Denial
Getting there!!
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 5,750
Denial
Saturday, August 31, 2013
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go
Denial
I've been recovering many years. I've used denial many times. It has been a defense, a survival device, a coping behavior, and, at times, almost my undoing. It has been both a friend and an enemy.
When I was a child, I used denial to protect my family and myself. I protected myself from seeing things too painful to see and feelings too overwhelming to feel. Denial got me safely through many traumatic situations, when I had no other resources for survival.
The negative aspect of using denial was that I lost touch with my feelings and myself. I became able to participate in harmful situations without even knowing I was hurting. I was able to tolerate a great deal of pain and abuse without the foggiest notion it was abnormal.
I learned to participate in my own abuse.
Denial protected me from pain, but it also rendered me blind to my feelings, my needs, and myself. It was like a thick blanket that covered and smothered me.
Eventually, I began to recover. I had a glimpse of awareness about my pain, my feelings, and my behaviors. I began to see myself, and the world, as we were. There was so much denial from my past that had the blanket been entirely ripped from me. I would have died from the shock of exposure. I needed to embrace insights, remembrances, awareness, and healing gently, gradually.
Life participated in this process with me. It is a gentle teacher. As I recovered, I was brought to the incidents and people I needed in order to remind me of what I was still denying, to tell me where I required more healing from my past, as I could handle these insights.
I still use, and break through, denial--as needed. When the winds of change blow through, upsetting a familiar structure and preparing me for the new, I pick up my blanket and hide, for a while. Sometimes, when someone I love has a problem, I hide under the blanket, momentarily. Memories emerge of things denied, memories that need to be remembered, felt, and accepted so I can continue to become healed - strong and healthy.
Sometimes, I feel ashamed about how long it takes me to struggle through to acceptance of reality. I feel embarrassed when I find myself again clouded by the fog of denial.
Then something happens, and I see that I am moving forward. The experience was necessary, connected, not at all a mistake, but an important part of healing.
It's an exciting process, this journey called recovery, but I understand I may sometimes use denial to help me get through the rough spots. I'm also aware that denial is a friend, and an enemy. I'm on the alert for danger signs: those cloudy, confused feelings . . . sluggish energy . . . feeling compulsive . . . running too fast or hard . . . avoiding support mechanisms.
I've gained a healthy respect for our need to use denial as a blanket to wrap ourselves in when we become too cold. It isn't my job to run around ripping people's blankets off or shaming others for using the blanket. Shaming makes them colder, makes them wrap themselves more tightly in the blanket. Yanking their blanket away is dangerous. They could die of exposure, the same way I could have.
I've learned the best thing I can do around people who are wrapped in this blanket is to make them feel warm and safe. The warmer and safer they feel, the more able they are to drop their blanket. I don't have to support or encourage their denial. I can be direct. If others are in denial about a particular thing, and their activity is harmful to me, I don't have to be around them. I can wish them well and take care of myself. You see, if I stand too long around someone who is harming me, I will inevitably pick up my blanket again.
I tend to be attracted to warm people. When I'm around warm people, I don't need to use my blanket.
I've gained respect for creating warm environments, where blankets are not needed, or at least not needed for long. I've gained trust in the way people heal from and deal with life.
God, help me be open to and trust the process that is healing me from all I have denied from my past. Help me strive for awareness and acceptance, but also help me practice gentleness and compassion for myself--and others--for those times I have used denial.
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go
Denial
I've been recovering many years. I've used denial many times. It has been a defense, a survival device, a coping behavior, and, at times, almost my undoing. It has been both a friend and an enemy.
When I was a child, I used denial to protect my family and myself. I protected myself from seeing things too painful to see and feelings too overwhelming to feel. Denial got me safely through many traumatic situations, when I had no other resources for survival.
The negative aspect of using denial was that I lost touch with my feelings and myself. I became able to participate in harmful situations without even knowing I was hurting. I was able to tolerate a great deal of pain and abuse without the foggiest notion it was abnormal.
I learned to participate in my own abuse.
Denial protected me from pain, but it also rendered me blind to my feelings, my needs, and myself. It was like a thick blanket that covered and smothered me.
Eventually, I began to recover. I had a glimpse of awareness about my pain, my feelings, and my behaviors. I began to see myself, and the world, as we were. There was so much denial from my past that had the blanket been entirely ripped from me. I would have died from the shock of exposure. I needed to embrace insights, remembrances, awareness, and healing gently, gradually.
Life participated in this process with me. It is a gentle teacher. As I recovered, I was brought to the incidents and people I needed in order to remind me of what I was still denying, to tell me where I required more healing from my past, as I could handle these insights.
I still use, and break through, denial--as needed. When the winds of change blow through, upsetting a familiar structure and preparing me for the new, I pick up my blanket and hide, for a while. Sometimes, when someone I love has a problem, I hide under the blanket, momentarily. Memories emerge of things denied, memories that need to be remembered, felt, and accepted so I can continue to become healed - strong and healthy.
Sometimes, I feel ashamed about how long it takes me to struggle through to acceptance of reality. I feel embarrassed when I find myself again clouded by the fog of denial.
Then something happens, and I see that I am moving forward. The experience was necessary, connected, not at all a mistake, but an important part of healing.
It's an exciting process, this journey called recovery, but I understand I may sometimes use denial to help me get through the rough spots. I'm also aware that denial is a friend, and an enemy. I'm on the alert for danger signs: those cloudy, confused feelings . . . sluggish energy . . . feeling compulsive . . . running too fast or hard . . . avoiding support mechanisms.
I've gained a healthy respect for our need to use denial as a blanket to wrap ourselves in when we become too cold. It isn't my job to run around ripping people's blankets off or shaming others for using the blanket. Shaming makes them colder, makes them wrap themselves more tightly in the blanket. Yanking their blanket away is dangerous. They could die of exposure, the same way I could have.
I've learned the best thing I can do around people who are wrapped in this blanket is to make them feel warm and safe. The warmer and safer they feel, the more able they are to drop their blanket. I don't have to support or encourage their denial. I can be direct. If others are in denial about a particular thing, and their activity is harmful to me, I don't have to be around them. I can wish them well and take care of myself. You see, if I stand too long around someone who is harming me, I will inevitably pick up my blanket again.
I tend to be attracted to warm people. When I'm around warm people, I don't need to use my blanket.
I've gained respect for creating warm environments, where blankets are not needed, or at least not needed for long. I've gained trust in the way people heal from and deal with life.
God, help me be open to and trust the process that is healing me from all I have denied from my past. Help me strive for awareness and acceptance, but also help me practice gentleness and compassion for myself--and others--for those times I have used denial.
Nature Girl
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: By The Lake
Posts: 60,328
I've gained a healthy respect for our need to use denial as a blanket to wrap ourselves in when we become too cold.
I accepted what I knew as I could handle it and when I knew better, I did better. It was all a process that took time and a lot of work on my part, a process that brought pain like I had never known pain and then healing that led to a good life that I never knew was possible.
Denial was a safety net for me. I never forget that when newcomers arrive wrapped in that same blanket. They will know the truth only when they can handle the truth and not a moment before.
Good reading today, LMN. Thanks.
Hugs
Member
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 1,287
Denial can be a powerful (and scary) thing. Like Ann, it was a safety net for me, yet I feel on some level I always knew I was in denial - and that it wasn't good to avoid and deny my problems. I just couldn't face things at that time. What finally helped was understanding and dealing with my fear - which eventually helped me to see that I could face life on life's terms - and that I would ultimately be better off if I worked to get through the problems.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 499
I needed this one today. I'm really struggling with this when it comes to my parents. I spend so much time focusing on my sister's addiction and my mom's codependency, it's like I just gloss over the fact that both my mother and father are alcoholics. I know that must play a role in this dysfunction, but it's like I don't even see that role, because it has been this way for my whole life, it just seems normal.
I find myself saying that their alcoholism doesn't really have an impact on the situation - but that's crazy, of course it has, right? I know I sound like a lunatic, but I'm really struggling with reconciling my perception and reality on this point.
I find myself saying that their alcoholism doesn't really have an impact on the situation - but that's crazy, of course it has, right? I know I sound like a lunatic, but I'm really struggling with reconciling my perception and reality on this point.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 178
This is a great post! And something that I have slowly been coming to grips with in myself also. I realise it took a lot of denial to stay in relationship with an addict for 15 years or so - denial both of what was really going on, and denial of my own feelings that he mirrored for me. I completely related to my ex's pain but never recognised it as also my own pain until after he was gone, but that's what kept us connected. Emotional pain, and emotional struggles. He dealt with it in a different way to me, that's all.
I had a kind of revelatory moment recently when I realised that I had been handballed a troubling situation by a friend, and was wondering why she did that. But then I remembered that I have always played dumb to what was really going on, refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of my face, yet knowing it deep down.
Others are used to me playing dumb, keeping the status quo, but I find I can't do that any more. It felt good to be honest and speak what I really knew inside, it was a bit freeing.
It is truly amazing to wake up like that!
Like waking up from a dream that you thought was some kind of trap you could never get out of, to find that all you had to do was open the door and you're out!
But you're right - nobody can force anyone out of denial. It's a process, and one I am very grateful has happened to me.
Thank you for this post xxx
I had a kind of revelatory moment recently when I realised that I had been handballed a troubling situation by a friend, and was wondering why she did that. But then I remembered that I have always played dumb to what was really going on, refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of my face, yet knowing it deep down.
Others are used to me playing dumb, keeping the status quo, but I find I can't do that any more. It felt good to be honest and speak what I really knew inside, it was a bit freeing.
It is truly amazing to wake up like that!
Like waking up from a dream that you thought was some kind of trap you could never get out of, to find that all you had to do was open the door and you're out!
But you're right - nobody can force anyone out of denial. It's a process, and one I am very grateful has happened to me.
Thank you for this post xxx
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