A Name for What Had No Name: Traumatic Invalidation, a Viral Video, and Coming Home to Self
October 7, 2026—I don’t know about you, but end-of-summer-into-fall 2026 has felt extraordinarily difficult. The bad news seems to come from all quarters. It feels like too much to sit with, hold, or witness. There are some days I just want to pull the covers over my head.
September was a very strange month for The Shiftless Wanderer as one of my TikTok videos went viral, and it continues to garner over 1000 views a day. In the post I spoke about traumatic invalidation and how it was at the root of the estranged relationship between my oldest son from his dad and me.
I let the viewers know that learning about validation was the antidote needed for us to repair our relationships. It struck a deep resonant chord in folks. I couldn’t pull the covers over my head. I had to stay present.
A Name for What Had No Name
There were several thousand comments with person after person relaying stories of growing up having been traumatically emotionally invalidated. They expressed surprised gratitude for being given a name for this experience that for so long had no name.
One person commented, “This is so validating for me to listen to! Thank you for sharing this. It helps me realize I wasn’t crazy for what I was going through!”
Another person remarked, “I was the punching bag emotionally for my parents. It’s one of the hardest forms of abuse to cope with bc no one on the outside sees it. Everyone else things everything is fine.” These have been incredibly painful stories to read. And there seems to be no end to them.
I have several close friends and colleagues who have told me over these last few years that the work of deconstructing validation as an essential communication skill and bringing awareness to the emotional scarring that comes from traumatic invalidation is timely and necessary. Ironically, TikTok made a true believer out of me. It is so necessary!
Alongside these heartrending comments have been the ones that make my heart leap. Literally. These are from parents who say, “Oh! I think that’s what I’m doing to my kid(s) now! How do I stop? What do I need to do differently?” These people give me such hope.
Finding My Way Back Home
The issues making the news these last few weeks, especially the terrible trifecta of Lindsay Clancy, Christa Pike, and Cornell Jane Doe, as seen through the lens of traumatic invalidation leaves me gasping for air at times. I have stayed away from everything except the headlines. It’s just too much. I have to save heart room for my clients, for whom some of these stories hit far far too close to home.
So what do we do when ‘the world is too much with us’, as Wordsworth so eloquently put it? I come back to my little map that guides me through my days:
Am I at home with myself right now? What does it feel like to be here now?
Am I not quite at home with myself? Am I no longer oriented or grounded? How do I know this?
Do I know how to find my way back home to Self? Do I know what is needed to re-orient and how to access that resource? Do I know what to do if it’s not available?
Am I back at home with myself? How do I know this?
I started writing in my journal again, and, as it has for the last 50+ years, it has saved me yet again. I find myself again when I open my journal and write. This is where my anger and grief have voices and words. They are scrawled across dozens of pages.
I’ve made a conscious effort to connect with loved ones. I give myself time for long conversations when I can. I text and check in on them. I tell them I love them all the time.
I stay away from the news and the ugliness online. Amazingly, even though what folks are posting on my social media these days is painful, it’s also been vulnerable, honest, and tender. What’s even more amazing is how strangers have responded to these heart-baring stories. My grandson, who is well-versed in TikTok, claims that he’s never seen posts where there is no meanness, no trolling, and no intolerance. I’m so grateful for that.
I watch the birds and the squirrels in the backyard from my desk where I spend many hours a day. And I watch the sky, how the light moves from east to west, and how the sun dances different as the summer comes to a hard close and we turn toward the darker months.
I talk with my parts day in and day out, all day long. I keep good company with them!
And I get up every morning, drink my tea, feed the cats, say good morning to my husband, and get to work.
Praise the Mutilated World
Wordsworth wrote his words 200 years ago, and still they sing alive the consternation of being human —
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
We have given our hearts away. . . . and so here at The Shiftless Wanderer, with our dear small team, we work to bring the heart back.
My mind then jumps forward (and back) to September 17, 2001, just 6 days after the Towers came down when this extraordinary poem landed in the center of the last page of The New Yorker. Adam Zagajewski’s ‘Try to Praise the Mutilated World.’ I memorized this poem many years later and recited it to myself when the world was too much with me. He reminds us to “Remember June's long days/and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.” Zagajewski demands that we praise the mutilated world, even while the executioners sing joyfully. Remember the small moments, he says, the curtain fluttering, the birds flitting in the back yard, the cats watching from the window, the husband folding the laundry.
“Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.”
And the light will fade and it will come again. This is the work, to stay the course, to find our way home again and again. What other work is there to do but this? To learn to be fully human on planet earth right at this moment.
Photo By: RomixImage