During my many, many, many years of infertility treatments, I was surrounded by loving, well meaning friends and family who wanted nothing more than to soothe my pain. And so, repeating the same cultural scripts we all hear around us, they’d often say things like, “everything will work out” or “you’ll get pregnant as soon as you stop trying” or “God saves special babies for special parents” and I would smile and nod as I burned inside. I tried to accept the kindness of the intention, but inside I felt more alienated than ever. In the stark light of the doctor’s offices, I knew that things often don’t work out. Sometimes death and loss are just facts to live with. I knew that there were many many children with significant medical needs who lived with families incapable of meeting them. Some of those children meet truly tragic ends. No amount of good intentions for reassurance can erase the cold reality, and the more I heard them the more I felt on my own, misunderstood and isolated.
I’ve been just as guilty of this as anyone, I was also raised internalizing these cultural scripts of dismissal. There are so many things we say just because it’s what we’ve heard, and we don’t know anything else.
When we are small children experiencing an entirely new world, there are a lot of things that seem distressing or concerning that to an adult are nothing. Things like balloons, or clowns, or dogs, can be terrifying to a very small child. It is normal for parents to tell the child that there is nothing to be afraid of and minimize that reaction. But if that minimization happens without our feelings being attended to, through the illogic of kid brains, we can easily grow up thinking that a kind response to distress is to say there’s nothing to be distressed about, even when there very much is.
Think about when you were a small child. When there was something wrong or distressing to you, how did the adults around you react? How often did you get concern and reassurance, and how often were you told, “You’re fine.” Without some deep personal introspection, you are probably treating yourself that same way now.
Minimizing our body needs is easier for everyone else around us, and so we are often rewarded when we do it to ourselves. From overextended parents rewarding us for being ‘good’, to perfect attendance at school, to being a ‘team player’ at work. Because of how systems of oppression work, and because it’s so convenient to Power, it’s common to develop a habit of minimizing your body needs, including to the point that you can disconnect from their cues entirely.
An internalized reflex of minimizing body needs may be a way to cope with the stresses and demands of modern life, but it is not a way to solve them. You cannot solve problems you won’t acknowledge. To solve the problems, you have to first admit what they are by validating the body cues that arise, learning what each sensation means and becoming more aware with practice.
Validation Over Minimization is a principle of Body Loyalty that recognizes we have been encouraged to disconnect from our bodies’ sensations and cues. It is a mindset shift that will help you find Self Acceptance as you realize that the way back to your body is to change that habit from minimizing your cues and needs to validating them and meeting them.
My son Atticus is autistic but we didn’t know that for a long time because all his struggles were attributed to his other disabilities. When he would have a sensory meltdown, from my point of view, everything was fine and then my child mysteriously collapsed in agony and pain with no explanation and no obvious trigger. The worst was the air conditioner. I couldn’t even hear it but every time it turned off it was like nails on a blackboard to Atticus. I had no idea what caused his distress, I had no idea how to stop it or prevent it, the only tool I had was to tell him that I saw it and I would stay with him in it.
That tool was powerful.
Denying the reality of our struggles prevents us from learning how to find solutions for them. I won’t be able to solve most of the painful things life brings his way, but I can give him my support as he develops coping skills and empower him to find new strategies.
Denial keeps us stuck. Both individually and systemically. Denying our own behavior or the reality of a hard situation means that as an individual we will stay stagnant. Denying the dynamics of Power and the ways our society dehumanizes us keeps us systemically trapped. Validating the position we find ourselves in is a way of taking stock of the situation as a first step towards changing it.
Like a lot of Gen Xer’s, the adults around me tended to respond to my complaints with, “You’re fine.” Unless someone was bleeding adults would rarely intervene. As an adult I’d still hear that in my head. When I felt sick I’d tell myself to push through with, “You’re fine.” When I was tired I’d tell myself to keep going with, “You’re fine.” When I was depressed I’d try to talk myself out of it with, “You’re fine.” But I wasn’t. I was sick or tired or depressed. Those are all body needs that deserve to be attended to.
You won’t heal your body by ignoring its cues. Healing and a sustainable life require living within your body’s means. If you try to work beyond the pace of your body you will just wind up in burn out. Going at the pace of your nervous system, whatever that is at whatever point of life you’re in, is what will allow you to keep moving forward without overdoing it.
That minimization instinct is powerful because we’ve been so strongly conditioned into it. Minimizing is inherently manipulative. It is a cognitive distortion that makes you see the world differently. It gets us working against our own instincts and the reality we’re experiencing to say something else is happening. Usually to say that we’re *not* being exploited, actually, and that the maintenance every human body requires is a character flaw. It teaches us to ignore problems instead of address them, but you can’t learn to regulate feelings you ignore, and you can’t heal wounds you won’t see.
Minimization is just spiritual bypassing again, dressed up in a very convincing costume. It’s just another way to dismiss the harm being done and pretending it’s not a problem as a way to cope. It robs you of your power to build something better.
In a relationship, validation communicates acceptance. It doesn’t mean that you agree, it means that you have listened, witnessed, and understand. It means that you respect your partner enough to take their concerns seriously, even if you ultimately decide on a different resolution. Validation for your body would look exactly the same way. If you respect your body enough to pay attention to its cues, you are validating your needs even if you can’t meet them.
Your body is talking to you all the time through sensation, but a lot of us only listen when pain becomes too bad to ignore. It’s like when a kid is trying to get their parent’s attention away from the phone. It takes screaming or a relentless repetition of MOM MOM MOM MOM. Your body is doing the same thing with pain. It is asking for your attention and help, but if you ignore it, it will eventually start screaming.
If we only listen to our bodies when we are forced to, we are denying ourselves all the joy of sensation. A beautiful life is built on a foundation of enjoying food, feeling the sun on your skin, resonating with music, admiring nature. These sensations are little gifts your body is bringing you, but you can’t appreciate them if you ignore everything your body is telling you.
Many people feel afraid to begin validating their needs because they fear encouraging things in a negative direction. There is so much criticism in our society for “victims” who “wallow” in “self pity” that those accusations get leveled at anyone who tries to address some kind of wrong. It’s true, some people are manipulative and they will use any tool accessible to be manipulative with. But in my experience, most of the time there is a structural or systemic issue – like, say, lack of health care – being blamed on the individual and Power calls it “victimhood” to hide who is really responsible.
Before trauma therapy I remember the visceral feeling that acknowledging my pain would be awakening a sleeping dragon that would swallow me whole. I couldn’t bear to look at the trauma out of fear that I’d never escape. What trauma therapy taught me is that healing can’t happen without validation. Without some kind of acknowledgement of the suffering, it won’t stop. Your body is the loyal friend who keeps receipts and keeps the score. It will not let go until the need is resolved. But you can resolve it. You first validate the need, and then you create yourself the necessary supports to meet it.
In their book Burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski write, “Emotions are tunnels. If you go all the way through them, you get to the light at the end.”
Emotions are fleeting. They pass. And they pass a lot faster if you don’t resist them or make meaning around them. Feelings just need to be felt and then they’ll move on. Emotions just need to be expressed and then there’s nothing to fight. Validation is the key. Psychologist Dan Siegal describes this with his catchphrase, “Name it to tame it.” Research has shown that by labeling our emotions, we can take the intensity out of them. It allows us to stand back from the feelings as a witness and react from that place instead of from in the middle of the intensity.
We are fed so much shame around emotional expression that I needed a way to destigmatize it for myself. I gave it a goofy name: Fallaparts.
Sometimes you just can’t hold it together for one more minute. So you have yourself a fallapart, get the feelings out, and then pull yourself back together and get on with it. Some are a little drizzle of rain, some are like a sudden summer shower, and some are hurricanes. But then the weather passes, the sun comes back out, and the world keeps turning.
To validate a partner in a relationship you pay attention to them, acknowledge what you hear, and admit what someone is feeling without avoiding or debating. It will work the same way in your relationship with your body.
When your body says you need a bathroom, don’t dismiss it and put it off to return one more email. When your body says you are hungry, don’t debate with it about whether or not it’s allowed to be. When an emotion comes up, don’t resist or shame it. Stretch what feels tight. Work with the rhythms of your body so that you do your hard work when you are able and your resting when you need. Believe that rest is part of the process.
If your body gives you inaccurate cues due to trauma or disability, validation will still be vital. It doesn’t mean you obey the inaccurate cues, it means you validate their presence and factor that in to your choices. When a past experience is telling me I’m not safe, forcing my body to do it anyway is not going to make me feel safer. Instead I look for ways to reassure myself of my current safety, find reasons why today is different from the past, create a safety plan, and then gently challenge myself to extend past my fear as my body will tolerate it.
I have a long and traumatic dental history, so any time I am in that dental chair my whole body is in full tilt red alarm fight or flight. At one of my last appointments I was getting a temporary dental appliance removed. My brain knew I was not in danger but my body DID NOT! Historically I would have tried to control my responses by trying to coerce myself into calm. You’re fine. Nothing is wrong. Calm down. Keep it together. But that was never very successful and only made my overall dental anxiety worse. That time, trying to make a Body Loyal choice, it’s like my brain looked at my body, saw her pure terror, and reacted with compassion. The part of me that is Atti’s mom kicked in and I started coaching my body through with love like I would for my child. You’re doing so good, you can do it, just a little more, you’re safe you’re safe you’re safe. I’m here.
And then the most amazing thing happened. I just calmed down. I got through the rest of the appointment just fine and went on about my day and forgot to even tell the story to my family that night.
Emotions, sensations, pain, are all communication. If we listen to our bodies better, they won’t have to go to such extreme lengths to get our attention.