HOW TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE PAIN & IF YOU ARE AVOIDING IT?
Jul 10, 2020Do you find yourself doing the following?
- Avoiding
- Blaming
- Comparing
- Compartmentalizing
- Complying
- Creating Distractions
- Helpless/Hopeless
- Exaggeration
- Either/or Thinking
- Entitlement
- Intellectualizing
- Justifying
- Magical Thinking
- Manipulation
- Minimizing
- Omission
- Rationalizing
- Unique/Different/Special
- Victim Thinking
Denial . . . another way of saying, I am lying, primarily to myself and secondarily to others about the reality/Truth of my experiences. And yet, we all do it. We all use denial to some degree or another. It's not a shiny moment on mankind to say that we all choose to go into denial to hide from the discomforts of life. Yet, all of us choose denial. WHY? Well. . .the main reason is that it gives us the illusion that I can control PAIN from entering into my life.
What is pain? Pain is anything that YOU deem is uncomfortable to you i.e., disappointment, betrayal, anger, fear, control from others, sadness, loss, grief, confusion, feelings of worthlessness, ANYTHING!! The Truth is YOU CANNOT CONTROL PAIN and yet I choose denial and tell myself that I can. It's a level of immaturity in each one of us that invites us into this illusion, this distortion that we "should not experience pain" and so we use denial to pretend that I don't have to experience pain. However, all that happens is that I disconnect emotionally from everyone and everything. I enter into denial attempting to control the inevitable PAINS of life, it's as though I am hitting a “pause” button on those painful events/experiences and at some point, I will need to return to feel the emotions associated therewith in order to be released from the denial (lie) I told myself about the PAIN I was experiencing.
I deceive myself and believe I have figured out a way to escape pain, as I am, in pain, just not feeling it. Pain then builds and builds over years and so does your ability to deny it. All of this distraction from pain invites you into nasty outcomes like, addictions of all kinds, controlling behaviors, lying, hiding, manipulating, deception in all flavors.
Until I am willing to acknowledge, be honest with, take responsibility for, feel the Truthful emotions, validate yourself and others, and surrender the outcomes of those inevitably painful experiences, I will drag them around with me throughout my life in a state of denial pretending that the painful experiences are not painful and I will be TRAPPED in a lie. . . called DENIAL!!
