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'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.

Invalidating her lived experience is a way of saying her viewpoint is more important than yours - its trying to discredit your viewpoint. You have a lived experience too. One that is longer and has more background information. She doesn't get to pull this silencing tactic. You would like to discuss matters; she wants to tell you 'her truth' and for you to accept it as 'the truth'. And quite frankly thats authoritarian manipulative bullshit.

You discuss differences. You don't just say my view is more important than yours.

Honestly, she's talking bollocks but what can you do?

The world isn't here to validate your feelings in any way, if she wants validation she can do that herself. If she wants the truth she needs to listen to other people.

Thank you. I've just come in from walking next door's dog and messaged her back with 'Nothing I can say or do invalidates your truth but it's not my truth and this is something we'll just have to disagree on.'

Thank you for breaking the blame/ abuse/ must be something you-they've said or done cycle demonstrated here and reframing it. I love my sister, I acknowledge all the positives, support her where I can but I'm not going to lie and pretend that all the kind old aunts and uncles I grew up with didn't care about her. They would have loved a letter from her, and they'd have responded.

I don't know what's going on in her life. We talk but I sometimes think we don't communicate.

Therapy really isn't good for everyone.

I'm not going to lie and pretend that all the kind old aunts and uncles I grew up with didn't care about her. They would have loved a letter from her, and they'd have responded.

This will be crushing for your sister, and probably what she can't hear/accept. The guilt, the lost opportunity, the definitive ending of these relationships - it's a LOT, especially when you know it's your own doing, especially when these people have passed, especially when you have a fractured relationship with your own daughter. Something significant will be going on with your sister.

But, it's not all hopeless. Your sister was loved by these relatives and that's a wonderful thing. It's never too late, while you're still alive, to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. You still love her, and maybe when she's ready and able she'll turn to you for a closer relationship too. Talking but not communicating is something we often do with people we love and want, but don't know how to let in. So close, and yet so far. In my experience, first has to come realisation and acceptance, then an awful lot of courage taking steps towards vulnerability and relationship building. Not easy.

"Oh do fuck off dear" is what I would want to say.
My own dsis often complained that my parents were closer to my kids.
Yes, you never took them to visit despite living the same distance as me, never invited them to your home and only communicated what you wanted for Xmas and birthdays.

You have my full sympathy, as I also have a sister like this. She recalls events in ways that they simply did not happen, and paints herself as the victim when in reality no "crime" even existed. It's baffling and horrifying in equal measure.

I think what is worse here, is that your sister is now blackening the name/memory of your loved ones, and you know she's making it up. I honestly would not back down here.

However, I think rather than saying it's untrue/not your experience, I would say :

"What? OMG. Why didn't you tell me at the time? Tell me exactly what happened? What did they say? When was this? What did you say?" And keep pushing her for solid answers. Let her spin the yarn. Unless she's an out and out liar, she will have to back track.

I would also point out that your relatives were always asking after her, and telling you to pass on their best, so you would have had no idea if they were saying something different to her face.

In my experience with my sister, if you don't call her out on it, she will take that as further "proof" that her version of events, is what really happened. My sister is batshit bonkers, I know how you feel.

Just roll your eyes and smile.

Apparently nowadays your lived experience is all you need to claim the whole world is against you.

I don't doubt that some people really do suffer. But it's diminished by people who look pay the truth and claim to tell the truth is "silencing them" "invalidating lived experiences".

I wouldn't engage or would simply ask "how would you have liked these people to be part of your life when you lived abroad and 250 miles away?"

My favourite thing nowadays is putting the ball in someone's park.

But yes - "recollections May vary" is also a fab response!

Your reply was great and I'm keeping that in my back pocket to use! I have a sibling very similar to yours and it can be difficult to reply to therapy type garble.

She got to have the carefree life away from the responsibility of family you had. You talked favourably of her and prob witness the disappointment from older relatives that she didn’t reciprocate contact when given and later they didn’t have a way to contact her.

And she wants to rewrite that story. Nah wouldn’t wash with me either.

Golly she does sound like hard work. I think your reply was solid.

I think your sister has used the term invalidation in unusual context. Generally, it is used in situation that are about social issues like gender, race, sexuality, mental health, disability etc. A person may feel a certain way; it doesn't make it the truth but it is there truth and experience. It appears your sister felt abandoned by the family; in the same vein it appears to did not make an effort to maintain contact. I tend to agree with other posters, that siblings can often have different experiences with family members. It appears that your sister may have underlying interpersonal/attachment/abandonment issues that influences how she views relationships.

Meghan Markle and Harry have a lot to answer for. Read this...

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rise-of-therapy-speak

New York Times article about the new argot (secret language) of therapy speak having gone mainstream:
The Rise of Therapy-Speak - How a language got off the couch and into the world.
By Katy Waldman March 26, 2021
“In the United States, basic mental-health care remains a luxury item; there’s a reason that the most fluent speakers of the trending argot tend to be wealthy and white. This may explain some of the irritation that therapy-speak occasionally provokes: the words suggest a sort of woke posturing, a theatrical deference to norms of kindness, and they also show how the language of suffering often finds its way into the mouths of those who suffer least.”

You are also alive and also experience…

I absolutely see where you're coming from Brenda. Your sister was still cared about by your relatives, she just wasn't there. I had a good relationship with my relations until I emigrated in my 20's. There were those who stayed in contact but there were also those who were not letter writers. However, they would ask others about how I and my family were getting on. I made a point of visiting all my relatives when home on holiday, even those who had not written or sent cards. Everyone was delighted to see me and hear my news, then I'd be away again and I'd not hear from them until I again returned. It never crossed my mind that I was "cut off" by these relatives, I knew it was the distance that separated us not their care for me.

Thank you, HarveyJJ. Yes, there's a difference between not keeping in touch because of distance and logistics and old age and actively cutting people out because of ill-feeling.

I've had a long and accusatory response from my sister, again using therapy-speak and demanding an apology. As Rainclouds suggests, I suspect she's using me to let off the emotional pressure that she's experiencing because of the situation with her daughter — which I know very little about and don't want to get involved in. It feels as if she's looking for a fight which she intends to win. This has happened before a number of times, but the therapy-speak has really highlighted it this time. My plan is to ignore it. I'm going away for a week to help a friend who's having a hip replacement tomorrow, so I'll just let myself be distracted by that.

My DH has wonderful, easy-going relationships with his siblings. It seems a bit tragic that I get on so much better with his sisters than I do my own. We're very different personalities: she has what my DM used to called an artistic temperament, while I was the steady one.

@SpeedReader "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?"

You do know that within this thread, the OP has mentioned several times that she passed on the feelings/greetings and caring thoughts from the older family members to her sister? The sister did nothing in turn.

I am beginning to think that it has now just become a "pile on the OP time"; where nothing of value is being shared. Especially from the silly poster, who did not read the whole thread to realize that these elderly family members were all dead, insisted that the OP needs to act as a go-between between the NVDS and the elderly family members and accusing the OP of choosing not to do so. Just mind-boggling at all the armchair psychiatrists that are out there. Her NVDS seems to go NC with people very easily and too many here want to blame everyone but the NVDS for her choices. Yes, the older relatives SHOULD have gotten in touch with the NVDS, but they did not and the NVDS never once reached out to them. It became a mutual stand-off and the only one NOT to blame is the OP. She is not, AFAIK, the UN of family relations.

OP--I also think, besides the people ready to tear you a new one, that many posters here have given you excellent advice and have been very caring, yet still able to give advice that you can use.

You cannot change your sister and she seems very angry. That is on her and not you. She needs to work this out herself, though it seems like her therapy is directed towards the "everybody's fault but mine" theory. It's also the kind that rarely helps in the long run, as making yourself the perennial victim never gives one quite the closure one needs. But, it keeps the therapy going as one has to continue the therapy when others don't buy the "poor victim" explanation.

Getting away for a week will be the best thing for you. I hope your friend recovers quickly from her surgery, and it's really nice of you to be there to support and help her.

For some people, this can be a way of avoiding regret. It is often easier to convince yourself that Aunt Mary was mean to you, than to admit that you really couldn't be bothered with her, and now it's too late.

I see this thread has been resurrected. Thank you for your compassion and for taking an interest.

Things went from bad to worse in the weeks that followed, so much so that I wondered if DS was having some kind of breakdown. I phoned a couple of times but she didn't want to talk to me. Instead she sent some strange, sweary, accusatory emails calling me all kinds of names, presumably intended to hurt me or engage me in a fight. When I responded I was concerned about her she told me to stop patronising her and then called me a twisted crazy c**t and told me to eff off out of her life. This isn't how anyone in my family or circle of friends treat each other and seems to have come out of nowhere. I haven't shown any of her emails to DH because I think he'd be really shocked. This is a side to her I didn't know existed.

We had a few weeks without any contact, then she emailed asking for contact details of our relatives living in Canada and the US. I've been in touch with them over the years. They've stayed with me when they've visited the UK and I've stayed with them when I spent a couple of months travelling in North America/ Canada. She's planning a trip in the spring and wanted to see if she could stay with some of them. I gave her their details and haven't heard from her again. I've sent her a Christmas card and a gift but I'm not expecting anything in return.

This is so unlike anything I'm used to that I have no idea what to say or do or think.

Yes, that makes sense. I suppose it must be the therapy sessions that have started her thinking about the wider family after all these years and perhaps, as you say, she's now regretting not having been involved. I wish she wouldn't take it out on me, though!

Why is that the op’s issue though. She could have made the effort to relationships are two way.

I'm

For some reason, this came up on my "trending" list. I am sorry that I resurrected a thread and hope I did not cause you undo distress.

That said, I am very glad you gave an update to your struggles with your DS.

You sound like a wonderful person and someone people would love to be related to (I know I would).

I hope you have a peaceful and stress-free holiday.

I also hope she doesn't run rough-shod over your relatives when she visits.

It looks to me like you 100% agree with each other on the facts here. The experience is what it is ("lived" or otherwise - narrated, perhaps?!) You differ in your interpretations of the third parties' motives. And that's okay. You may need to actually say "And that's okay".

Everyone in the world has an individual perspective on everything. Those can differ just a little or massively, but it's a given that they will differ a fair bit when third parties' feelings come into the picture - especially if those parties are dead, so can't be asked for their perspective.

In some things, it's worth arguing until we reach a shared view. Mostly it's not. We have to respect one another's right to our own minds. It's almost certainly not worth arguing over something as futile as a deceased person's perspective since, unless they left copious diaries, their individual perspective went to the grave with them.

Good to hear DD's doing therapy. Wishing her well with it.