Understand Denial and Learn to Tell the Truth to your Loved One

We all know when we feel that something is not right, we all have our inbuilt instinctive system.

Anne and Bob had been married for 5 years and both agreed that they were a happy couple. Bob was a financial advisor and the nature of his career meant that he worked most evenings. He would come home from the office in the early evening, eat a quick meal with Anne and then either go out to meet a client or have a meeting in their upstairs office. Anne had happily accepted this situation, as she was at work all day and said she could get on with things around the house in the evenings.

Notice here the common denial practice of not addressing things right at the beginning of an ensuing situation. Asking themselves ‘why’ this was acceptable to either of them at this stage might have flagged up deeper concerns.

Other than the odd argument they both felt comfortable with each other and life continued for them without any problems. They thought they were close and had talked about starting a family all seemed rosy. Because of Bobs working commitments, Anne would have regular nights out with friends from work and Bob simply accepted this even though Anne spent more and more leisure time with friends. He knew he was a bit of a workaholic!

Thinking about starting a family is a common answer to what is often a ‘cry’ for ‘something’ more and deeper in a relationship that in practice is failing.

Everything was normal, nothing had changed and there had been no warnings the night that Anne stayed out until the early hours of the morning. She said she had taken a friend home and fallen asleep on her friends sofa. The reality was that she had slept with someone else. Bob, however, chose to believe her lies and went into denial. He wasn’t prepared to really question the disturbing, nagging knot in his stomach that was the biggest clue to the truth.

Notice that ‘normal’ often means that nothing is changing. We are beings that are meant to evolve and grow and we choose our partners to help us to do this. If a relationship remains ’normal’ – it is likely to become stagnant and have problems.

Later, Bob did question Ann on a number of occasions, they rowed violently and Bob was always relieved to hear Anne’s lies, which changed each time he questioned her. Anne now had the perfect opportunity to jump into a denial strategy. She could turn the situation around and complain about his accusations; her denial strategy included blaming and being a victim and although she continued to lie to Bob, what was more damaging was the denial system that she put into place for herself.

Here as so often happens the parties choose to bury their heads in the sand and dig out the real problems. At this stage both could reflect on what is good and what it was that attracted them to each other and discuss the reasons why they fell in love in the first place. Couples often are afraid to say how they feel about their pain because of rejection. As a couple this also shows up how little they have talked in the past about inner feelings. It might be useful to see a therapist to help them talk through their denials strategies and open the door to honest feelings.

Her affair took second place in her system and rather than look at the real activity Anne chose to divert her emotions and concentrate on convincing herself that she had good and honest reasons for what she had done.

Trying to justify ones own ‘wrong doings’ is a classic example of self denial.

Denial becomes a complicated ‘game’ to play and the more you play the greater the denial system grows. It literally becomes a disease that spreads through the emotions, mind and body. The kind of two-ing and fro-ing that Bob and Anne played can have many different permutations depending upon the backgrounds of the players, their family life and childhood. If we have had difficult, unsupported childhoods, where the people around us have been in denial systems, when we are caught in our own situations, we automatically revert to our previously learnt family denial strategies.

If we can understand that these behaviours are triggered by patterns from the past we could go a long way to heal our selves and our relationships. Seeing that no one is really at fault is about a deeper understanding for ourselves and others.

Deep down Bob knows that Anne is lying and is too afraid to admit it. His denial system will swing backwards and forwards, from “How could she possibly do it", to “No she hardly went out", to, “Anne has told me that she could never betray me". Anne on the other hand also knows that what she had done was wrong and has no excuses, but rather then face this she invents the excuses for herself and also lies to Bob.

Many people avoid seeing the truth because it is so painful to accept what is really going on. When in reality the true pain is caused by denial. First to the self and second to the partner.

This self-deception is damaging for both parties and it is inevitable that regardless of how long the denial system is kept in place, sooner or later the truth will emerge and all the pain that we try to avoid is inescapable. The actual affair brings its own hurt and pain and this will have to be faced. What follows is the deeper knowledge that denial gives us. The knowledge that we are not true to ourselves is harder than the first hurt. Afterwards comes a realisation that if we had been prepared to examine the issues, we could have seen how we denied ourselves the truth of a situation. We always know what the real truth is and rather then face it there and then, we hurt ourselves.

The Creating Game book will help you to sort through patterns that limit you and hold you back.

www.thecreatinggame.com

This article is a real case example and names have been changed.

Linda is a qualified Ayurvedic Practioner and Spiritual Psychotherapist - she has a practice and clinic in Cheshire, England and can be contacted via her website.Linda writes am emagazine called 'All things Good' which is full of articles for self development sign up to recieve yours on the website

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