Believing in the validity of our own experience

I get a little sick of hearing how people with power lord it over others who are vulnerable to their views, particularly when they invalidate the experience of the person. Even if the person in power (say a medical professional) knows more, they have no right to denigrate the person’s felt experience.

There is great veracity in believing in the validity of our own experience. When we believe our own experience is valid, we have a confidence within our lives that isn’t easily shaken.

Imagine you have some chronic condition—it could be physical, psychological, spiritual, or a blend thereof. Just about everyone who’s got or had a chronic condition has experienced the invalidation of others, and worse, the invalidation of medical professionals whose job it is to diagnose and treat such conditions.

The other salient example I should like to mention is the outworking of trauma through abuse. Many are there who either aren’t qualified to comment, but do, and they do all sorts of damage, or those who are qualified who have no sense of empathy. Either way, the trauma response and people being triggered are too quickly invalidated.

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The invalidation of others tends to work us over psychologically and we can easily begin to doubt ourselves, our own experience, our right to complain, etc, even our morality for having experienced what we felt. This is such a deep soul-level betrayal.

But the fact is we do experience what we experience.

What we sense and what we feel are true. And only we, ourselves, can tell what we’re feeling, how painful it is, its depth and severity, and status any given moment. Why should we doubt what we feel?

It is an insanity to allow others who don’t know how we feel to talk us down or talk us out of it, or worse, to talk us into feeling guilty for what we are, in the truth of experience’s reality, feeling!

What we all need more of (not less of) is some acumen and dignity around our daily, moment-by-moment, experience of life. God gave us senses to feel with, to perceive with, to judge with, to discern with, and to decide with. God didn’t give us our senses that somebody else would tell us what we’re feeling is wrong.

Our job as human beings in this life is to live a true life in the light of experience. God trusts us to feel what we feel; we would not have five senses otherwise.

So, please do believe in the validity of your own experience.

What we feel is real.

Photo by Frederik Falinski on Unsplash