A part of traumatization is, for some, invalidation, which is, at its most basic, another form of denial. The only difference between invalidation and denial, I’ve found, is that invalidation is usually done from the point of view of someone who, for one reason or another, cannot, or will not, understand the reality of another as being a reality at all, while denial is this same concept applied to oneself. All too frequently, those who have survived early life trauma have experienced invalidation, either during the trauma experience itself or in the time afterward. Invalidation of an early-life trauma, by its nature, can only cause harm, and magnify the effects of an already existing posttraumatic state. Some well-meaning people can invalidate the realities of others without realizing they’re doing it. Other people who may not have the best of intentions might do this very same thing, fully aware of what they’re doing and yet unwilling to stop for one reason or another.
To anyone, invalidation of their reality is a poison. TO a trauma survivor, the results of invalidation can be deadly. In our system alone, we have had at least four members who, at some point, wanted to take their own lives, and outside of the system there have been cases of such plans being followed through, simply because someone had invalidated their experiences one too many times. In the process of recovering from trauma, the effects of invalidation must be undone. This means that one who talks with a survivor about their experiences must learn to refrain from implying or directly stating in some way that what happened to them was somehow not the reality they experienced, even if the survivor’s account of the experience doesn’t completely match another’s point of view. In other words, your job as a listener is to support the person in healing, not debate with them over their recall of a life-altering event or series of events. Remember that someone’s account of an event is their own, and that nobody else could live through it the same way or have the exact reaction that someone else had. Something small to you could be greatly impactful to another, and, in our eyes, no one has the right to say that another’s memories are somehow wrong, because, after all, every human experience is at least somewhat subjective, and trauma depends largely upon the person in terms of its being seen as trauma and impacting someone’s life.
This topic becomes particularly relevant when the idea of Dissociative Identity Disorder, or multiplicity in general, comes into the picture. Often, there is no objective way to verify the memories of beings who aren’t even seen as people in the eyes of the law. Drawing on the points made earlier, however, and bringing into account the fact that many multiples have experienced trauma or have had other things happen in their lives that cannot be verified by anyone inside or outside of the system, one might come to the conclusion that it is wise to take the memories of an insider as valid realities unless the insider in question believes that they aren’t. It is pointless to question the realities of another if they are causing distress to the person who they belong to, because it will not help calm their fear or ease their pain, and might even make things worse for both yourself and them. As someone who has watched children of the system now known as ComunityBelonging suffer at the hands of people who invalidated them in ways that are almost uncomprehendable, I can tell you many stories about the impact that such invalidation had on our healing, both as individuals and as a whole. My main intention in writing this article was not to bash people, but to emphasize the impact that something like this has in our lives and the lives of those who have survived trauma everywhere, and to encourage those who may be supporting survivors to accept and validate their experiences as the realities that they are. I’ve seen, too often, the results of this refusal to take a person’s account of a distressing event as their reality in myself and those around me, and, if I may be blunt, I’m tired of doing nothing about it.
Some insiders, with the help of adults, might post their stories on this blog. Not all of them start with trauma that brought them into this world. Depending on what each of us wants to share, we may reveal things that may not fit in with the medical understanding of multiplicity. Here is my request to the WordPress community. Don’t try to pull out the invalidation card simply because our stories don’t start out with a traumatic beginning. The standards for DID don’t say that an insider must have been born from pain to be valid, only that there must be time loss between two or more of the insiders that is not caused by anything else, and that these gaps in memory must cause distress to one or more of the insiders. A diagnoses of DID, to us, only implies that a system loses time and is distressed by it, and may have a higher likelihood of past trauma that should be taken into account, nothing more, nothing less.
For us, trauma is only one part of our story. While it gave rise to our multiplicity in the beginning, there are other factors at play that make us who we are today, factors that are just as significant as the memories we’ve written about in our last few articles. My hope for this blog is that it is a safe place for all types of multiplicity and other experiences that aren’t usually thought of as typical, and that hope begins with the publishing of this piece and the sharing of various stories from us, both about memories of pain and memories of joy. There should not be any shame around being multiple, even if it is a response to trauma. I hope you’ve been able to learn something from what’s here now, and what will be here in the future. But above anything else, I hope the things here so far have given you or a loved one the inspiration to stand up for themselves and what they feel is write, to confront abuse when they see it, or at least to take the accounts of those who have experienced or witnessed trauma seriously. One of our dreams is to hold our head high, openly multiple in a public place with others around who refuse to hide their own systems, who refuse the effects of invalidation, and who reject the idea that they are wrong for being open about who they are. Social change starts with those effected rising up, educating the public around them through whatever form they can, and then standing firm in the face of backlash.
Let’s begin that change.