Denial & the Drain of the Everyday
There are many things in life one could rightly consider boring and inane, and all of these things, broadly speaking, can be categorized as doing the laundry.
Exercise. Budgeting. Studying. Difficult conversations. Together they make up the minutiae of life, and people are loath to do them sometimes. Not because they are painful, but rather, because they are unpleasant, and it is upon discovering the many variations of displeasure that arise in day-to-day life, that denial steps in to serve a greater function.
Denial is a psychological defense mechanism, the core function of which is not only to protect the mind from threats (pain), but also to preserve one’s relationship to pleasure, which if we had it our way, would be unceasing and constant. Human beings are incredibly attuned to good feelings and just as sensitive to any marker of their absence.
The mind seems to have a way of guiding individuals away from inner turmoil and conflict. Away from the small tasks that compromise them by becoming a significant drain on their energy and time. This is what denial is really a defense against, not the simple act of folding clothes, but the greater threat it represents by encroaching on human finitude.
What is Denial?
It is a refusal to accept facts which are as incontrovertible as they are inconvenient. It is not the surface reality that is difficult to tolerate, but the awareness of the underlying meaning of investing precious resources into things one does not really care about.
Denial is mostly an unconscious process that people are not aware of, especially not in the moment it is employed. Freud called it the “ostrich policy” invoking the image of the animal sticking its head in the ground to avoid what threatens it. Which is what denial is tantamount to, sticking one’s head in the ground to avoid distressing reality. Doing so can be necessary and protective at times, but it can also hinder growth and development.
How Denial Works
Imagine a person who is at risk of losing someone close to them, such as an aging parent. They love this person and cannot imagine living in a world without them. The thought of it is simply too severe, and rather than allow oneself to be overwhelmed, the psyche kicks in and activates the defense of denial.
Thoughts of one’s parent miraculously recovering or being saved by some miracle treatment occur, and if not that then by the sheer force of their will to survive, and if not that, then finally by some sort of divine intervention.
In such scenarios these outcomes are unlikely if not impossible, but the psyche produces them in order to provide relief and protection from feelings of fear and authenticity. This response can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the context.
Common Types
Denial can manifest in different ways and should be judged accordingly based on how it is categorized.
Simple denial is the most straightforward type, which is characterized by direct denial of reality. It is a simple refusal to believe what has happened, has really happened.
A close companion of this simple denial is minimization, which involves a partial admission of the truth but stops short of full recognition by downplaying the significance of what has occurred. This partial admission of the truth makes minimization the most difficult type of denial to identify because it easily passes for honesty.
The next type is not always thought of as a form of denial but it is one. It is projection, which occurs when you attribute unacceptable feelings or impulses to others. When one is criticized or held at fault for something they’ve done, rather than be accountable, they may accuse someone else of doing the exact thing they are guilty of.
And of course there is avoidance, the type of denial that most people are familiar with. It involves the subtle unconscious choice to avoid all together anything and everything that could leave you feeling exposed. Avoidance stands in direct opposition to reality and truth.
Denial in Everyday Life
Despite occasionally producing a positive outcome, on the whole denial has a negative effect on multiple areas of life. People suffer personally, socially, physically, and spiritually when they live in denial. They turn a blind eye to the warning signs that trouble is on the horizon and do nothing to stop it. They miss out on some of the most meaningful and rewarding aspects of life. In this regard, denial ceases to be a form of protection and becomes a barricade between who someone is and who they could become.
Working Through
The question of how to work through denial is really the question of how one tolerates and eventually works through pain.
Practicing self-compassion is necessary in order to do this. When someone makes a mistake or doesn’t live up to their standards, the temptation is to avoid the painful uncomfortable feelings that come with this reality. Self-compassion is an antidote to such avoidance.
Writing is a practical way of employing it. Reflecting on what was done and getting all of one’s thoughts and feelings, whether good or bad, out on the page, can help to tolerate them. It allows for working through them.
If the issue is that someone denies their feelings by unnecessarily courting conflict, the solution is to slow down and direct their skepticism towards the sudden urge they have to fight or argue.
To push themselves to have open conversations instead, and in doing so, acknowledge how difficult it is to admit one’s wrongs, not only to others but also to themselves. Dealing with the difficult is how one becomes more courageous than they imagine they are.
Final Thoughts
Though ineffective, denial is not a flaw. It is a necessary defense at times. It is a natural part of psychic life. Not one that should be employed without discretion–there are times when the use of denial as a defense mechanism is what must in fact be denied.
It is important to be aware and take stock of where denial shows up in one’s life, and what thoughts and feelings lie just beyond it, which is how a person can locate, find, and face whatever it is that denial is protecting them from.
Is Mental Health a Matter of Alignment?
A mentor taught me a simple definition of mental health. They taught me that mental health is when your head, heart, and mouth are in a straight line. The work that we all must do in life, the work that the existential therapist is particularly concerned with, is trying to help people create this kind of alignment in their lives.
Many of our problems stem from being out of alignment. Our heads (thoughts) reflect one reality while our hearts (emotions) or our mouths (words and actions) reflect another. This misalignment creates internal turmoil and confusion. It makes it difficult to consistently show up as one’s best self and to act with integrity. And integrity is a necessary part of mental health–it is both a product of good mental health as well as a contributor to it.
We use our values to measure whether or not we are living with integrity and to guide us towards alignment, but it is difficult to stay there because of our tendency to focus on things that do not matter and things that we have no control over. The frequency with which these two categories are synonymous with one another is not a coincidence.
When mental health begins to worsen, one of the first things to do is examine if somewhere, somehow our lives have gotten out of alignment.
The Beauty in Brokenness: How Despair Can Illuminate the Path to Healing
What exactly is despair? A state of mind entered into not on account of a person’s own will and volition, and not one that they feel pulled into by a strength greater than their own. Despair is more akin to the person who slumps down defeated after a long struggle. It comes to them when they feel they are at the limit of their capacities, when it feels as if they have reached the final step on the staircase of existence and there is nothing new for them to strive for or experience.
Thankfully, despair, while being quite convincing in this regard, is nothing more than an illusion. Not in the sense that a person doesn’t actually experience the dark and heavy thoughts and feelings that accompany it. Those are as real as it gets. What is not real is the conclusions that are drawn from this experience. Despair is not a final stop or an end to happiness. Despair is a crucible in which everyone, once there, has the opportunity to reach down even further within themselves and discover new strength that they did not know they had. And with the discovery of new strength comes the discovery of new possibilities.
Much of what people discover and attain in the way of progress can only be gained through difficult circumstances. Anyone capable of examining their own life can agree with this sentiment. The path towards being whoever and whatever it is one wants to be contains both difficult and easy moments, but it is the difficult moments that are most impactful and remembered most vividly.
Imagine for a moment, a person named Johnnie who has complained for months about her dislike of doing hard things, and really that word doesn’t describe it–hatred is the most appropriate word to capture her feelings. Week after week she complains about her life and the things she would rather not face, using every method of avoidance she can conjure up in her mind. And the harder she tries to avoid; the more difficult things become for her until eventually there is nothing else she can do to avoid the challenges in her life. As dogged as she has been, she is finally all out of tricks, and with this ending comes the beginning of her own personal encounter with despair.
Despair is not the final stop or the end of happiness. Despair is a crucible in which everyone, once there, has the opportunity to reach down even further within themselves and discover new strength that they did not know they had.
She has been sick–sad, blue, depressed, ill, any and all of those things, but none of them, no matter how terrible, has been enough to make her give up trying to push away her problems. It is only in realizing that one is surrounded and without any more exits that they have the opportunity to be brought into a new psychological state. The transition is difficult. It is a type of pain that has not been experienced before. It is blunt and direct, and aching.
Despite all this discomfort, the therapist must insist that someone like Johnnie turn her attention towards the things she desperately does not want to look at, and the must do so without being abrasive and damaging. They must accept the fact that the best they may be able to manage is to get someone to look at the details of their life for a few minutes at a time, and sometimes even less than that. They must be persistent in their encouragement that a person keep coming back to their situation and try to see it with clarity.
The wish for life to be easy is difficult to give up, and it is equally difficult to be in the position of having to push someone to relinquish it, but it is necessary. The best form of help one person can provide to another is getting them to realize the fact that life is never really easy for anybody, and the only thing left for a person to do once they know this is to embrace the struggle and take the hard road. It’s no easy feat because treading an unfamiliar path inevitably means embarking on a journey without a map in search of somewhere you’ve never been with nothing but the hope within to carry you forward. But, if someone can make the difficult start and keep moving through the treacherous middle, they find that eventually the journey does become less difficult and even though they don’t know exactly where they’re going or what they’re doing, they start to trust that they’ll know when they get there.
…life is never really easy for anybody. And, the only thing left to do once you know this is to embrace the struggle and take the hard road.
Despair can unlock new depths of experience within. I called it a crucible, but it’s just as appropriate to compare it to being locked inside of a mental gymnasium where strengthening your mind is the only way to break free. Anyone who continually expects ease and comfort in life will be perpetually disappointed. They’ll sit on the floor lamenting life’s unfairness while wasting away. This is the falsehood that a misunderstanding of despair leads to, and this is why it is important to realize that even in despair, and in a certain sense, only through despair can a person transform their life.
The person who undergoes this transformation does so by choosing to become stronger, not by waiting for the burdens of their life to become easier.
When Self-Medication Doesn’t Work
By work I mean make problems go away or resolve them. Self-medication, especially through the use of drugs, is rooted in impatience, and an urgent desire to make things better. Usually with the intent to do so as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. There is a type of logic to this thinking that is understandable when you consider the fact that people exert a tremendous amount of effort to bear their pain and hide their suffering from others.
It makes sense to look for easy solutions in such circumstances and expecting anyone in this position to double down on the work of eating well, sleeping enough, exercising regularly, and maintaining social connections is asking a lot. And yet, this is exactly what is required, what should be asked, and what should be promoted. All of these are called forms of self-care, but they are also forms of self-medication because engaging in these activities affects you in all of the same ways, altering your mood, emotions, brain chemistry, your life.
Discomfort is a side-effect of change, and what most people mean when they say they dislike change, is that they dislike being uncomfortable. When people are reasonably sure that change will lead to more pleasure and comfort they embrace it openly. The issue with adaptive methods of creating change is that the positive results are usually not immediate and must build up over time, and time, along with patience, are luxuries not often given by those who are suffering. Improving the diet, starting the exercise routine, taking the medications daily, attending the therapy sessions weekly. They all yield positive benefits, after the initial challenge of starting. Substance abuse, on the other hand, provides immediate relief without posing any initial challenges, which makes it an enticing choice, until one considers the painful side-effects that come after and last much longer than any ill effects that come from making other types of changes.
Failure to thoroughly consider this reality is what sets off the intolerable cycle where the remedy is also the source of pain, which can only be alleviated, one thinks, by getting more and more of the remedy. The record of the chaos this cycle produces is well-established: in reality the only way to experience genuine relief is by accepting that the journey towards healing will be undertaken with a certain level of discomfort. Accepting that working on oneself in all the aforementioned ways is worth the effort of pushing past one’s current capacities, and maintaining, if only for a little bit, the hope that things will get better.
Understanding Panic Attacks & What to do About Them
Panic attacks are the bodily manifestations of anxiety magnified. When anxiety levels get too high, when the mental and emotional stress become unbearable, and it literally feels like you will die, you are experiencing a panic attack.
Severe anxiety can make routine things feel terrifying, and panic attacks can be understood as the body’s response to this terror. Panic is the signal that tells the body to shut down and try to save itself.
Because panic attacks play out in the body, the best way to stop them is to work with the body. Three ways to engage the body and help it to calm down are:
Deep breathing exercises
Finding a peaceful spot to rest in where you feel grounded
Holding yourself while repeating calming mantras
How Depression & Anxiety are Related
Both depression and anxiety are responses to loss, real or imagined. The depressed person is preoccupied with what was and the anxious person is preoccupied with what could be.
Depression and anxiety describe dynamic states of mind and these conditions frequently interact with each other and overlap. To think of a future and constantly worry about what could go wrong is to live with anxiety. But when the potential threat of future loss is replaced by the inevitability of loss, anxiety becomes depression. When the mind goes back and forth between these two states, anxiety and depression brush up against one another, doubly tormenting the psyche.