Validation

Validation was key for my recovery.

As a child, I constantly sought my mothers help and protection. When my mother refused to help me, I turned to others for aid. There was neither understanding nor encouragement whenever I tried to talk to outsiders of what went on at home. On the contrary, my pleas for help were met with denial, disbelief, minimization, blame, or the simple words, “Get over it.”

Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., explains this occurrence well on page 7 of her book, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books (1997):

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering.

As children, our young brains have not developed enough to take care of ourselves. We are dependent on the adults in our lives to teach us how to process the information we gather from our experiences. I learned as an adult that when our childhood abuse is denied as if it did not happen or as if the violent behavior is excusable, our trauma becomes fused to us and stays with us until someone teaches us differently by validating our experiences. If our experiences are never validated, our trauma remains fused into adulthood.

Even if we are already aware of our childhood abuse, we often live in denial about the effect the abuse has had on us. It is necessary to have another party bear witness to our trauma. This allows us the opportunity to admit to ourselves the ways in which we were damaged by our abuse. Support and validation offered from others, dissolves our isolation and gives us the necessary strength to journey forward to the life we deserve.