What is trauma denial?
According to Freud, denial is a defense mechanism that protects the individual from emotional pain.
It gives us time to adjust to difficult situations. However, staying in the denial phase can interfere with your ability to function in everyday life.
If you're in denial, you're attempting to protect yourself from the truth. You might feel overwhelmed and numb, struggling to function in work, school, or daily life. Sometimes, initial short-term denial can be a good thing, giving you time to adjust after a stressful issue. Denial can also inspire you to make some sort of shift in your life. Unfortunately, denial can also take a significant toll on your mental health.
For example, politicians are often caught in the middle of conflicting pressures. To earn votes they may need to promise something in return, and this may conflict with other expectations.
The easiest way out is to lie or deny what they said, and to prevent others to know the truth.
Dictatorships are used to this approach on a large scale. Those countries share a common pattern: high level of corruption, citizen kept in hostage by the regime, and internal propaganda designed to brainwash everyone with fake news.
However, initial short-term denial can be healthy. As one of the five stages of grief, the denial phase helps your mind absorb distressing information at its own pace. Grief doesn't necessarily involve a loss of life—and denial might be triggered by the loss of a relationship, pet, home, job, or a difficult diagnosis, such as a disability or chronic physical health condition.
After a traumatic event, you might need some time to process what happened. This type of denial is a healthy response to trauma. After your mind absorbs the situation, you'll start to approach the problem more rationally and take the appropriate action.
When is denial harmful?
When you don't take the appropriate action, such as seeking professional mental health care, long-term denial can turn into a harmful response. Some examples of unhealthy denial include:
As a defense mechanism, denial might prevent you from seeking help, such as medical treatment or mental health services. Denial can affect anyone at any stage of life—from adolescence through adulthood.
If ignored, denial can create a vicious cycle, creating problems with devastating consequences. Over time, denial can lead to mental health concerns, such as anxiety, low mood, and stress.
Trauma is an emotional response to experiencing, or witnessing, a distressing event or series of events, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA).
Some experiences linked to trauma include:
Certain mental health conditions may develop after a traumatic experience:
Denial and emotional avoidance both create distance from a traumatic experience, but they're slightly different:
"Denial distorts facts and events by ignoring the presence of the elephant in the room, so to speak. There is no admission of a problem," says Lashara Shaw, a licensed professional counselor based in Naperville, Illinois.
Avoidance, on the other hand, can be an attempt to refrain from feeling painful emotions by withdrawing or dissociating from specific experiences.
It could also involve avoidance of situations or interactions that may become emotional in any way.
For example, denial would be saying, believing, and acting like the traumatic experience didn't affect you.
Emotional avoidance, on the other hand, could be using alcohol or drugs to prevent thinking about the event or feeling detached from friends and family in general.
If you feel stuck, working with a licensed therapist can help you work through denial and move forward. Whether you're experiencing a specific mental health condition, such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or you're working through grief, speaking with a mental health professional can help you understand your responses.
https://psychcentral.com/blog/denial-of-trauma-signs
https://withtherapy.com/mental-health-resources/what-is-denial/
It gives us time to adjust to difficult situations. However, staying in the denial phase can interfere with your ability to function in everyday life.
If you're in denial, you're attempting to protect yourself from the truth. You might feel overwhelmed and numb, struggling to function in work, school, or daily life. Sometimes, initial short-term denial can be a good thing, giving you time to adjust after a stressful issue. Denial can also inspire you to make some sort of shift in your life. Unfortunately, denial can also take a significant toll on your mental health.
For example, politicians are often caught in the middle of conflicting pressures. To earn votes they may need to promise something in return, and this may conflict with other expectations.
The easiest way out is to lie or deny what they said, and to prevent others to know the truth.
Dictatorships are used to this approach on a large scale. Those countries share a common pattern: high level of corruption, citizen kept in hostage by the regime, and internal propaganda designed to brainwash everyone with fake news.
However, initial short-term denial can be healthy. As one of the five stages of grief, the denial phase helps your mind absorb distressing information at its own pace. Grief doesn't necessarily involve a loss of life—and denial might be triggered by the loss of a relationship, pet, home, job, or a difficult diagnosis, such as a disability or chronic physical health condition.
After a traumatic event, you might need some time to process what happened. This type of denial is a healthy response to trauma. After your mind absorbs the situation, you'll start to approach the problem more rationally and take the appropriate action.
When is denial harmful?
When you don't take the appropriate action, such as seeking professional mental health care, long-term denial can turn into a harmful response. Some examples of unhealthy denial include:
- A bystander witnesses a traumatic car accident but claims they're not affected.
- A cancer patient chooses not to seek medical treatment, insisting that they're getting better.
- A coworker consistently misses meetings due to substance use problems but insists that he's okay because he's still showing up to work.
- A person with heart disease experiences chest pain but refuses to acknowledge their symptoms.
If ignored, denial can create a vicious cycle, creating problems with devastating consequences. Over time, denial can lead to mental health concerns, such as anxiety, low mood, and stress.
Trauma is an emotional response to experiencing, or witnessing, a distressing event or series of events, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA).
Some experiences linked to trauma include:
- accidents
- childhood abuse
- domestic violence
- loss of a loved one
- natural disaster
- sexual assault
- torture
- war
Certain mental health conditions may develop after a traumatic experience:
- anxiety
- post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- depression
- personality disorders
- schizophrenia
- substance use
Denial and emotional avoidance both create distance from a traumatic experience, but they're slightly different:
"Denial distorts facts and events by ignoring the presence of the elephant in the room, so to speak. There is no admission of a problem," says Lashara Shaw, a licensed professional counselor based in Naperville, Illinois.
Avoidance, on the other hand, can be an attempt to refrain from feeling painful emotions by withdrawing or dissociating from specific experiences.
It could also involve avoidance of situations or interactions that may become emotional in any way.
For example, denial would be saying, believing, and acting like the traumatic experience didn't affect you.
Emotional avoidance, on the other hand, could be using alcohol or drugs to prevent thinking about the event or feeling detached from friends and family in general.
If you feel stuck, working with a licensed therapist can help you work through denial and move forward. Whether you're experiencing a specific mental health condition, such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or you're working through grief, speaking with a mental health professional can help you understand your responses.
https://psychcentral.com/blog/denial-of-trauma-signs
https://withtherapy.com/mental-health-resources/what-is-denial/
