June 12, 2011
Dear clusterflock
What activates your denial? When do you shut down instead of maintaining your awareness?
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- Joel Bernstein: I know right?
- Rick Neece: Being nice is a dainty way to put it.
- Rick Neece: Hey Cristopher? Who cried “uncle” first, at the end of your ten-year stand-off? To quote my...
- Michael Smith: Ours is the kitchen.
- Amy Mabli: That’s what happens when you give the dogs the bed.
- Deron Bauman: Sweet Jesus.
- Michael Smith: Don’t we all.
- Pam: I have a story coming out soon in a ‘little mag’, Chicago Quarterly Review. An old friend recently...
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- Christopher Walken: Hey Clusterflockers, Realize y’all are hurting. I’ve been a really close friend of my...
- Marco: This works pretty well in mobile, more so in iOS
- Michael Smith: It was not the intent of management to imply all sissies are “namby pamby”. Management was...
- Rick Neece: I take umbrage with the term “namby pamby.” Some sissies are fierce.
- Carole Corlew: Shelia. Happy no big deal day. I would start your very own post but this phone is in semi rebellion.
I love this question, Kelsey. I need to ponder. My first thought was that I never relinquish my awareness–my security is tied to it–but I’m sure that’s not true.
Thank you for asking this of us. I’ll be back.
During paralyzing confusion that arises during a time that requires action. Also as a knee-jerk reaction to shame or panic. Assuredly other times as well, but those seem to be my main triggers.
I’m pretty sure the awareness is there. The permission to act on it has been a long time coming.
Usually after the 2 bottle of grappa
Listening to someone suffering from logorrhea* will at least threaten to numb my attention/awareness.
*one of my very favorite words
I haven’t been to a doctor in about a decade.
I think it’s when my sense of righteous indignation takes over.
Two great questions, Kelsey. Like Cindy, I will ponder. I may not answer here. I’ll definitely answer inside my head.
First thoughts. What activates my denial? The first cig I light in the evening after a day at work while having a cocktail on the patio. (*I will live forever, no matter what I do.*)
The second question is harder to answer. Just now, it seems, the answer would be, I shut down after “just enough” cocktail and cigs on the patio.
Now, if in your question, you’re asking, “When are you shut down by others…(Putting words in your mouth.)?” I shut down when there are too many around, with words they need to say. I stop trying to talk, I listen. I go to bed with things unsaid. I’m not ever sure if my contribution, if I could have said/or anyone could have heard, would have really contributed to the conversation.
This is a great question, Kelsey. I think I did so much work getting past religious demands in early life that I don’t now experience much denial about anything. I sometimes have unrealistic goals that find me persisting in the belief that I will achieve them. But I gauge denial in myself by way of a contrast between rational perspective and emotional need. Maybe it’s because I’m so supicious of my own emotional need–but I seem to have a finely tuned radar that whispers to me almost immediately when I’m drifting away from what seems reasonably most likely. But I guess denial is built into us at a foundational level in some ways. For instance, when I injure myself I often tell myself–even before I examine things closely–that it’s surely not so bad, probably something that a mere bandaid will fix.
When I am on the receiving end of hyperbolic expressions of distress that the speaker has uttered time and time and time again. Time unending.
Okay, I’ve thought of this all afternoon. And I realized that the few times I have gone into actual denial are the very times when a flight mechanism has kicked in. I was simultaneously denying the severity of a problem and trying to run from it. The best example is the moment when Daryl told me 23 years ago that he needed surgery for a biopsy. And I said, don’t go. Don’t go to the doctor. We can just go somewhere else, start over.
I suddenly flashed onto an image of something I did not witness, something Jon recounted. From before the day our cat Lena went off to wherever. And the sliding glass door leading out back was always cracked open.
So Jon got up one morning (or afternoon) and walked from the bedroom into the living room, and there he saw a blue jay standing in one corner. Unharmed. At least not physically.
Jon characterized the jay’s attitude.
“I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m not here. This isn’t happening.”
Denial.
(He did manage to cloak the jay gently and convey it out of doors. It blinked briefly in astonishment, then flew off.)
Oh Sheila, thank you. I love Jon’s description and action. It’s funny, too, that this question made me think of something similar. I have seen rats fed to large snakes. The rat often walks around a bit in the snake habitat when first introduced to it–then sees the snake. And what happens? Often the rat looks to the side a bit and starts to nibble about, as if nothing is wrong. I always think the rat is thinking: “Maybe if I do this and pretend all is well, I will have not seen that snake.”
That just breaks my heart.
The jay incident feels oddly Central or Eastern European to me. That species of absurdism. The awful dislocation. The pathos. The black comedy. The sudden intervention of the (apparently) miraculous.
A blue jay version of something like Kieslowski’s White.
When I get angry, I deny anything that might be good about me. Also, I turn green and get super muscular.
The art of defensive denial is tricky. Sometimes you can make it work. But not if you are a rat and you are trapped in an enclosure with a large and hungry snake. And there is no kindly protector to take pity and act to save you.
This has been on my mind for about a week, but it really hit home this morning during my Alcohol and Chemical Dependency class. I suspect the answer to these questions is very different in the mind of an addict. The substance of the addiction doesn’t matter, it’s the fact that the user depends on somatically induced states to regulate any intolerable emotions or anxiety. When a person commits to abstinence, that often doesn’t mean recovery. So, why is it that some addicts do manage sobriety? What are they accomplishing that those who relapse are not?
According to T. Gorski’s developmental recovery model, addicts that are capable of continued self-awareness during highly stressful and triggering experiences do not relapse. Instead, they reach out for help with all the lack of denial that requires. Those who are too stoic to admit the trouble they’re having with their lives, those are the ones who slip back to their addictions.
Reflecting on your sincere and insightful answers, I can’t identify with Deron’s impression. I think sometimes I’m closer to Cindy’s, and yet I’m less likely to be aware enough to say, “Don’t go.” These days, now that I’m descending ever deeper into my narrative construction through therapy, denial seems to be much of the fabric of my self-making. I am hopeful that this process will help me find a tool, much like Daryl’s radar or Deron’s permission. But first, I have to be able to tell the difference between experience and denial.
I don’t know how to answer this question. I can’t think of an answer.
Rereading the middle paragraph above, I should explain that I am referring to addicts-in-recovery. Those who have been sober for at least six months. Relapse is a hundred times more likely before that, denial or no denial.
I don’t have any secrets. I used to believe firmly in the importance of secrets and hold mine close, but total transparency with the people I love makes denial harder to access.
I’m also not embarrassed of anything in my life that I can think of, I make it known whatever it is, and talking or making fun of whatever it is makes it easier.
I sound cavalier but I think a lack of secrets preempts denial.
I’ve done things of which I am positively ashamed, but I can own up to and talk about them
asif it’s only my own shabby behavior that comes into play. On the other hand, there are things of which I do not speak — things of which I am not ashamed — because to do so would generate ripples and waves that would affect others.When I think of denial, I think primarily of refusing to acknowledge a truth to myself. Or of shutting down and refusing to confront directly a difficulty between me and someone else.
I don’t really think of it in terms of withholding information. Or confidences.
I guess I’m in denial about what I think is possible in my own life? I’m not sure.
Kelsey, you might find Schwartz’s IFS model a useful approach to the problem, it that it individualizes the problem, putting forth a model within one can ask, “What role does denial (or substance use) play within the inner life of this person?” And offers a framework within which to follow the many highly personalized directions that question can possibly go.
Interestingly, descriptions of the therapy read like the approach is a sibling to the mindfulness meditation found in the Buddhist tradition, with cultivating access to a state of gentle inner awareness comprising a key part of making the therapy work.
Sheila, that’s how I think of denial too. Though I did only mean shutting down myself, I can see why so many people thought I meant shutting down another. And Michael! That’s the class I’ll be taking this fall. According to everyone in my cohort who got to take it last semester, I can expect my mind to be blown. I’m doing the best I can to figure out how I should brace myself for such an impact.
With regard to the second question, there are multiple things. I tune out when I hear what I deem to be unfair or hypocritical criticism, whether it be correct or not.
Regarding the first question, is denial the refusal to acknowledge something with myself, or the refusal to acknowledge it with someone else? Maybe those are just two different forms of denial. I like to think that I’m self-aware enough to avoid the first kind, but that’s probably my denial talking. I know exactly what I don’t talk about with other people, my withheld confidences to borrow Sheila’s term, and I’m not going to tell you what they are. Not in a comment on a webpage with my name attached to it, anyway.
Oh man I got all comma-happy on y’all, I sincerely apologize.
There are too many things to even begin contemplating a list, but the one quote that gets me through them is “What you are afraid of is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do”, which I’m pretty confident is from someone here on Clusterflock.
When I got to meet up with Andrew last Monday, he confirmed that it did sound like something one of you guys would say.
I can also say, to anyone who has yet to meet Mr. Simone, that he is wonderful company. Very good people, that one.
Robert, I think it comes from here. And yes, Simone is the best kind of company. Pity he doesn’t talk with his hands, though.
Deron, that’s my tumblr, but I am happy to know someone actually reads it.
Thanks, Robert, and I can safely echo the sentiment.
Oh, fuck me, that’s full circle.
Oh YOU’RE Andricon.
Hey Andrew is the minecraft server up?