choublak

I have a hard time with the denial thing. I can't help seeing "being in denial" as something people do on purpose.

overit263

Oh nooooo, when you are a person in denial...you really don't believe it, it's very powerful and until you shake it, nothing makes sense.

choublak

Some recovering alcoholics say they don't remember being in denial. What does that mean?

choublak

So you're intentionally not shaking it.

DoubleBarrel

Self deception is a powerful force, but I think it is greatly exacerbated when using drugs or alcohol, because being completely out of it makes it so much easier to live in a fantasy world and not really see what you are doing.
At a certain point of intoxication or addiction, you get tunnel vision, and you really don't see what's happening to you, much less how it affects others.

overit263

I think that denial is a mechanism in a strange way to protect yourself, like you cannot handle the truth so you just don't see what's in front of you. My ex ah, when I found out he had stolen from other people to feed his addiction and I questioned why he didn't say something while in treatment, he said "I didn't want to believe that I did that". Could be a total lie and manipulation, but when people go into treatment they are told repeatedly that they are not bad people, they've just made bad decisions. I could see not wanting to admit to yourself that you've become a full fledged addict, no one wants to be an addict after all.

Springs

I am still new to this, but as the wife of an A I was in very powerful denial. To me, looking back, it is almost like the denial itself was a drug that I took a bit of, and then some more, and it took hold of me and eventually I had such crazy crazy thinking under its influence. I feel like it took strength to rip myself out of it and I'm still fighting not to let it re-take hold.

LexieCat

You don't know what you don't know.

Part of the whole denial thing is that you aren't aware that it's happening. It's not a willful refusal to acknowledge something. We human beings tend to rationalize things in a way that fits with our image of ourselves and the world. And when we are presented with evidence to the contrary, we tend to rationalize and shape our perceptions to fit with our beliefs.

I spent my career as a trial lawyer. One of the challenges for me was always to get the jury to understand stuff that didn't fit with their view of reality. Why criminals--and victims and witnesses--behaved as they did, thought the way they did. It's the only way to understand what really happened. So were the jurors in denial? In a way, and some of them wouldn't accept the evidence no matter how clearly it was explained. They simply could not accept that someone would behave in a way different from the way they, or someone they knew, would.

If you were to ask the jurors, though, why they didn't find the defendant guilty, they might complain about the investigation or prosecution for having a case that "didn't make sense."

So plenty of people are in denial about a lot of things--it isn't limited to alcoholics. It's pronounced there, though, because the denial is a characteristic of the disease. Since the alcoholic HAS to keep drinking (nature of the addiction), they HAVE to formulate other reasons to explain the adverse consequences of the drinking.

SparkleKitty

I believe if they are doing it on purpose, then you can't call it denial. And I believe that denial is a very real and very scary thing. I lived in it for a long time.

FireSprite

I think it's confusing because sometimes people DO choose to stay in denial about things. I think those types of situations tend to be tied more to shocking events like a sudden death in the family, etc. Things that come on suddenly, leave your life forever changed & are difficult to manage.

And then there are times when they aren't intending to be in denial, they simply DON'T see the forest for the trees. I think this type of denial is more insidious because it grows a little at a time versus being brought on by a singular event - and because of that the person in denial gets more & more comfortable with the feeling the longer it carries on. Kind of like the frog sitting in water analogy - they never really feel the degree by degree change, but it's still happening despite their awareness. JMHO.

Wavy

My take on denial is that you can't be in denial if you truly don't know something is happening (or whatever the issue is). Denial requires that you have an awareness, however small, that whatever is happening is wrong, but that you ignore that awareness for whatever reason. It might be a niggle in the back of your brain, or an opposing idea to yours that disproportionately winds you up because of its grain of truth.

I wasn't in denial about the abuse I received until I understood what abuse was, but couldn't square those ideas with my experience. Denial is about reluctance to face a truth. If you don't know the truth you can't face it. I would say many alcoholics are in denial because they know, somewhere inside them, that the things they do are destructive and harmful, but they don't want to face that, maybe even drink more to not have to face that. Some genuinely can't see any harm in their actions, they are not in denial yet because they have had no realisation yet. Just my thoughts.

OnawaMiniya

Perhaps people here are speaking of the difference between being in denial and being plain old ignorant.

I like Wavy's post above mine.

choublak

For example:

Loved one tells the A he has to stop or the relationship is over, A agrees to stop but then also points out flaws the loved one has, i.e., using their vices as a bargaining tool so he (the A) can renege on his promise and go back to drinking as soon as the loved one does not toe the mark.

I have a hard time seeing that as anything but intentional.

Some people will say "oh it's not them, it's the disease" but I don't quite buy that either. It's the person making choices in the midst of a disease.

LexieCat

But the choices are DRIVEN by the disease. If you remember that the alcoholic can't feel normal without drinking, that is the key. Not drinking causes extreme discomfort--physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Until you have something else to satisfy those needs (good sobriety and tools to deal with life sober), you are gonna be one miserable person if you're an alcoholic who isn't drinking.

Wisconsin

I totally agree with Lexie. To say it a slightly different way, my AH has virtually no coping skills. There are many reasons for that, but the end result is that the way he copes with things (stress, pain, happiness, joy...EVERYTHING) is to drink. Yes, he is choosing to drink. But his dysfunctional relationship with alcohol totally skews his ability to look at the choice rationally and reasonably.

I also look at it in terms of my own "addiction": my AH's disease. I became addicted to the drama, to the deep (and sick) intertwining of every aspect of our lives, and the total inability to see myself as individual and apart from him. Sure, I was making a choice to go through his phone and bank records, to call him incessantly to be "sure" he was or wasn't drinking. I would choose to do those things even though I knew they made me feel physically sick, disrupted my sanity and serenity and sleep, and did nothing to make me feel better about the situation or even enable me to make a DECISION about the situation. My emotional craziness in that kind of a situation made it virtually impossible for me to make a rational, reasonable choice about what the healthiest behavior would be.

What changes? It's different for everybody. But I do know that I never changed SOMEBODY ELSE with my words. Simply saying the same things, over and over again, did nothing to change my AH. I reached my own epiphany about my denial and dysfunction after a series of truly awful incidents. My understanding of myself and my choices had to change...almost shock me right out of denial.

FireSprite

Choublack, I don't know if you ever read any of the threads in the A forum, but there is a post right now that I think kind of touches on this from the A's POV.

This is the part of the post that speaks about denial:

And here is the entire thread: http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ltimatums.html

It may not make sense to you/us "normies" but because the addiction receives top priority, it skews the way the addict views everything else around it. Also, those that are able to LITERALLY convince themselves that that a lie is the truth create even blurrier lines with denial. If they BELIEVE it to be true, there's nothing to deny. Think of the alcoholism as the root problem & the denial as just a symptom.