Dismissing your feelings
What it is
Telling you that what you feel is wrong, exaggerated, or shouldn't be there. Not disagreeing with your interpretation — invalidating the feeling itself. Erodes trust in your own emotional read.
Does this sound familiar?
How it gets justified
“It's not a big deal — you're overreacting.”
The response was proportional to what your body picked up. Calling it overreaction is a way to recalibrate your detection system so it stops flagging what's actually there.
“You shouldn't feel that way.”
Feelings aren't optional. They're physiological responses to something the body detected. Telling them they shouldn't exist doesn't make them go away — it forces them to run where you can't read them.
Often escalates toward
When a behavior stays unnamed, the nervous system stops registering it as alarm — and the door opens to what comes next.
Related patterns
Something feels off but you can't name it?
An exercise to listen to what the body already knows.