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“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
“I am invisible. I don’t matter a shred to anyone. I’ve died a million times already with the pain of it.” Sinead O’Connor.
“It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.” David Levithan
One of the most core and universal needs that every human has - not just to thrive or to realize their potential but just merely to effectively function as an individual - is to feel significant. To have a fundamental and enduring sense of worth and value.
To matter.
"An individual who has a good sense of worth (like self-esteem), but who is not valued and acknowledged by others, cannot experience a complete sense of well-being." (1)
This sense of worth and value of who we are is what develops as an ever evolving output of our interaction with the people in our lives and within the family and social structures we inhabit and experience day to day. There is no more important component to the development of a secure sense of worth and identity - to the lived experience of mattering - than the family system and the parents who lead it.
Children who grow up pervasively feeling that they do not matter - particularly within their families who are their primary and most impactful mechanisms for understanding themselves and their place in the world around them - are at risk for negative emotional and developmental outcomes both during their childhood and on into their experience as an adult. This can include everything from depression, anxiety and loneliness to academic and professional performance - which can range from perfectionism to underperformance - to insecure attachment dynamics that have lifelong impact on social, professional and romantic relationships.
Mattering is critical.
To feel as if we matter equates to the perception of being important to others - the visceral understanding that we count in the world. It is the experience of being heard and appreciated, valued in relationships not only in how significant we are to them as an integral part of their lives, but most importantly, in who we inherently are as individuals and what we bring to them simply as a function of being ourselves.
Mattering also is associated with belonging - whether or not our experience is important to those we are in relationship with, and whether we have the ability to safely share that experience in order to impact or improve it, effects whether or not we feel a part of that group or family.
"Importance is the feeling of being significant to someone, as expressed through sentiments of concern and actions of caring for one's needs." (1)
“For too many people, the sense of not mattering to others is predominant and is a chronic and pervasive feeling and perception.” (3)
In the above scales, higher scores reflect greater perceived levels of either mattering or anti-mattering with people in general or as assessed within specific groups of people.
“A sense of mattering - the feeling that others care about our experience - is fundamental to well-being” (2)
Those of us who are estranged and score ourselves relative to our experience with our parents and families very likely end up with scores on the low end of the mattering scale and on the high end of the anti-mattering scale.
According to Gordon Flett, author of The Psychology of Mattering and co-creator of the anti-mattering scale:
“The feeling of not mattering to others is qualitatively different and distinct and is not simply the opposite of the feeling of mattering to others. That is, anti-mattering and mattering are not simply endpoints of the same dimensional continuum. Rather, while mattering is seen as highly protective and adaptive, not mattering in the form of anti-mattering should be regarded as a unique and specific vulnerability unlike any other risk factor.”(3)
The impact of anti-mattering cannot be overstated.
A truism that has long circulated is that it takes at least five positive interactions to offset the impact of one negative one.
Here, when mattering impacts our sense of self and identity as well as our sense of belonging and worth, consistently negative experiences of appraisal along the anti-mattering scale from those we are emotionally and physically dependent upon in our formative years and are socialized to consider the most foundational and important of our lives is devastating.
“I will never listen to anything you have ever said, or ever will say.”
Whether sentiments like the above are uttered directly by a parent or family member, as in my experience, conveyed through their consistent actions and behaviors, or very likely a combination of both, the resulting damage from a permeative experience of not having a voice or a sense of belonging within one’s family of origin can never be undone.
To a child, those messages and behaviors consisting of being continually dismissed, ignored, teased, bullied, ridiculed, berated, criticized and invalidated will be internalized into thoughts and feelings of “I am not worth paying attention or listening to” and “I am worthless” and “I. Don’t. Matter.”
As an adult likely still on the receiving end of those behaviors, the decision to estrange comes after spending countless time, emotional labor and personal resources deconstructing those messages and experiences - and all the other negative and harmful events that may have gone along with them. It comes from the eventual realization that not only were those messages false but that, without fundamental change to the relationships in the present and recognition of the impact of the past, there simply is no benefit to continuing to participate in those relationships, while there remains ongoing and unabating levels of harm to stay.
By the time a family member who has experienced this level of anti-mattering decides to estrange themselves, they have often spent the bulk of their lifetime feeling that there is something wrong with them and have engaged in an active process to try to identify and address whatever that might be. Often there comes a point of transition from looking internally to casting that gaze outward in seeking to understand what is wrong within their family system and reflecting upon their experiences from childhood on.
There comes to be an understanding that our lack of sense of worth isn’t inherent to who we are, but a reflection of the family system from which we came.
We come to realize all the ways in which we tried to be seen and heard within our families and were continually shut down and the ways in which we adapted - or potentially maladapted - as a result.
Babies instinctively cry when they have needs to be met. Studies have shown that when those babies who are in overcrowded orphanages or are with neglectful parents stop crying to communicate those needs, it isn’t that the needs have stopped or have been satisfied, it is that they have learned that no one is coming to provide them. Their silence means they have stopped asking for those needs to be met.
In estrangement, after what both research and the voices of estranged adult children agree are typically years of attempting to explain our experience, attempting to be heard and asking for our voices to matter, the silence of no contact is the refusal to continue shouting ineffectually into the wind.
Our focus is now on reprogramming ourselves to realize that we do in fact matter. To try to unravel a lifetime of being cast aside in innumerable ways and the lies that such behaviors has told us about ourselves.
It is on cultivating the relationships with those who actually recognize our value, and learning ever so slowly to trust what they reflect back to us about ourselves and the ways in which we do matter. And to ensure that we convey to them - our families of choice and creation - that they matter to us.
"Loving relationships are one of the key determinants of happiness - people experience happiness when they interact with others who make them feel important and significant." (1)
To all of my fellow estranged adult children, we - our experiences, our voices and all the various yet common reasons we chose ourselves over our family dysfunction - matter.
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[Please note: This article is in reflection of the annual October 7th observance of You Matter to Me day. The educational columnist is not a licensed mental health professional. The articles under this series are written from a peer to peer perspective.]
Sources:
Pardisi, Monica et al. (2024). "Feeling Important, Feeling Well. The Association Between Mattering and Well-being: A Meta-analysis Study." Journal of Happiness Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00720-3
Oyserman, Daphna et al. (2007). “Unfair Treatment and Self-Regulatory Focus.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 43. 505-512. DOI:10.1016/j.jesp.2006.05.014
Flett, Gordon L. et al. (2022). “The Anti-Mattering Scale: Development, Psychometric Properties and Associations With Well-Being and Distress Measures in Adolescents and Emerging Adults.” Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment. Vol. 40(I) 37-59. DOI: 10.1177/07342829211050544
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