Acronyms for Awareness, Part III: Denial

This is Part III of my four-part article on Acronyms for Awareness. 

Denial was right up there in my “major life awareness” topics. Denial is not a river in Egypt!

When we are in denial, we don’t even realize that we are lying to ourselves, much less the world in general. We don’t realize that we deny our faults, our circumstance, the actions of others, etc. We deny them because we are afraid to take constructive action to make our life better. We are used to be stuck in our “comfortable misery” because for many of us, we grew up that way and that’s “all we know.” Or so we believe. We convince ourselves that there is no other way, no better choice, no happier way of life, no healthier state of mind, no peaceful way to a more contented heart.

The denial is based on our fear, once again. Fear that we may not succeed at making a better life for ourselves. Fear that we may not ever find someone who will truly love and respect us. Fear that if we talk to our children and confront them about any of our concerns, they will rebel and shut down and end up disrespecting us for “assuming” things that aren’t true. Fear that if we aren’t perfect, we will never be a quality individual.

Our denial comes in the illusion that we are supposed to be perfect. Denial is the illusion that our life is fine the way it is in the middle of all the chaos and abuse that surrounds us. Denial speaks volumes in our illusion of who are kids “should” be. The ironic thing is that I learned a long time ago to never, ever “should” on anybody. There are no “shoulds!” All people do what they are meant to do in every single moment of their lives, for the purposes that only their spirits can understand. It’s all part of their journey, in their own perfect timing, to become conscious of the awarenesses they were meant to “remember” in them becoming “the grandest version of the greatest vision they ever held about themselves.”

When people get to know us better and find out more about the details of our lives, they sometimes believe that we have "lied" to them about our life. If they weren't raised in a dysfunctional upbringing (which is very rare nowadays), they don't understand that we are not lying to them on purpose. We are in our denial. We are subconsciously using denial as a defense mechanism, a way of surviving. Trying to get someone to understand dysfunction and co-dependency is like trying to explain the color blue to a blind man. I know this from experience, trust me!

It takes much self-reflection, inner work and strong determination to pull ourselves out of the trap of dysfunction. I know this from experience, too!

The last of my four part article, which follows, is: Ego

Continue reading if you so desire!