying to make sense of a story I was expected to accept, while relevant context was not allowed into consideration. Have you ever realized that what seemed like the only obvious conclusion was actually inaccurate and deeply unfair — once you had a more complete account of the story? One real-life example: I’m in a hurry and stuck behind a man in a posh new Jaguar, stopped in the road and holding up traffic for what I assume is no good reason—just entitled and inconsiderate. Then I SEE he has gotten out of his car to help a disabled elderly person with a heavy package cross the street. Nothing about the stopped car changed. The context did. I feel some of that same aha humbling energy when I think about people like Howard Stern, Monica Lewinsky, Stormy Daniels, Pamela Anderson, and others whom I experienced through a particular public narrative without bothering to question what might have been missing from it. Sometimes the framing was profitable. Sometimes powerful people had an enormous stake in which version prevailed. Either way, I accepted a conclusion before I had much interest in the fuller record. Just saaaaayin.

Black-and-white line drawing of two stick figures in a leaking boat. One figure wears a life vest, holds a life preserver, and says, “You need to calm down,” while the other figure looks distressed and bails water out of the boat.

The Advantage of Appearing Unbothered

September 14, 2026

I am beginning to recognize and more effectively name and navigate familiar systems, patterns, and personalities. In power imbalances, the person with more status or authority can seem even more credible when appearing almost completely unaffected — mildly inconvenienced at most. Beneath a curated exterior — detached, unreadable, even smiling or measured — strategically executed impunity may pass for sovereignty, shielded from challenge by status/rank itself. By contrast, an emotional response to threat or injury can be marked as excessive: evidence of defect, weakness, and wrongness, rendering the account of what happened inadmissible. Once that logic is established, power-over can pass as reasonable and justified. This is where emotional violence can comfortably hide: in the latitude granted by role, status, or perceived legitimacy to diminish, exclude, intimidate, or overpower another person while the resulting distress is treated as further proof that the response was warranted.

Black-and-white illustration of a distressed girl telling her mother and sister something hurts. They press buttons producing labels including dramatic, selfish, ungrateful, and too sensitive, leaving comfort and support untouched.

When Distress Is Dismissed as Negativity or Drama

August 26, 2026

I came into the family as the youngest, with a tightly wound nervous system and a way of taking in the world that was unusually sensitive—to sensory and emotional input, even chemical sensitivity to basic food ingredients. What I recognize now is how easily my frequent, unbridled emotional displays of despair could steal the show. Once I was visibly distressed, the distress itself was identified as the issue. Only in 12-step recovery did I learn to withhold the gift of distraction of my reaction. Before developing the metacognitive ability and language to name what was happening inside me, I certainly failed to make a persuasive case for myself. I have now accessed language for what happened, but no one in my family has shown even remote interest in understanding it—or me. I do not recall being met with curiosity by any single person, about what I was experiencing or what I might need. I remember correction, judgment, banishment, and even mocking by the actual adults. It was as though there was one established way to deal with me. I think of that as the branding. The packaging. The lens through which everything about me was processed. My discomfort, which went unconsoled and therefore persisted and compounded, was treated as evidence that something was fundamentally wrong with me. Dramatic. Histrionic. Too sensitive. Attention-seeking. Always the problem with problems. Over time, the branding hardened into vilification. Definitely an othering. Whatever I was reacting to could disappear behind the reaction. That created an ecosystem in which anything reductive, degrading, hurtful, or upsetting to me could pass without resistance or examination. Whatever else may be true, this is my experience. The branding did not merely shape my understanding of myself and my family. It made harming me easier, more permissible, and more deniable. I emerged from that environment with few models for self-soothing, compassion, or kindness, and with maladaptive ways of coping. I could be unreasonable, highly reactive, and say deeply hurtful things. I do not need to minimize any of that to understand where some of those patterns were formed, or to recognize how much I have unlearned and changed outside the relationships in which they were shaped and reinforced. Part of that growth has been learning to identify and intentionally choose something different from the kinds of personalities and relational patterns I had come to associate with what was normal, loving, kind, or healthy. I am still working on not mistaking familiarity for safety or connection.

“But What Did She Do?”

April 24, 2025

Friend: So you’re not in contact with your daughter anymore? Family Member: No, she’s just too much. Always some issue with her. Always making everything harder than it has to be. Friend: Wow. What happened exactly? Did she hurt someone? Lie? Betray you? Family Member: No, not really. It’s more like… she always has needs and limits and feelings that are too much and make no sense. So sensitive. Demanding. Needy. Always demanding conversation. It’s exhausting. Friend: That doesn’t sound like a crime. Did she ask to talk about something hard? Family Member: Yeah, but she turns everything into a problem. Like, she’ll say something felt hurtful, or ask someone to stop doing something—and suddenly, it’s a whole thing. She speaks problems into existence. If she’s upset, that’s the problem. Not what caused it. Friend: So she brings up something painful and you say she’s just trying to cause drama? Family Member: Exactly. We always told her: stop manufacturing chaos. If you’re hurting, you probably imagined it, earned it, or brought it on yourself. Friend: What happens when she does try to talk about it? Family Member: She gets overwhelmed. Emotional. Then she cries and it’s like, see? You can’t even talk to her. She’s unstable. Friend: Did you ever try family therapy? Family Member: Yes, once. She completely fell apart in the session. Couldn’t handle us calmly telling the therapist how hard she is. The therapist saw right through her. Friend: Or maybe she broke down because the room was against her and you used that as proof? Family Member: Whatever. She just needs everything to be her way. We can’t do that. Friend: So what’s the worst thing she actually did? Family Member: She refused to keep showing up—opted out until we had more useless conversations. She always said she’d come to the table if people would be kind. But she made herself the outsider. Ask anyone—she sucks. Friend: But if nobody can name what she actually did—not how she felt, or how you felt about her, but what she really did—then what was she punished for? Family Member: For being impossible. Creating tension to get attention. Friend: Hmmm. 14 Years Later Friend: Wait… so you don’t talk to your mom anymore? Son: Nah. She’s impossible. Always on my case, trying to control everything. Friend: That sucks. But like—what did she do? Was she abusive? Did she lie to you or betray you? Son: No. She just… always had these expectations…demands. And like tried to be my boss. Always correcting me. She wanted me to be perfect. Friend: Okay… but was she unfair? Like punishing you for stuff that wasn’t real? Was she constantly grounding you or taking your phone for no reason? Son: No, not really. I think I got grounded maybe once. She barely ever took my phone. Friend: So you weren’t in trouble all the time? Son: No, not really. She’d just get mad when I didn’t follow through or when I ignored her. Friend: So… she had rules? Son: Yeah, but she wanted consistency. Like, if I did something well for three weeks, and then I would drop the ball and she would correct or redirect me. Like the three weeks did not even count. Friend: That doesn’t sound crazy. That sounds like accountability… parenting? Son: She just wouldn’t let me do whatever I wanted. She’d say no to stuff sometimes. She expected respect. Friend: Did you guys ever try family therapy? Son: Yeah, but I went thinking it’d be my chance to explain my side, and maybe get the therapist to see how hard she is. I don’t think she went in expecting that. Friend: So… you weren’t there to try to heal things? Son: Not really. And she got upset in the session, started crying, and then it was like—“see? She’s so emotional, you can’t even talk to her.” Friend: So her emotional reaction to being overwhelmed was used as proof that she’s the problem? Son: I mean… yeah. Friend: And the worst thing she did was… not agree immediately to let you drive across the country at 16 without a plan? Son: She said I could if I had check-ins and stayed with people we know. But it felt like she didn’t trust me. Friend: So she wanted to keep you safe and be part of the planning, and that made her the enemy? Son: I guess. But still… she sucks. Narrator: This is the anatomy of a smear campaign. A person becomes “too much” only after they become unwilling to be mistreated. They say, “She’s hard to deal with.” But what did she do? Ask again. From every angle. Ask louder. Ask in front of the people who repeat the story. Ask the ones who believe it. What did she do? What did she do? And if no one can name it, then maybe— just maybe— she didn’t do anything at all. Maybe she just stopped agreeing to be the scapegoat. Below are just a few of the books that have been especially informative and healing for me as I navigate my journey of recovery and self-understanding:

Golden Memories

November 27, 2016

I’ve been thinking about the difference between making memories and making things look nice for photographs. Shared experiences and connections…rather than required and posed photos with others in close proximity. I have too many photos suggestive of good times and connection and have been often saddened that the lack of posed photos in recent years is proof of the opposite. Truth, I hide from the camera because pictures can lie…or worse, they can tell the truth! For OUR 2016 Thanksgiving, however, it would have been nice to have someone snapping pictures on the down-low, of us just doing our thing, laughing, playing, being who we are. Journalistic photos are my fave. Posing genuinely 100% pains me. I wouldn’t mind some photos of us, in action, enjoying each other. In addition to OUR sweet Thanksgiving Day, today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving (maybe the start of a ritual—memory making), we decorated both Christmas trees while listening to COUNTRY holiday music—taking breaks to throw football, walk dogs, and eat pizza. I experience the joy in simple moments when I am present enough to just show up. I don’t recall too many good moments in my life. I recall pretending but not feeling truly good, present, visible, and welcome. For special occasions, I must ride only with those who will help me push! It is said that I recall only bad things or that the bad things are figments of my imagination. A historical revisionist is what I am called…by those who, when I report being cold, offer me a thermostat reading rather than a blanket OR meet my expression of hunger with a report of the approximate time of my last feeding, rather than a sandwich. My more complex feelings, like fear and anxiety, are addressed with equal interest and compassion. Having my physical and emotional reality judged or disputed kinda messes me up. I cannot choose my feelings, only how I respond to them and with whom I share them. I don’t know how to not feel what I feel or to feel what I do not. I have sure tried, with food, a loveless marriage, sex, shopping, alcohol, drugs, geography… None brought relief, only distraction. When I am working on numbing or denying my pain, I am blocking myself also from joy and connection. We have made two precious memory days, nearly back to back. With a unity of purpose, none of us felt herded. We were fluid and non-confused. Just for today, I am practicing being present for those who WANT to connect and make memories. Together, to me, is much, much more than being in the same place or at the same table. Proximity is no proxy for connection. Wholesome connection is breath-taking and badass! Anything less for the special days is just bad.