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There’s a moment—silent, almost imperceptible—when a human learns that their emotions are wrong.
It begins with a word, a gesture, or a tone. A look that is all too frequent it becomes familiar; part of the family— it snatches the legitimacy of belonging right out of your breath, reducing the bonds to memorable indignities.
Shut up before I give you something to cry about. Stop being so sensitive; you’re overreacting.
It’s not that big of a deal. Why are you crying, again?
You have no reason to be upset; you’re just trying to get attention.
Big boys/girls don’t cry. Just get over it—I said, just get over it.
You’re being dramatic. You’re fine, stop acting like a baby. Don’t be ridiculous.
You always make everything about you. I don’t want to hear it; there are people who have it way worse than you.
That’s enough of that. What’s wrong with you? If you keep whining, I’ll really give you something to whine about.
Who do you think you are? It’s not that serious; get it together—nobody wants to hear about your problems.
I don’t have time for this. You pay no bills around here, so shut your mouth and fix your face, now.
Oh, you think you have it bad? What about me?!
I grew up in the shadow of these words. Perhaps you did too. They were hurled like thunderclaps wrapped in barbed wire—sharp and relentless—meant to slice the spirit right off the bone, to control, to bend me into something quieter and easier to manage.
At the time, I didn’t understand what these words were really doing to me. I only knew how they felt: like slamming a door an inch from my face, like being told over and over again that my feelings weren’t just inconvenient, but wrong.
When you’re exposed to dismissive admonitions like these—when your emotions are met with rejection instead of compassion—you learn quickly that the world doesn’t want to hear you, let alone feel you. And so, you adapt. You diverge.
For years, I thought emotional divergence was just a way of surviving, of compartmentalizing and making sense of feelings I wasn’t allowed to express. But now I see it for what it truly is: a gift. It is brilliance born of necessity; resilience sharpened by rejection. It’s the way I reclaimed my voice in a world that has tried to erase it.
When the World Invalidates
Growing up in foster care, I was no stranger to invalidation. My pain was met with dismissal. My joy was treated as naive. If I cried, I was “being dramatic.” If I expressed anger, I was “out of control.” Any time I dared to show my emotions, the world seemed to push back harder, as if to punish me for feeling at all.
But here’s the truth that no one tells you: emotions don’t disappear just because you’ve been told to bury them. They don’t vanish when you’re told to “get over it.” Instead, they go underground, become stealth, waiting to resurface in ways you might not even recognize—through anxiety, through shame, through the ache of feeling disconnected from yourself.
And yet, even as I learned to suppress my emotions to survive, I also found ways to keep them alive. I didn’t have a therapist or a mentor to guide me, but I had something just as powerful: my own intuition. It told me that my emotions weren’t something to fear. They were messages, maps—even lifelines. And they were mine.
Emotional Divergence: a Brilliance of Survival
That’s what this thing I’ve come to call emotional divergence is: a creative, adaptive response to an invalidating world. When no one teaches you how to process your feelings, you teach yourself. You find ways to understand them, to sit with them, to name them, to offer compassion and empathy—even when the world insists they don’t matter.
For me, emotional divergence looked like this:
>> Sitting with my feelings and emotions, no need to hide, no need to run, but to honor me.
>> Writing down my anger as an expression to mirror, to validate my reality, myself.
>> Naming my grief, my joy, my fear, and refusing to let them be minimized or dismissed.
At its core, emotional divergence is about reclaiming the parts of yourself that the world tries to silence. It’s about saying: “My feelings matter, even if no one else sees them.” It’s about the willingness to see oneself.
Over time, I realized that this divergence wasn’t just survival—it was a superpower. Emotional divergence has given me a deeper understanding of myself and others. It taught me to hold space for contradictions, to find beauty in complexity. It allowed me to feel deeply, even in a world that tells us to numb out, and dumb ourselves down.
The Cost of Diverging
But let me be honest: emotional divergence doesn’t come without its challenges.
There’s a weight to feeling so deeply in a world that often punishes vulnerability. There’s the constant question: Am I too much? There’s the exhaustion of having to justify your emotions to others, or even to yourself. And there’s the loneliness of navigating a world that sometimes seems determined to silence you.
Yet even with all of that, I would never trade my divergence for anything. It’s how I learned to hold my own emotions with care, even if no one else could; especially if no one else would. It’s how I learned to turn pain into wisdom, anger into strength, and grief into compassion.
Three Ways to Honor Emotional Divergence
If you’ve experienced emotional divergence, if you’ve had to teach yourself how to navigate your feelings in a face of feeling invalidated, know this: your emotions are not your enemy. They are your potency. Here’s how you can honor that strength:
Name Your Feelings
When invalidation has been your reality, it’s easy to internalize the belief that your feelings don’t matter. Start by naming them—out loud, in a journal, or in conversation with someone you trust. Naming your emotions gives them power and reminds you that they are valid.
Reclaim Your Narrative
The world may have tried to tell you that you’re too sensitive, too dramatic, too much. But those words are not your truth. Rewrite the narrative: I feel deeply because I am deeply human. My emotions are not a weakness—they are my strength.
Find or Create Safe Spaces
Surround yourself with people who honor your emotional depth. And if you can’t find those people yet, create a safe space for yourself. Therapy, journaling, art, or even moments of quiet reflection can help you nurture your emotional self.
Emotional Divergence is Power
I used to believe my emotions were a burden. Now I see them for what they are: power. Emotional divergence isn’t just a way to survive—it’s a way to thrive. It’s proof of your resilience, your creativity, and your humanity.
So, the next time the world tells you to “fix your face” or “get over it,” remember this: your emotions are not too much. They are just enough. And they belong to you.
And perhaps, most importantly, know this: you are not broken, therefore, there is nothing to fix.
~
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