Denial

A mask is the face you show the world in place of the person you are inside. You made each one yourself, as a form of protection, and most of the time it did its job. The Finding the Real You page talks about the hard shell we build around the marshmallow inside. Masks are part of that shell.

Denial is a very powerful mask, because it is the one that hides you from you.

The irony

The odd thing about denial is that it is almost always obvious to everyone around you what you are in denial about.

Your friends can see it. Your family can see it. The person at work who barely knows you can probably see it. The only one who cannot is the one wearing the mask, and that is exactly what makes it the mask we forget we put on.

Every single one of us has had an issue with denial at some point in life.

Why we put it on

It is usually because we want things to be a certain way.

Take a marriage that has reached the point of no return. It is very common for one person to believe things are ok while the other one knows the truth. And the people around them can often see that things are far from healthy. The one in denial is still living in the marriage they want. Everyone else is looking at the one that is actually there.

There are boundless examples of this in life. A job that is going nowhere. A friendship that only runs one way. A habit that stopped being harmless a long time ago. A body that has been trying to tell you something for months.

Facing the truth of a situation can often lead to a painful realisation and the loss of something we desperately want to hold on to. Denial is how we put off that loss. It feels like protection, and for a while it is. The cost is that you go on living inside something that is no longer real.

Denial about who you are

Denial is not only about other people and situations. Some people spend a whole lifetime in denial about themselves.

My mother was a psychic, and she denied her own abilities. I think that is a big part of why I never shared what I was experiencing as a child. The one time I did tell her about a vision, she gave me an aspirin and sent me for a nap. Go figure.

She was not being cruel. She simply had no shelf to put it on. If you have been told your whole life that a part of you is not real, it is very easy to agree, and then to forget you ever agreed.

So if you have abilities you keep explaining away, it is worth asking whether you are in denial about them. You will find the Your Abilities area a good place to start looking.

How denial keeps itself going

Your perception of the world is shaped by everything in your life up to this moment. Every feeling, thought and experience has helped build the lens you see through, and the lens decides what you notice.

One stage of perception is selective exposure. It happens when someone wants to believe they are seeing the world as it is, and so they confirm everything through ideas they already hold. That can make them miss things that everyone else can see. It is denial at the level of the senses. The Perception post tells the old story of the tall ships that the people on the shore could not see, because nothing in their experience matched them.

Many of the rules we live by have flawed beginnings that we have simply carried forward. Questioning them, and asking why you formed them in the first place, is one of the most valuable things you can do for your growth.

The quickest way out

The quickest way to resolve denial is to be open to new ideas, and open to questioning your own belief system.

That sounds frightening, and it does not need to be. You have done it many times already. Things you once believed to be the truth, you now see differently. You were not wrong before, and you are not necessarily right now. Your perspective has changed, and that has changed your idea of what is real.

We are taught that north is up. Turn the map of the world the other way and it is still an accurate map. Sometimes we need to look through different eyes and ignore "because it has always been done that way." Just because you see the world differently from the people around you does not make you wrong.

Being open to questioning everything inside you also puts you on the road to discovering new things.

What happens when you look

When you start questioning, a few things will happen.

1. You will often confirm that your beliefs have good foundations. You will get messages back that reinforce you are on the right track.
2. At times a question mark will appear over certain parts of what you believe. Those are the moments to start reviewing what is actually real for you.
3. You will feel a range of emotions when you do. That is normal. Power on. It is good to find out the truth for you.

Whatever you have to let go of when a mask comes off, the Letting Go page is there for that part.

It is better to know the truth than to live with a lie.

Something to sit with

Think of the people who know you best. If you asked them what you are in denial about, what would they say?

You do not have to ask them. Just notice what came to mind first.

You will be your own teacher in this.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.