Hi Alice. I'm new here, so I'm blundering around, but I did see a comment you left on another thread where you wrote:
The need for validation of our feelings and suspicions seems to be a very basic need stemming from childhood. I was invalidated by my parents growing up and I came to believe as an adult that my feelings were just my overactive imagination, weren't important for anyone else to consider, or complete fabrications unless I had some tangible proof or evidence that the trigger of my emotions existed. Not that it ever mattered to my parents. If I could prove someone pulled my hair and made me cry, I was to get over it.
That sounds so much like my experience. It's taken me until, oh, maybe two years ago to stop feeling like I was insane. I was tortured by this idea that I was a terrible person, that I had some evil need to fabricate a sense of reality in which I suspected that perhaps my family was not quite as perfect as I was constantly told it was. Because if, in fact, nothing was really wrong (even though deep in my heart I could feel things were terribly amiss), what sort of child did that make me? Certainly not a good, loving daughter.
I learned to shove my feelings down so far it's taken a lot for me to be able to find them, and then try to sort them out. I'm still an emotional idiot.
Thank you for sharing that bit. It helps to know I wasn't the only one walking around wondering why I was such a contrary little girl when all I really wanted to do was be able to trust the world around me at face value.