Why Can't I Trust My Feelings After Understanding My Mother?

You've done the work. You created a detailed document-ten pages cataloging fifteen different moments when your mother dismissed you, invalidated you, made you feel invisible. You thought getting it all down on paper would help. You thought finally seeing the pattern clearly-the 9 out of 10 times she responded with coldness instead of care-would somehow make the pain less sharp.

But it didn't.

You're still carrying it. When you talk to people, you're running a constant background program of self-interrogation: Is this person actually being rude to me, or am I making it up? Am I allowed to feel hurt by what they said? Are my perceptions even real?

Your therapist calls it social anxiety. You've been practicing small talk, learning from podcasts, trying to get better at connecting with people. And those things help-a little. But the exhaustion remains. The sense that you're always having to prove your own experiences are legitimate.

Here's what most people miss: Your social anxiety isn't the problem. It's a symptom.

What Maternal Invalidation Actually Damages

When most people struggle with social anxiety, they immediately focus on the anxiety itself-the nervousness, the second-guessing, the difficulty connecting. The standard advice is to practice exposure, challenge negative thoughts, work on social skills.

But in cases like yours, where there's a documented history of maternal dismissiveness, the real issue runs much deeper.

What happened during your cancer treatment tells the story clearly. You were sick. You needed support. And instead of providing that support, your mother questioned whether you had a learning disability or a mental health problem. Instead of believing you, she made you prove you were actually ill.

That moment-and the fourteen others like it across your lifetime-didn't just hurt. They damaged something researchers call "epistemic trust."

Why You Can't Trust Your Own Knowing

Epistemic trust is your ability to trust your own knowing. It's the internal confidence that when you perceive something, feel something, or experience something, it's real and legitimate.

Most people develop this foundation in childhood through a simple pattern: they express an internal experience ("I'm scared," "That hurt," "I don't feel well"), and their caregiver validates it ("I can see you're scared," "That must have hurt," "Let's take care of you").

Through hundreds of these micro-interactions, children learn: My internal experiences are real. My perceptions are trustworthy. I can know what I know.

But when a parent consistently responds with dismissal or invalidation-when they question your reality, attribute your experiences to mental problems, or show more care to siblings-something breaks.

You learn the opposite lesson: My internal experiences might not be real. My perceptions might be wrong. I can't trust what I know.

This is why you're exhausted in social interactions. You're not just managing anxiety. You're running a constant verification program, checking and rechecking whether what you're experiencing is actually legitimate.

Why Understanding Her Doesn't Heal You

You mentioned that your mother spent twenty years caring for your brother, who needed full-time healthcare. Maybe that explains why she didn't have emotional space for you. Maybe her circumstances justify her behavior.

But here's the difficult truth: understanding why she was unavailable doesn't repair what was damaged.

You can intellectually grasp that she was overwhelmed. You can document all fifteen experiences in a ten-page PDF. You can condense it into fifteen bullet points using AI tools.

None of that rebuilds epistemic trust.

Because here's what most people don't realize about traumatic memories: they're not stored as coherent narratives. They're stored as fragmented, sensory pieces.

When you just list what happened, you're creating an index of pain. But those memories are still fragmented in your nervous system-disconnected images, physical sensations, emotional flashes that haven't been integrated into a complete story.

This is why the documentation didn't make the pain go away. You cataloged the fragments, but you didn't reconsolidate them.

How Memory Reconsolidation Actually Works

There's a therapeutic technique your therapist introduced: writing what you would want to tell your mother about how each experience hurt you, without actually telling her. Writing it multiple times.

You had a reasonable concern: "Won't this just retraumatize me?"

Here's why it won't-and why it's actually the opposite.

When you write the same experience repeatedly, something specific happens in your brain. Each time you write it, you're in a slightly different emotional state. Sometimes you're calmer. Sometimes you notice new details. Sometimes you access different aspects of what you needed.

This variation is what allows memory reconsolidation to happen. Your brain begins piecing those fragmented sensory memories into a more integrated, coherent narrative.

The crucial difference from retraumatization is control. You're safe. You're choosing when to engage. And you're not just reliving-you're actively making meaning.

Each time you write, you're adding another layer of understanding. You're helping your brain transform scattered fragments into a story you can hold, examine, and eventually integrate.

The Self-Invalidation Pattern You're Repeating

During your first crying session in therapy, something scared you. You usually keep everything controlled. The tears felt like falling apart.

But that controlled version of you-the one who documents everything in PDFs and therapy notes and podcast learnings but never actually feels it with another person present-where did that come from?

Look closely, and you'll see: you're doing to yourself exactly what your mother did to you.

She invalidated your emotional experiences. She made you prove your perceptions were real. She kept you at an intellectual distance.

And now? You invalidate your own emotional experiences. You question whether your perceptions are legitimate. You keep yourself at an intellectual distance-even from Brett, who's been genuinely supportive.

The controlled version kept you safe from your mother's dismissal. But it's also keeping you isolated. It's perpetuating the very pattern that wounded you.

How to Build Earned Security

Here's the hopeful part: research on attachment shows that people who experienced invalidating or dismissive parenting can develop what's called "earned security."

Earned security means you weren't given secure attachment as a foundation, but you build it anyway-through the deliberate work of making coherent sense of your experiences.

Your tears in therapy weren't falling apart. They were the opposite. They were evidence that you're moving from intellectual understanding to emotional integration.

You're beginning to feel what you've only been documenting.

This is the actual work: not managing your social anxiety symptoms, but healing the foundational wound underneath. Not just understanding what your mother did, but articulating what you needed and didn't receive. Not staying controlled, but learning to trust that your emotions are legitimate data.

How to Use the Repetitive Writing Exercise

The repetitive writing exercise isn't busywork. It's the mechanism for memory reconsolidation.

Take one of your fifteen experiences at a time. Write what happened. Then-and this is the crucial part-write what you specifically needed in that moment that you didn't receive.

Not what would have made it better. Not what your mother should have done. But what you needed.

"I needed her to believe me."

"I needed her to validate that my experience was real without me having to prove it."

"I needed her to show curiosity about my inner world instead of making assumptions."

"I needed her to be interested in who I actually am."

Each time you write this, you're doing two things. First, you're reconsolidating fragmented memories into coherent narratives. Second, you're developing the capacity to recognize and ask for these needs now.

Because here's what changes: once you can articulate what you needed then, you can begin asking for it in your current relationships.

How to Practice Receiving Witnessing

You mentioned Brett has been supportive. But you don't let him fully in. You show him your documents and summaries, but you don't tell him how a specific memory makes you feel.

What if you tried something different?

What if, instead of showing him your ten-page PDF, you told him about one experience and asked him to just listen-not fix it, not solve it, not explain your mother's behavior-just witness it?

This is what you needed from your mother that you never got: witnessing.

Not solutions. Not explanations. Just someone validating that what you experienced was real and that it mattered.

You can't change what your mother gave you. But you can change how you meet your own needs now. You can practice asking Brett-or your therapist-for the specific things you needed.

Start small. Pick one experience from your list. Tell Brett how it made you feel, and explicitly ask: "I just need you to listen and validate that this was painful. I don't need you to fix it."

Watch what happens. Notice whether you can let yourself receive that witnessing. Pay attention to the voice that might say, "This isn't legitimate, you're being dramatic, you're making too much of this."

That's not your voice. That's your mother's voice, internalized.

When to Stop Hoping She'll Change

You're wondering when you stop hoping your mother will change. When you accept this is just who she is.

That question will answer itself as you do this deeper work. Right now, you're still trying to decide about your mother while you're controlled by the wound she created.

The acceptance piece-the decision about whether to keep seeking connection or establish different boundaries-that emerges naturally once you've fully grieved what you didn't receive.

For now, the goal isn't to decide about your mother. It's to understand your own story clearly enough that you're not controlled by it.

It's to rebuild epistemic trust-to learn that when you perceive something, feel something, or experience something, it's real and legitimate. You don't have to prove it. You don't have to earn the right to your own knowing.

Your social anxiety will shift as that foundation rebuilds. Not because you practiced small talk better, but because you're no longer running that exhausting background program of constant self-interrogation.

You're learning to trust what you know.

And that changes everything.