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Key points
- People often remain in denial about their problems and resist help that is offered.
- When we become aware and begin to break through denial, it is important to find good sources of support.
- On the other side of denial exists the potential for improved health, clarity, and serenity.
As I’ve interacted with clients over the years, I’ve become acutely sensitive to the denial that keeps people embedded in unhealthy behaviors, relationship patterns, cognitive distortions, addictions, and potentially harmful sexual activity.
Denial often reveals itself in therapy as resistance to the help being offered. Every suggestion of an alternative approach or perspective is met with "buts" and reasons why change can't happen.
It may seem odd to people outside the helping professions that individuals seeking professional help would resist receiving it, but it happens frequently. Often clients don’t know they are doing it. This is the nature of defense mechanisms. Facing reality is tough.
As I have observed this tension between the desire to get well and the unconscious opposition to receiving help, I turn the mirror on myself. It is crucial that those motivated to help others apply therapeutic wisdom to themselves first.
Observing clients in denial has shown more clearly the tendency to deny my flaws, weaknesses, unhealthy habits, poor choices, and disordered thought processes. We are all blind to what we are blind to until light breaks through. I try to live mindfully in the light as much as possible, but can never do it perfectly.
Most caught in addictions and unhealthy habits know, in a hidden recess of their brains, that they are on a self-destructive path, and that their lifestyle affects others close to them.
Likewise, people locked into relentlessly dysfunctional family systems or abusive relationships can be told repeatedly that they have a right to seek a safer, healthier life, but denial keeps them from finding the courage to move away from harmful situations.
Even when we have acquired enough insight to see where our behaviors are leading us, we may persist in them because that is the nature of the change process, it is a process. Breaking through denial and being aware that change is necessary is only the beginning; we must eventually commit to taking action.
Hitting bottom
Some people break through denial only when they have hit bottom, meaning that the pain of denying a problem finally becomes stronger than the pain of facing it. Hitting bottom might be the loss of a job, financial disaster, broken relationships, chronic depression, a car accident while intoxicated, incarceration, a drug overdose, or a violent altercation.
Something rudely wakes them up. They finally accept that they need help from outside the bubble of denial that has just burst.
At times like this, they need friends, fellow sufferers, or wise counselors to tell them the truth.
Those newly awakened need kind people to remind them of who they are, and who they can be. They need to be encouraged that they are capable of finding freedom and growth if they are willing to pursue it.
Some people, after recognizing and breaking through their denial, will successfully turn from dysfunctional and compulsive behaviors. They pursue therapy, recovery, or some other means of healing. They discover serenity, clarity, and self-respect.
In counseling, individuals can begin to test their distorted reality and call things as they truly are. It’s not easy to acknowledge the truth, especially when they’re bound by the delusion that negative consequences only come to other people or that good outcomes are only available to other people. Both of these self-defeating mindsets are forms of magical thinking that disempower people from taking action.
Good counseling can assist in facing the painful reality of problems that are keeping people sick and hopeless and finding pathways to change. It also demonstrates that they don't have to do their work alone.
If you are in this process—recognizing and breaking through denial toward change, please be gentle with yourself. It may take time and work to heal damage that has already occurred. Find the kind of support that works for you, whether therapy, a recovery program, a support group, pastoral care, or a structured self-care plan.
And if you are in a position to bring help and care to others who are experiencing a season of painful change, also remember to be gentle. It can be very frustrating to work with people stuck in denial when we can see their problems so clearly. Change needs to progress on their timeframe, not ours.
Remember that we've all been there in some way, at some point.
References
Psychological maturity and change in adult defense mechanisms. Journal of Research in Personality. 2012. P. Cramer
Forgetting having denied: The amnesic consequences of denial. Mem Cognit. 2018. H. Otgaar, et al.
