On Denial (in answer to nats)

[tweeter]

(03-18-2014, 11:09 PM)Tangled Web Wrote: We have been following this discussion on denial and would like to chime in here. Although we respect your views on denial tweeter and we find some common ground in what you are saying we also disagree with somethings also. Denial for us has been our saving grace. When I read your posts regarding this , you paint such a dark picture of people who deny things. I never really saw denial as a person believing a lie and maybe it is. To us denial kept us functioning and has proven to be a very effective way to cope with things. And I don't really see it as such a bad thing. But like you said earlier it is very complex and complicated and it does have it's downfalls also.
Tangled

Of course. The apparent purpose, and I believe it is so, is to temporarily protect people from something too painful to deal with at the time. I see it as a form of going into shock, including varying degrees of functionality according to the individual.

The dark picture I painted was a matter of pushing the envelope, based on reality, even if an extreme one. I don't know the prevalence of that sort of outcome. I just know it occurs.

I feel that deep denial, from which one peeks out after a couple of months, and then kicks out the door because it's based on a lie (or more than one), can be bad. Why? Because during elapsed time in la la land, I could have turned things around, at actual risk to myself. Wearing blinders as to what was going on (so giving someone the benefit of the doubt, which was not warranted) did irreparable harm. I was trying to keep safe in a situation so full of double signals, I couldn't see straight. My life was taken away during, and before, that time in fantasy-land under circumstances that had been escalating within another person who had lost himself in a denial roller coaster which I didn't comprehend.

Be that as it may, I have taken your words to heart. I was not considering how the dynamics of denial could differ in a multiple. Know what? I can't. There are too many variables within an inner family. With that perspective, and my limitations, I got a nonverbal glimpse, of why the word "lie" bothered you. Something untrue is not always a lie in the realm of denial. It can be denial of the unthinkable by a child or adult because... the sun will rise on another day. I think I view the child perspective better, which makes sense.

I've seen times in myself and, primarily in someone else, of unconsciously (because it happens so fast) accepted lies. Like being a hooked fish. It's obvious enough, after the fact. That was what I was referring to. You pointed out the possibility of something else. I agree.

thank you,
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