“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”Asked philosopher George Berkeley
We trauma survivors ask: Did it really fall?
Was it real? Did it happen?
We grapple with these questions because often in a toxic family system, there are abusers and there are complicit bystanders. They stand there and watch yet pretend not to see your pain, your struggles. This kind of blatant invalidation is traumatic. Their ignoring the elephant in the room slowly makes us doubt our reality.
The nervous system is designed to detect safety and danger. When a child or adult expresses fear, sadness, anger, or excitement and is told they’re too sensitive, dramatic, or imagining things, the system receives mixed signals. There is a mismatch between what the body feels and the invalidating feedback of the outside world, which creates confusion and stress in a child’s nervous system.
It was utterly disorienting to me as a pre-teen who had just lost her mother, not to have my grief empathized with and comforted. My loneliness was brushed aside, like it was nothing.
Chronic Invalidation Makes Us Doubt Our Reality
When this kind of invalidation chronically happens when we experience loss, abuse, or neglect, we slowly begin to doubt our reality. If they don’t see my struggle, maybe it is not much. Maybe I’m too sensitive.
The complicit silence and invalidation by everyone around is extremely traumatising to someone going through visible abuse and neglect. Invalidation is one of the most insidious forms of emotional abuse and can make the recipient feel like they’re going crazy!
It’s the nothingness of having zero attention, attunement, acknowledgement, or consideration at all. The still-face is traumatising to any human, not just babies. Even though we learn to accept, adapt, and carry on, some part of us dies – there is a huge black hole where our feelings, aliveness should have been. Accepting their perception of our experiences helps us survive the unbearable pain of not being seen or heard.
Invalidation Makes You Feel Unreal
When my mother died, I expected lots of sympathy and care from my family, particularly my father. But no, overnight, he became even more rageful and violent. I was just expected to put on my big woman boots and magically turn into a competent adult at 11.
I looked to my maternal grandmother, but she was detached and distant. Nonetheless, she knew how to put on a show. Good when there were people around, while putting on her cold witch persona when alone. I didn’t understand why my family thought a child didn’t feel emotions, particularly the grief of losing her mother.
Traumatic Invalidation – Covert Neglect
Traumatic invalidation occurs when, instead of care and compassion, your emotions, perceptions, or lived experiences are consistently dismissed or minimized.
When our genuine pain, grief, and hurt are treated as an inconvenience, bother, or exaggeration by the people who we expect to support us, it feels like a deep betrayal. It is akin to them putting salt on our open wounds.
According to Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, “an invalidating environment is one in which communication of emotional experiences is met by erratic, inappropriate, and extreme responses”, such as punishment or ignoring. This kind of invalidation further dysregulates our nervous system, leading to C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Invalidation of our emotional experiences and self-perception makes us doubt our perceptions and reality. Over time, the persistent lack of validation causes a feeling of unrealness.
Traumatic Invalidation
Traumatic invalidation is not just because of what was said or not said, it is about who said or didn’t say it when you were most vulnerable.
When the people closest to you deny your reality in a moment of pain, it adds a second layer of trauma. It disrupts our core human need to feel seen, heard, and supported.
Over time, we feel shame-filled and disconnected from our feelings and our reality. When a person is invalidated and gaslighted regularly, they start to question their perceptions, their sanity, or even their right to exist. Invalidation by the people closest to us feels like the erasing of our person-ness – that feeling we are alive.
Invalidated Reality and Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
Besides having to deal with the heartbreaking sadness of my mother’s death, I also had to cope with being used and abused by all the various jerks who made up my extended family. It was one constant, crazy-making cycle I tried my best to survive.
What finally torpedoed me into existential numbness was when an uncle (my mother’s sister’s husband) began lustfully eyeing me, a 12-year-old. His narcissistic wife accused me of trying to seduce him. The shock knocked me to the ground. When I came to my senses, I felt dirty, blank, unreal, like I was floating in some nightmare. I now realize I had my first episode of depersonalization.
What made it even more surreal was when this very creepy uncle got up from his nap and saw me sitting dazed in shock, and asked what the matter was. I looked at him blankly. It’s beyond belief now, how women will not admonish the male perpetrator but completely tear down an innocent child.
Depersonalization and Traumatic Amnesia
Two weeks later, when I met this sicko aunt and her husband, I was still in a daze. My grandmother forced me to go for a ride with him. This very grandmother who co-accused me of that repugnant act.
I looked at my grandmother’s face, confused, like, is she really asking me to go with this creep? My reluctance was pushed aside to accommodate their fake caring.
After that, my memory went blank. That, I’ve learned, is traumatic amnesia. I didn’t remember any of this until my breakdown nearly 15 years later.
It was my brain’s way of protecting me, or else I’d have gone completely mad.
Derealization and Depersonalization (DPDR) Disorder
Derealization and depersonalization are subtypes of dissociation. Overwhelming emotional stress trips the brain into a kind of shutdown. It’s a defense mechanism to avoid getting fried. They occur concurrently or individually. However, during the depersonalization/derealization experiences, reality testing remains intact.
The main cause of DPDR, according to research, seems to be covert forms of childhood maltreatment, in particular emotional abuse and neglect.
Depersonalization is the feeling that you’re not quite real, while derealization is the feeling that the world isn’t quite real.
At the core, DPDR is experienced as a sense of detachment or estrangement from one’s self or from one’s surroundings—‘feeling unreal’—alongside a heightened awareness of this detachment.
Your emotions and perceptions are blunted and numb, as if not being fully alive or real.
Feeling Numb and Disconnected
For years, I’ve felt numb, like a zombie, walking through life, like I wasn’t me but watching a character in a movie.
Life is happening ‘over there’. There is an intellectual understanding that something is upsetting, but there are no feelings.
There was deep care and concern for my son, but no feeling of love. I went through life going through the motions robotically, but not feeling vital or alive.
Over time, this numbing becomes the new normal. Emotional detachment, space-outs, and a distorted sense of reality take root—not as conscious choices, but as a protective strategy.
DPDR and Arrested Development
After those distressing experiences of being falsely accused and then forced to go with the same creep, whom I was blamed for enticing, my mind went into a state of shock.
There is an intellectual understanding that something upsetting happened, but I felt nothing. Depersonalization is a freezing” response and often causes a person to stop maturing emotionally, leading to arrested development.
Most of those traumatizing experiences happened around age 13, at the cusp of my transition into womanhood. Up until recently, I felt and often behaved like a 13-year-old. Never fully became an embodied thinking, feeling adult woman.
Even after I had my son, I didn’t feel the warm, fuzzy mother emotions. I was performing but not feeling anything.
It was really scary because here I was responsible for this helpless human, when I myself felt like a child having to cope with the scary world of adult responsibility. It’s only as I heal that I feel like I’m waking up from the curse of an evil witch (my evil narcissistic aunt).
It feels like I’ve skipped years without real awareness.
Derealization Isn’t Just Psychological
Depersonalization-derealization disorder (DPDR) isn’t just psychological—it’s somatic. It’s rooted in the body’s survival systems: the freeze response, the shutdown mode. The years of survival numbness are beyond words. These are not cognitive distortions. These are protective patterns built deep into the nervous system.
I know my scoliosis was a part of the DPDR disorder. As I feel more alive and present, my body’s scoliotic armor keeps releasing.
Healing From Being Unseen
Depersonalization and derealization create within us feelings of unreality: “I don’t feel real. The world feels unreal.
A critical part of healing from DPDR is to find validating environments in which we feel safe, heard, seen, accepted, and valued for who we are. Any whiff of invalidation or gaslighting should be shut down.
Also, required are somatic or body-based therapies. These help regulate the nervous system, lower fight-or-flight arousal, and safely re-ground you back into your physical sensations.
Activities like yoga, dance, and barefoot walking on sand or grass. In my previous article on being lost, I explained how being lost shifts my mind into a state of embodied presence. This has been the most effective magic pill that has helped me become more alive and present.
Find what works for you and do it every day. Most importantly, don’t tolerate uncaring invalidators. Don’t let anyone else dictate how you feel.
