Q. I commonly have the experience of being invalidated. I know my mother invalidated my feelings/opinions. According to her, her perception was the only true perception. I feel upset and like I disappear when I feel misperceived or my feelings are discounted. My therapist thinks I'm borderline but the other characteristics don't fit. In my adulthood, I feel that I'm invalidated and it really doesn't feel like I'm projecting. The only thing I know is to keep validating my feelings and perceptions, yet now with this therapist I'm starting to distrust myself if my perceptions are really distorted. If I reframe the situation it doesn't feel true and then I'm left like when I was a child of seeing something one way and my mother seeing it another and me taking her perception on and then feeling totally confused.

A real trigger in interpersonal relations is when the other person starts telling me who I am and it doesn't fit with my perceptions of myself. Like people will perceive me as meek, but I don't feel meek. Another situation, I was very assertive and stood up for what I believed, but the other person told me I was passive. Also, with my therapist I'm feeling not seen, but she is saying that is part of the borderline.

Please explain the concept of vulnerability vs. invalidation. I don't know what that means. Does it mean when the borderline is vulnerable they will be invalidated?

  A. I am empathetic to your questions, but I face a lose-lose situation here. I do not want to invalidate anything you have done in therapy nor suggest what you should do or what things mean since I know nothing about you.

Let me instead give you my view of people. Everyone in the world has his or her own way of viewing things. Certain ways are clearly right (respect other people) and others clearly wrong (do not abuse children). But a lot of what we do, whether we are passive-dependent or self-centered/assertive, have different behaviors associated with them. Is the President of the USA bad because he is assertive? No he is not. Is the late Mother Theresa bad because in many ways she is passive? Clearly not. Both have a view of the world, and act according to this view.

If you are unhappy with your view of the world, you would already have changed it. The disdain for the results of your behaviors are what bugs you, not how you act. Perhaps what you need is not a different personality, which is impossible anyhow, but better foresight and planning to eliminate the aberrant results. Accept who you are, work out the kinks of the parts you can, and get on with your life as best possible. Your therapist can help with this a lot.