Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Meghan Markle Teach Emotional Invalidation: What Is It and How to Stop It

You could experience “you’re overreacting” or “just get over it” on both sides, trying to support someone or having your feelings ignored. This is emotional invalidation, and it can come even from well-meaning people who simply don’t know how to sit with discomfort.

We have seen emotional invalidation play out in real time, not only in real life but also on screens. Multiple celebrities shared how their worries and problems were minimized and how that significantly impacted their well-being.

Let’s learn from the mistakes of others. How can the experience of celebrities help us understand emotional invalidation? Are there celebrity-proven strategies against it? Read in our article.

What Does it Mean to Invalidate Feelings? Britney Spears’ and Meghan Markle’s Experiences

Emotional invalidation happens when someone rejects, minimizes, or undermines another person’s emotional experience. It might sound like “You’re too sensitive,” “That’s not a big deal,” or “Nobody feels that way.”

The meaning of “invalidate feelings” refers to making someone feel like their emotional reaction is irrational. People who experienced emotional invalidation are unsure about their relationships or self-view, and the emotional intelligence test, in this case, shows how a person processes their emotions. How it looks like in the example of A-list celebrities:

• Britney Spears’ emotions in the mid-2000s were extremely invalidated. She had severe postpartum depression, lost her aunt, and struggled with paparazzi pressure. And she was still called crazy to the point that her father had to take conservatorship over her. That only made invalidation worse, with the media calling her crazy and mentally unstable.
• Meghan Markle had her lonely and desperate feelings invalidated. In multiple interviews, she shared about her suicidal thoughts and how the royal family neglected her. Expecting compassion, it backfired. She was mocked and called out for lying.

Examples of Common Phrases That Invalidate Feelings

Emotional invalidation in daily life won’t look like dramatic examples from celebrities’ lives. People who invalidate feelings mean well and even logic their concerns. The people who do so may improve their communication skills in the Breeze app so that people don’t feel weird after talking to them.

Below are some examples of how emotional invalidation can sound.

From others:

• “You’re overreacting, just calm down.”
• “Other people have it worse.”
• “You’re just being dramatic.”
• “You're such a crybaby.”
• “Why do you cry? There is no reason.”

From ourselves:

• “I shouldn’t feel this way.”
• “I’m just weak.”
• “Why can’t I just move on?”
• “It’s stupid to be upset about this.”
• "It doesn't seem to bother others."

Invalidation can also show up nonverbally: eye rolls, sighs, changing the subject, or silence when someone shares something vulnerable. These responses teach that emotions are inconvenient or shameful.

What Do Invalidated Feelings Mean for Mental Health? Examples of Taylor Swift and Dwayne Johnson

Although emotional invalidation is unpleasant to experience, its influence on a person’s sense of self is even more complicated. According to Linehan, emotional invalidation in early life is a key environmental factor in the development of borderline personality disorder (BPD). But its effects are much broader, contributing to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and emotional dysregulation in both children and adults.

Here are some of the mental health consequences of emotional invalidation on A-list signer, Taylor Swift:

• Anxiety: If emotions are constantly questioned or dismissed, a person may start to fear expressing them at all. Taylor Swift’s steps were so closely monitored and judged that she admitted she feared doing anything. The most popular singer in the world said she became extremely people-pleasing. It also resulted in her fear of vulnerability and opening up.

• Relationship difficulties: It doesn't matter if current relationships are healthy or not; invalidated feelings mean minimal experience with emotional safety. Swift learned a hard lesson not to trust others and learned to mask her real needs completely and seek intense emotional reassurance in ways that feel overwhelming to others.

Dwayne Johnson is another victim of emotional validation. Here’s how it resulted in his mental health:

• Depression: The Rock constantly experiences pressure, and his personal worries have always been dismissed. That’s why he suppressed his emotions, internalized shame, and kept the problems to himself. In later interviews, Dwayne admitted he had depression and was very ashamed of himself despite the success. If emotional validation persists, a person doesn't believe they are worthy of love because they are different, and not in a good way.
• Loss of identity: The image of a strong, unemotional, and funny man felt restrictive to Dwayne, as he admitted later on in his career. He said that it felt like limiting himself to just one characteristic.

“It made it very difficult to connect to my values. Like, who even am I?” said Johnhon. This confusion and difficulty trusting your own instincts are common consequences of emotional invalidation.

How to Stop Emotional Invalidation? Tips from Meghan Markle, Selena Gomez, and Taylor Swift

Stopping emotional invalidation, whether coming from others or directed at yourself, begins with awareness. If you're the one experiencing invalidated feelings, the help is closer than you think. Just look at your idols: they overcame invalidation first and also can teach you.

1. Learn to validate yourself first. The most sustainable change begins internally as seen in the example of Taylor Swift. When she heard that she was too emotional or dramatic, she simply disagreed. You can do it too: Simply dismiss these comments from the inner critic.

Start by naming your emotions, something you were restricted from doing. Do you have an important presentation tomorrow? Admit you're anxious. A significant other forgot to respond to a text. Say that it hurt you.

These simple acknowledgments help regulate the nervous system. People say that we come to this planet alone and we leave it alone. So, no one besides yourself can soothe you better than you.

2. Use emotionally safe language with others. Selena Gomez spent years justifying her symptoms. However, as she admitted later, she only felt safe when she stopped doing that.

She limited talking to others about her bipolar disorder and lupus to only in diagnostic language. Selena also advocated for mental health literacy and self-improvement. For example, replace invalidating statements like “It’s not a big deal” with validating ones like “That sounds really hard” or “I can see why you’d feel that way.”

3. Set boundaries around invalidation. If someone consistently shuts down your feelings, it’s okay to set limits. That’s what Meghan Markle did. She left a place that felt unsafe to her and chose distance from the public eye.

It's okay to simply ignore a person and hold onto your own beliefs about yourself. But it may also be a valuable lesson for other people. This might sound like, “When you tell me to ‘just get over it,’ I feel dismissed. I’d appreciate it if you could listen without trying to fix it right away.”