Invalidation Quotes

In their 2001 study 'The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,' Diane E Hoffmann and Anita J. Tarzian pointed out that women are 'more likely to have their pain reports discounted as 'emotional' or 'psychogenic' and, therefore, 'not real.' This invalidation parallels the invalidation of women's anger, which is similarly often reduced to proof of women's mental weakness. One study of postoperative pain relief for patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery revealed that men in pain were given pain relief medication, but women were given sedatives. Sedatives aren't pain relievers, or analgesics. They're calming and dulling agents that 'take the edge off.' But for whom, exactly? ~ Soraya Chemaly

Invalidation is about dismissing your experiences, thoughts and above all your emotions. Indeed the intention is to not even allow you to have those thoughts, experiences and emotions. It‟s a way of invading your head and reprogramming it. It‟s psychological abuse (messing with your thoughts) and emotional abuse (messing with your feelings). ~ Danu Morrigan

invalidation is crazy-making, and it is also at the root of gaslighting, where victims' feelings are purposely denied or manipulated in order to make them question their sanity. ~ Samantha Rodman

There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors. ~ Leon Bambrick

In the absence of conceptual clarity, the dominant emotion is fear, fear of losing opportunities, fear of threats, fear of achievement, fear of abandonment, fear of invalidation. The emotion of fear impacts the way we think and what we believe. It contaminates the filtering of sensations and choice of responses. It creates a vicious cycle where atma is eclipsed by aham, our judgemental self. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on. ~ Elizabeth Howell

...The same folks who believe this fantasy also believe that the sole motivation for modern man's practice of science is to disprove their beliefs. How despicably arrogant of them to circumvent their burden of proof! It is plainly there for all to see that science wishes to discover and prove the answers to the very same questions that religion claims to already have answers for, whether or not they disprove former assumptions by our ancestors. The religionists should be happy that that their claims might have the chance to be proven wrong, but instead they would rather fear them disproven. I don't know about you, but I smell a guilty conscience. If they were one-hundred percent certain that their claims were of truth, they wouldn't need "faith" in them, nor would they have to dread possible invalidation. ~ John M. Penkal

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences. ~ George Will

The difference between the Sophist and the ignorant (or stupid) is not the difference between an intentional error (into which one falls in order to trip up one's adversary) and an unintentional error (of which both interlocutors are victims). The Sophist should not be interpreted as someone who uses error as a trap and uses faulty reasoning as a crafty weapon. He occupies a different dimension from that of true or faulty reasoning; he is on the side of the semblance of reasoning. He occupies the dimension of shadow and reflection; he occupies a reasoning mirage, but he does not really reason. And this invalidation, produced not by error but by semblance, affects not only the Sophist's reasoning moreover, it affects all his wisdom, his sophia. ~ Michel Foucault

Trauma is personal. It does not disappear if it is not validated. When it is ignored or invalidated the silent screams continue internally heard only by the one held captive. ~ Danielle Bernock

Guilt is really self- condemnation and self-invalidation of our worth and value as a human being. ~ David R. Hawkins

DID survivors are failed twice: once at the initial point of their abuse/trauma and again when the system fails to acknowledge their needs, even doubting their diagnosis if they have been fortunate enough to obtain one. This cannot be right in the twenty-first century. ~ Joan Coleman

Hence, too, my main concern will be to locate the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behavior, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely perceivable forms of desire, how it penetrates and controls everyday pleasure - all this entailing effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the polymorphous techniques of power. ~ Michel Foucault