I have invalidated my DS's lived experience by having a different opinion on things...

[afishcalledbreanda]

That's it, really. There's been a death in the extended family and my sister and I were reminiscing about our parents (dead a while now) and various aunts and uncles. I lived in the same region as several of my mum's family and kept in touch and visited them (often with my DM) and got to know them quite well when I was in my 20s and 30s. My DS went abroad to study at 18 and was gone for six years, married on her return to the UK and lived 250 miles away from the main core of the elderly family members, so only saw them at weddings and funerals.

She says that these older aunts and uncles cut her out of their lives and now says she feels angry and hurt by their behaviour. I can't remember her mentioning them for years at a time. If she'd wanted to send them a Christmas card or visit them I'd have happily put her in touch. I said to her pretty much what I've said here — that they never really got to know her because she wasn't around, that they always asked about her and her DH and DC, I kept them up to date with the basics of what was going on in her life and I didn't see any ill will or cutting out. I was polite and not argumentative.

She's responded with an angry message saying that I am 'invalidating her lived experience' and that it's not for me to deny her truth. I'm not denying that she feels what she feels and I certainly haven't told her she's wrong. All I've said is that I see it differently and explained why.

She has fairly recently started counselling/ therapy after falling out very badly with her daughter, who's gone NC, and now she's started using what I think of as 'therapy speak'. Ideas, please, for a cheery response that acknowledges that's how she feels but that I'm allowed to see things differently. I can't quite find the words without sounding insincere or without an eye-roll showing.

She has her lived experience and you have yours. I don't think you can really tell anyone what a relationship felt like to them. So while I think her language was maybe a bit reactionary, you were sort of trying to tell her that what she experienced wasn't the case, which I don't think is right. You can't possibly have known every single conversation or every single interaction they had and what that felt like for her. Your lived experiences were different. Those relationships felt one way for you, but differently for her. No one is more right. I think in this case, you just say, I'm sorry you felt like that and I didn't mean to make you feel that way and I hope you're doing okay.

I don't think the OP's DD does either tbh.

It can be useful in certain situations- for example, as a white woman, if I said at work that "there's no racism in this company" then my Asian colleagues might rightly feel that I am "invalidating their lived experience" if they have in fact experienced racism. I have no authority to to make that statement.

Similarly on a charity board I am on we are trying to recruit board members with lived experience of the issues that we try to address because it brings a really important perspective. If I've never been homeless how can I, however well meaning, understand what my priorities might be if I was homeless".

However, this is definitely a "recollections may vary" situation or as the Manics put it "this is my truth, now show me yours". The only way around it is to try to talk about it and understand why you see things differently. She clearly still saw herself as the "child" in the relationship with those relatives, so put the onus on them, whereas they (and you) presumably felt that as an adult she should make the effort too.

'Recollections may vary' is a cracking riposte but really not appropriate on this occasion because there is no disputing the fact that she had no contact with these elderly relatives for many years. She interprets that as them cutting her out while I say that for perfectly understandable circumstances she was never really in with them.

It's put into context because, a while back, I finally contacted a friend whom I'd neglected for months and apologised profusely for the radio silence. Her response was 'We both have phones, it's as much my fault as yours' and we laughed and went on to have a warm, positive conversation. But my sister doesn't see things as a two-way street and has always seemed to find offence where none was intended. I think it's got worse as she's got older.

I've usually managed to rise above it but this therapy-speak really does my head in. Just because I have had a different experience and just because I interpret events differently doesn't mean I'm invalidating her, does it? Or does it?

I'd like to ignore, but I would probably say something truthful & blunt inflammatory & probably considered "wrong".
She doesn't want to accept that her relationship is different from yours, because She made the choice to move away from the locality where you all lived & then made no effort to connect with them. by visiting or letters, mails, photos.
Her relationship with them was unavoidably altered. but she had the opportunity instead to make connections with new people & new places.
Having a good relationship with people involves familiarity & to a certain degree, effort.

Wrong thread?

She sounds toxic, disturbed. Actually OP, it is the correct phrase, she's remembering it differently, according to what suits her, but that isn't what happened.

We had a thing with my middle brother, years ago. Very sporty, and he particularly begged to go to teen sporty holiday camp /daycare,, for the whole week, which all 3 of us went to. Years later, he insisted that we'd all been carted off there against our will. My mum, eldest brother and I put him straight, because it's bullshit and the irony is he wanted it and begged for it most out of all of us!

Arggh- Sorry OP- I thought DS was a typo for DD but you mean your sister. Apologies for confusing reply upthread.

So she fell out with your aunt
Fell out with daughter
And now she's starting on you

Spot the common denominator?

Take a step back OP.

amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/20/triggered-toxic-narcissist-are-you-fluent-in-therapy-speak

At the risk of invalidating your lived experience by not agreeing...

I didn't tell her what her relationship with them was. I knew from both DS and the elderly relatives (who were always interested to hear any news or see photos of her and her family) that there had been no contact because they all told me that they hadn't seen or heard from her. She didn't come to their funerals because she said she barely knew them.

I wasn't argumentative or confrontational in our original conversation. When she said they'd cut her out I just said calmly, as I would to any of my friends or my DH, oh, I didn't see it like that and then explained why.

If we're getting into a situation where I have to agree with her all the time in order to maintain contact, we'll have very limited contact.

Wise post. Op, respect your sister’s experience. She may be mistaken but she may not be. It is very common for siblings to have vastly different experiences regarding family interactions.

You come across as very cold with disdain toward your sister. You dislike her, that is plain to see. You may be the linchpin in the whole situation for all we know.

She does sound prickly and yes, often people who are just beginning therapy are necessarily very focused on their own feelings but:

She was still a child when she moved away - it's possible that she needed to distance herself from the family for her own survival, and now feels angry that she was forced to do that and missed out on your parents love and support (which perhaps you benefitted from).

It's likely this is actually about your parents (and you, as your parents' other child [not your fault]) rather than the extended family The relationships with aunts and uncles are proxies for her relationships with your parents whom she may feel rejected or abandoned her by allowing her to detach, rather than facing whatever the issues were with her.

The estrangement from her own daughter supports this - perhaps she's emotionally dysregulated and 'trapped' in adolescence herself, and this has prevented her from parenting well.

I agree with pp that it seems to be the default for her feelings to be dismissed or belittled - your joke about 'invalidating the lived experience' of another poster, for example, means you are seeing this through a slightly irritated cultural lens, rather than simply seeing a sister in pain, even if you don't understand it.

Another good post.

You don’t have to agree with your sister. You can accept that she had a different experience and opinion from you and respect that. You are close to these relatives and could actually mediate a restoration of relationship between them and your sister, but you choose to do exactly to your sister what she says she felt was done to her by family members. I think that’s why I believe her.

She is obviously generally in pain as others have said. This isn’t about you or your family members as you have clearly identified she has other family issues. I don’t think I would be going around invalidating her experiences at the moment it never goes well. She is probably feeling uber defensive at the moment.

I agree with you by the way, the phone does go in two directions but at the moment she isn’t in a space to see that aspect.

But you are asking me to deny my own experience with my elderly relatives, who always showed an interest in DS's life, and asked me to pass their good wishes on to her (which I did and which she never commented on). They knew she was busy with children and a full-time job and didn't have much time for anything else so they didn't expect anything of her. I was close to a couple of them: had POA for them, executed wills, helped move them into care homes, sat with a couple of them as they were dying. It hurts me to hear her say they cut her off when actually, they would have loved a phone call or a visit. Perhaps that's what I say to her. So I thank you while not agreeing with you.

I don’t think I would be going around invalidating her experiences at the moment it never goes well.

I'm not invalidating her experiences. I am putting my point of view, based on my experiences, in the full understanding that she will have a different one and that we can talk in an adult, non-acrimonious fashion about it. That's not a problem for me, though it seems to be for her.

Actually that isn’t what you are doing. You are telling her that her experience is wrong. She is probably trying to unpick something in the family dynamics that has gone wrong for her. That experience of trying to figure out what is wrong in a family is basically like trying to see air, she may have landed a bit off base and she might be projecting issues onto the wrong people but I am willing to bet there is a problem for her in the family dynamics that may or may not be down to her.

”Recollections may vary” is precisely the type of thing that I think my family members would think is a real “gotcha” with me. They have been endlessly gaslighting me about abuse I experienced at the hands of my brother and my parents with whom they have very different and clearly much better relationships.

Family dynamics are extremely complex and very often people living in the same family have extremely different experiences of others in the same group.

Emotions aren't always rational or based on fact OP - your sister clearly feels she was overlooked or unloved or something.

You're countering with the fact that uncles and aunts did express interest in her and would probably have developed relationship with her if something spurred that on.

That's a logical argument. For her, she's dealing with the emotion of having felt a little bit unloved for an extended time, or frozen out, or that you were favourite etc and not really addressing it. Feeling that way for a long time would impact your self esteem and give you self beliefs about how you were viewed that would impact your identity and sense of self. Therapy would help identify and unpick that so she can let go of the unhappiness.

What I mean is - it doesn't have to be a rational, based-in-fact thing to have a real impact on her. If she perceived herself to be frozen out for a long period then that could impact her, even if the door to wider family was never locked at all.

It seems to me from the context that the issue stems from before she moved away, had children etc which would explain why she didn’t comment when you passed on ‘well wishes’ from them. It is odd that you don’t acknowledge that possibility.

You dismissed what she said out of hand so she didn’t have a chance, or didn’t feel safe enough with you, to elaborate on why she feels the way she does. I don’t know what is going on, obviously we all just know what you’re telling us, but you’re the linchpin. You could help her have a relationship with these family members but you want to ostracize her. Do you not realize you’re doing exactly to her what she says was done to her??

“But you are asking me to deny my own experience with my elderly relatives”

No @afishcalledbreanda She’s not asking you to deny your experience. She’s asking you to acknowledge that your sister’s was different. That she sees things differently. Not incorrectly or wrongly, but differently.

tbh the longer the thread goes on the more I see you as the problem, dictating how she should see things, how she should feel. that denying how people feel and telling them how they should feel is a real bugbear of mind.

fwiw I am the absent sister. My lovely older sister has lived closer to home and forged closer ties with extended family than me. I’m not jealous at all, she has done the hard yards so to speak but I do feel wistful sometimes that her experience has been different to mine. And as it happens I know she does too. We are very close. We talk about things like this without malice or resentment. I am very lucky on that respect.

You are close to these relatives and could actually mediate a restoration of relationship between them and your sister, but you choose to do exactly to your sister what she says she felt was done to her by family members. I think that’s why I believe her.

They're all dead now. DS never showed them any interest while they were alive. I can remember innumerable conversations when I would tell her I'd seen them and they sent their best wishes, or tell her what was going on with them, and she showed no interest at all.

It stuns me that you would just project a story of abuse onto her/ us/ my parents without even bothering to ask about our family background. Like deciding that everyone you don't get along with is narcissistic or autistic. My sister won a scholarship to a prestigious foreign institute and that's why she went abroad.

I think people have put forward the idea that there are often unacknowledged/unknown complexities in family dynamics and in individuals that mean that different family members can have very different experiences of each and posters have given you examples of some of these scenarios. I have no idea if it is your sister or the family background that is the issue but there is an issue between you and your sister’s relationship.

I very much agree with this.

The OP says,

"I'm not denying that she feels what she feels and I certainly haven't told her she's wrong. All I've said is that I see it differently and explained why."

The OP was not a part of the relationship between the sister and the aunts and uncles. The sister left to study at quite a young age, and may have felt that no effort was made by those (much older) relatives to get in touch with her. Perhaps she had felt unimportant or overlooked throughout her childhood?

The problem with these communication failures is they can lead to an impasse where no-one reaches out to anyone, each thinking the other doesn't care. However, the OP's response makes it sound like the fault lay mostly with the sister (had she reached out, the relatives would have been interested). When the OP was asked about her sister, why did she not suggest her relatives get in touch, or let the sister know people had been asking about her?

This is the best approach to avoid being sucked into a relational black hole.