When is denial healthy

When it happens, we simply don't want to accept the truth of a situation. There are a variety of reasons for this response, but it can cause problems for you. If you're struggling with being in denial and its impacts on your life, know that you're not alone. You can find a way to live a more grounded life. This website is owned and operated by BetterHelp, who receives all fees associated with the platform.

No matter who we are, over time, we all develop different coping mechanisms to help us deal with a variety of circumstances and issues. These coping mechanisms can be healthy or unhealthy. When a coping mechanism is unhealthy, it becomes difficult for us to address our real issues or make desired changes in our behavior.

Denial psychology is built around understanding denial as a coping mechanism, along with the way it impacts us and our relationships. According to Merriam-Webster , denial psychology is a "defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or with reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality. To understand how denial is used as a defense mechanism, let's start by looking at what defense mechanisms are and how we use them in our everyday lives.

We will then discuss how denial can impact you and how to handle it later in the article. When it comes to protecting ourselves psychologically, defense mechanisms provide an unconscious way to prevent unacceptable thoughts or feelings from making us overwhelmingly anxious.

This process often means that we're trying to protect ourselves from feelings of shame or guilt, although these defense mechanisms can also arise when we feel threatened. Often, we develop these unconscious defense mechanisms to address contradictions found in our lives. For instance, we all have reality, society, and biology pulling at us. Add to that our intimate relationships with others, plus our relationship with ourselves.

We also have many different forces influencing our thoughts, feelings, and actions. With all of these demands upon us, it can be easy to feel threatened or overwhelmed, which is a precursor to anxiety. As a result, our bodies and brains create these defense mechanisms to help us to address the anxiety and any feelings that might be associated with it, including guilt. Psychology has identified denial as the primary defense mechanism that most people use to cope with highly stressful situations.

It often involves blocking external events from our conscious awareness. Essentially, if a situation is too much for us to handle, then we refuse to experience it at all. That doesn't make the facts or the reality of the situation go away, but it allows us to pretend that it isn't real, therefore reducing its impact on us.

While denial might reduce your anxiety in the short term, the reality is that it's not an effective way to deal with a situation in the long term.

Eventually, the reality of the circumstances kicks in, and then you have to deal with it. You may turn to blame to address your feelings of anxiety or guilt, trying to put the responsibility for your feelings onto someone else. Avoiding situations or assigning blame can hurt your relationships in the long run, so denial is likely to cause more problems than it solves over time. When you use denial as a defense mechanism, it can easily become a way of lying to yourself.

While it might seem easier in the moment, the reality is that it can cause you to develop maladaptive behaviors and unhealthy relationships.

Denial, on the other hand, can be a healthy option to protect yourself temporarily during tough situations. In fact, denial is only harmful when it causes you to engage in unhealthy behaviors or allows a bad situation or relationship to continue. A person who denies that they have a problem will be reluctant to seek help. As a result, this can prolong his or her addiction until he or she faces serious consequences.

Unfortunately, addiction kills and refusing to get help can turn into a death sentence. Denial also hurts the family and loved ones of an addict in denial. The family may obsessively try to make the addict find help, then become hurt when their loved one becomes defensive. Like an addiction, the act of being in denial hurts not only the person suffering but the entire family as well. Helping a loved one move past denial is a difficult task. It can be extremely frustrating to watch a loved one continue to harm themselves without realizing the severity of their addiction.

However, there are ways to intervene and help a loved one recognize the truth. When confronting a loved one, it is important to focus on expressing your concern in an honest and caring manner.

If you know someone who has achieved sobriety, it may be ideal to invite them to help you speak with your loved one. After all, they will understand what this person is going through and will be a living example that recovery is possible. While speaking to your loved one, it is important to be specific. Let him or her know exactly how specific situations have made you feel. Let him or her know exactly what your fears and concerns are. Use your own emotions and insight to try and show this person just how serious the problem is.

Lastly, be prepared to offer your loved one support by being prepared with recovery resources. Unfortunately, denial is a symptom of the disease of addiction. Therefore, even after confronting your loved one, he or she may still be in denial.

In the meantime, you can continue to let your loved one know that you will be there when he or she is ready for help. You can be prepared with a list of local NA or AA meetings, the contact of a nearby treatment center, or a counselor who specializes in addictions. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads.

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List of Partners vendors. Denial is a type of defense mechanism that involves ignoring the reality of a situation to avoid anxiety. Defense mechanisms are strategies that people use to cope with distressing feelings. In the case of denial, it can involve not acknowledging reality or denying the consequences of that reality.

If you are in denial, it often means that you are struggling to accept something that seems overwhelming or stressful. However, in the short term, this defense mechanism can have a useful purpose.

It can allow you to have time to adjust to a sudden change in your reality. By giving yourself time, you might be able to accept, adapt, and eventually move on. But denial can also cause problems in your life, particularly if it keeps you from addressing a problem or making a needed change. In some cases, it can prevent you from accepting help or getting the treatment that they need. Denial was first described by the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud , who described it as refusing to acknowledge upsetting facts about external events and internal ones, including memories, thoughts, and feelings.

There are a few signs that you or someone you know might be using denial as a defense mechanism. Some common signs:. In addition to these signs, you might find yourself feeling hopeless or helpless. On some level, you know there is a problem that needs to be addressed, but you feel that nothing you do or say will make a difference.

When other people try to offer advice or help, you might brush off their concern by pretending to agree or telling them to mind their own business. Like other defense mechanisms, denial functions as a way to protect you from experiencing anxiety. In some cases, it might be a way to avoid dealing with stress or painful emotions. By refusing to deal with or even admit that there is something wrong, you are trying to prevent facing stress, conflict, threats, fears, and anxieties.

Denial serves a few different purposes. First, using this defense mechanism means you don't have to acknowledge the problem.