Episode 32 - Emotional Invalidation/Spiritual Dismissal

"Let Go and Let God"..."Too Blessed to be Stressed"...wait, what? When you share your emotions/thoughts with someone and you are met with avoidance by means of a Christian cliche or misused scripture, you may have experienced "Spiritual Dismissal," which is what this episode is all about. Listen to some real-life examples, the negative effects of invalidated emotions, and how to view these responses a little differently.

Transcript

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Hey, guys! And welcome to Episode 32 of Grace and Progress. My name is Brianna Leach. I'm a wife, a mom of three and a licensed counselor who loves getting letters in the mail and the fact that there is a parks and rec reboot this week. And I firmly believe that if you woke up this morning, when you have a purpose, if you've listened before, then you know that we're here to create a safe space to learn more about yourself and take small steps to become the person you were created to be all the while giving yourself grace along the way. And if you're new here, welcome. I am so glad to have you here. Look forward to spending our time together and hope you can walk away with something to apply to your week ahead. I value your time and mine. So, like usual, I'm gonna jump right in to this week's topic. And this topic is a little different than others because it can be a little controversial, I guess for like a better terms. But it has come up in so many conversations lately and also within the groups that I speak Teoh. It's come up as a topic and something that people are struggling with or have experienced or don't know what to do with. So today we're gonna talk about emotional invalidation, and more specifically, we're gonna talk about what I call spiritual dismissal. I'm sure this is a novel concept, or maybe it's something I just made up. But I use the term spiritually dismissal as a form of emotional invalidation that relies on Christian cliches or Christian eases, I would say, or even misuse scriptures that may not be intentionally invalidating, but it's completely dismissing someone's emotions. So before we jump into that more, let me talk about emotional validation versus invalidation. So when you experience an emotion, it's a visitor. Emotions come and go. You get to decide how long they stay, whether they set up camp, whether you use them as an excuse to act in a certain way or whatever the scenario is, emotions are visitor in our life. We will talk more next week about being emotional detectives and understanding the emotions as they enter our life. But today my goal is for you to recognize this very specific type of dismissal that I feel is prevalent and unfortunately, has been around for a long time and is very unhealthy and sometimes can even cause toxic thought patterns. No won't spend too much time going onto that. But for the most part, I'm sure you understand. Validation is basically when someone gives you permission to feel, you know, statements like I understand why you feel that way I can see this is upsetting you. I hear you, you know, validating phrases or responses that allow you to feel that emotion and know that whether they approve of it or not is not necessarily the case. It's maybe investigating a little bit more. Oh, tell me more. I hear that you're really upset. What makes you feel that way? And of course, the opposite would be emotional invalidation, which is dismissing your thoughts. It's ignoring your feelings completely, moving on to something else or changing the subject. Sometimes your emotions are totally rejected or judged, and in the case of spiritual dismissal, I'm gonna take it one step further. So not only are your feelings ignored, rejected or judged on top of that, the conduit for this invalidation is Scripture misused or cliches or whatever kind of terms you might hear. If you've grown up around the church or in the faith community, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. You might be nodding right now or if it hits you on a gut level. I'm really sorry that you've experienced something like this where you have a genuine emotion reaction to something. You share it with someone wanting to process it or validate it or explore it a bit more and you're met with a closed book. Nope, that's how you should be feeling. Nope. Something must be wrong with your Christianity, and that breaks my heart. I see it so often in counseling and especially, like I said in faith communities where the truth is there under layers but in spiritually dismissal of someone's emotions. It's totally used the wrong way. Let me give you some examples before we go any further, because I want you to understand what I mean when I talk about this. So let's say you go to a friend and you're talking about the crazy time in the world right now, and you say, man, I just don't know what's gonna happen next. I I'm a little worried. I am fearful about if things are gonna change for my business or for my home for my kids, and I just don't know what to Dio. And your friend responds with spiritual dismissal by saying, Oh girl, come on. Faith over fear, faith over fear. God tells us not to worry. We are not supposed to have fear, and Christians should not walk in fear. Okay, can you see the dismissal right there? What she's saying who your friend is saying is not necessarily untrue. It's just inappropriate for the time being. One quick fix of that could have been a validating statement like, Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. I feel the stress of the weird time that we're in, too. It doesn't have to be 100% agreement or even approval of what the person saying, but just meeting them where they're at is validation. Whereas the dismissal is you shouldn't feel this way. Basically, your faith isn't strong. If you are experiencing any fear. That's what the underlying message is telling you. Does that make sense? Okay, here's another example. You're facing some really hard times ahead. Or maybe you lost your job or your child care provider just quit. Or some scenario where you're really struggling and you're talking to a friend. Hopefully not the same one, but a different one. And you say I am just really struggling right now. I am having a hard time seeing the positive in this. I don't know what I'm gonna do when it comes to figuring this all out. And instead of a validating statement which might be, you know what your right you have had ah lot going on. You've been dealt a bad hand. So to say, in this season of your life, that would be a brief validating statement. But a spiritual dismissal of that would be You know what counted all joy. Count it all joy that you are struggling, that you are getting stronger every day and that you got just gonna use it Now again, I am not negating that God will use hard times and get the glory and work all things for good. I totally 100% agree with that. But in the moment of talking with a friend, or maybe you're on the receiving end of that kind of invalidation of dismissing what you're feeling, ignoring the fact that you're just kind of laying your heart out there wanting to bear one another's burdens, to brush it off that quickly and just say, yep, struggles are good. You should be. You should be totally aware of this, that your struggles produced character. You know, you should know this already. That is spiritually dismissal. I'm gonna call it like I see it. It is so frustrating to see Scripture or Biblical truth used in the wrong way. And it only causes worse thought processes and believing lies that I'm always going to feel this way or what I'm feeling is not valid. Or as a Christian, I'm not allowed to have down days. That is untrue. And here's one more example. You tell a friend I'm angry. I'm angry at this person. They have done me wrong. I'm not sure if I can forgive them, and I need to talk to somebody about this. The spiritual dismissal response would be You know what? Ask God to take away your anger. God forgive you. You should turn the other cheek and forgive that person. I mean that quick, just saying Nope. Let's not acknowledge those feelings. Let's move on. Let's ignore him and focus on what you should be doing. An example that set for you in Jesus, who is a perfect person. So again, what they're saying is not untrue. But in that moment, goodness gracious, just be with the person where they're at. Just say, Yeah, what they did was wrong. I can see why you're angry. I would be angry, too. Let's figure out how you could move forward with this in a healthy way instead of just lapping some misuse bursts or Christian ease to get it off your plate. And that's the final part of this when you hear spiritually dismissal, Hopefully it's not coming out of your mouth, but if it is, that's OK. We've all done it. I've done it. It's been done to me. I think just the awareness that I have of it now it's easier to catch it faster. But when you hear spiritually dismissal, whether the recipient or accidentally giving it know that it usually comes from two places, the first would be anger, and that might sound funny, but I referenced it often the gift analogy with anger, guilt, inferiority, fear, trauma so someone who's using spiritual dismissal to another person's emotions might be feeling fearful, and it comes across as a quick knee jerk reaction of. Nope. If you feel that way, then that means what I've felt or resolved in my mind isn't true. Or maybe needs to be questioned. That makes me uncomfortable. And so I'm going to apply a misuse spiritually Band Aid for what you're going through. That sounds a little complicated, but if you think about it coming from a place of fear or inferiority, that this other person is processing things and that makes you uncomfortable, so you apply spiritually dismissal just to keep it in a neat little box rather than having to get down in the dirt like Jesus did and meet people where they're at and be real with them. So anger, with the subtext of guilt, inferiority, fear, trauma that is one lens that spiritually dismissal will come from the other lens is ignorance, and I mean that in the kind this way, like not in a negative connotation. But ignorance and the true meaning of not knowing what you're talking about are not knowing that you're even doing it when someone passes away and you're like, Oh, heaven needed another angel. No, God did not need more angels. But you felt uncomfortable. You didn't know what to say. So you just said something and the best thing you could do. If you catch yourself doing it, you can say, you know what? I know I didn't mean that. Honestly, I'm uncomfortable. I don't know what to say. I don't know what you're going through. I know that you're feeling real feelings, and I want to be here with you. That would be validating to the other person much more than making up some scenario that makes you feel better in the moment. So spiritually dismissal is a reality. It happens every day. I've had it happen to me multiple times. I'm sure you have to. If you're hearing this and nodding along and getting that feeling, you might be even picturing who keeps doing it to you. Or you can pull it up in your text threat or email history. But recognizing it is key to taking a breath, setting it on a shelf. Thank you for your input. And then you could work on self validating, which we'll talk about more in next week's episode. But for now, no that your feelings are riel. Whether they are brief visitors or linger a little longer or you're really wrestling with some of them, that's OK. The good news is a spiritual lens on our emotions is not a bad thing. So please hear me when I say we had the perfect example of emotional validation when Jesus walked the Earth. And even in the Old Testament, when David talks about God being near to the brokenhearted and just lingering with them, not afraid of the uncomfortable, not afraid of validating your feelings and recognizing your insecurities Jesus meeting people right where they were at crying when they were crying, rejoicing when they were rejoicing and feeling the feelings with them. The ultimate validation. So know that you are not alone in whatever you're feeling. If you've experienced spiritual dismissal, I'm sorry, and hopefully that person will listen and change Teoh. But in the week ahead, just know that you can do this, and I am cheering you on. Thanks so much for listening