It’s not just a river in Egypt—and it’s not always a bad thing!  Here are a few tips for understanding one of our most common coping strategies and some signs about when it’s helpful and when it is harmful.

What’s denial?

Denial is a way of holding a problem outside of conscious awareness.  It’s a bit different from minimization, which downplays the impact of feelings and events, but it has a similar headline:  “I’ve got it under control.  Everything’s fine.”

It’s a way of keeping our head on straight in dire times.

Sadly, I think denial gets a bad rap a lot of the time.  People equate denial with being deluded,  lazy, or cowardly.  They think it’s like sticking your head in the sand, avoiding the problem.

This mental representation of denial is true, to some extent.  But, if life is looking a lot like a scary movie, it might be a good idea to try and look away during some of the awful parts.  This sort of shielding, in small doses, can be helpful— as long as you don’t remain checked out indefinitely.

Denial is one of the ways the mind and heart shields itself from overwhelm.

Here’s how to know if denial is helping or hurting…

When it’s helpful…

As I mentioned before, denial can be protective in small doses.  It’s a form of emotional triage—a way to say, “I’ll get to this when I’m ready.”

You can think of denial as a kind of scabbing over process, like binding a wound—something we put in place to protect ourselves from further trouble (infection, complication), while our body tries to heal itself. The mind kicks in and does what it can to minimize the damage, getting life back to normal as soon as possible.

So, in certain circumstances, denial can be healthy and appropriate reaction.  Interfering with someone’s denial may force them to embrace troubling realities and problems before they are ready, causing them to become overwhelmed or experience a crisis.

When it’s not…

If you keep a bandaid on a wound for ever and ever, it actually impedes the healing process.  After a while, the wound needs to be exposed to air, to “breathe,” as a part of the healing process.  This permits the scab can toughen and eventually be discarded when the body is ready.

There’s a similar expiration date for denial, a time when a person needs to come to terms with a situation in order to then move past it.

So, unhealthy denial is denial that persists indefinitely, interfering with the healing process.  Prolonged denial disarms the mind’s alarm system, and keeps the heart and mind in an emotionally “muffled” state.  This can actually leave a person more open to troubling situations or escalations when they are not tapped into the facts of their situation and their emotional state.

Harmful denial can be compounded not only by duration but also by being paired with harmful coping strategies, such as drinking or eating compulsively to soothe strong feelings.

The bottom line:  denial has its uses.  Just be wary if it’s the go-to method of choice for coping with life’s troubles.