Validate Your Ticket, Please!

This personal post is brought to us by guest writer Robin Klammer, talking about what it means to validate our experiences.

Validation is a conundrum to me. For so long, I didn’t feel like I had much worth unless someone told me I did. From my earliest years, I remember thinking, “I’m not good unless someone else says so.” I’m not quite sure exactly when this perception came about.

I do have a theory though. From the time we are born, we are helpless and utterly dependent on someone to love and care for us. What happens then, when for whatever reason, our primary caregiver, usually the one who gave birth to us, is not there to validate our experiences?

Taking care of an infant’s basic needs only goes so far. Babies actually grow faster when they feel loved and safe, and when their needs are tended to consistently. They know when they cry, someone will be there to calm and soothe them. They are validated.

If a baby is ill and needs to be cared for in the hospital for an extended period, who is there?

I had all sorts of wires, tubes, and i.v’s hooked up to me for the for couple months of my life. This was back in the 70’s when only basic needs were met. Love and touch had no business being in the NICU. Fortunately, I pulled through.

Without consistent care from one or two primary caregivers, or if care changes hands often, what happens to our sense of security? Do we feel that our world is safe? That we matter to someone? That our emotions are real and validated?

Many times, due to circumstances beyond my control, I lived in places that were not home, and with strangers I was reluctant to trust. What happens when you feel that the only person you truly count on, consistently lets you down?

It’s greatly disheartening to feel that you don’t seem to matter much to anyone in the world.

Especially when it’s the one who’s supposed to love you the most and validate you the most.

To hear one thing like an apology and a promise that it won’t happen again. But of course, it does….Again and again and so on through the years. The formative years that have a great hand in shaping the person you may become.

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started to truly understand and appreciate the consequences that parenting or the lack thereof can have in one’s life. The anxiety and bouts of depression I have overcome have indeed made me stronger, yet I still fall prey at times to this dark night of the soul, when I have to validate myself.

I am truly grateful that I have been able to reach out and get the help I needed. That’s not to say that I don’t have dark moments or days/weeks, but I have better tools to deal with it, and I know from whence it came.

I can now validate what I’m feeling and take steps in self-care to remedy this malady.

I still have a lot of living to do, and darned if I’m going to skulk around waiting for someone else to validate my self-worth!!

What’s one time you’ve been let down? How did you respond?