By Trevor Lawsons, Contributing Writer
It seems that denial patterns are a common reason why people are denied at Board or fall into relapse of substance abuse or criminality. That is why in Kid Cat Juvenile Lifer Support Group we cover all aspects of denial in the module “Denial Management”.
Have you ever wondered why they call it “denial management?” I used to think, if denial is frowned upon, why do I need to manage it? Why not just avoid it? It wasn’t until I started to study denial and the different denial patterns that I understood how denial affects all of us.
According to “Denial Management Counseling Professional Guild” by Terence T. Gorski (20), denial is the natural tendency to avoid the pain caused by recognizing the presence, severity, and responsibility for dealing with serious problems. What I learned from the JLSG module is that we often deal with the shock of a major problem by using one of several denial patterns, which are broken up into 2 groups: the “Big Five” and the “Small Seven”. The “Big Five” are avoidance, absolved denial, minimizing, rationalizing, and blaming. The “Small Seven” are comparison, compliance, manipulation, flight into health, recovery by fear, strategic hopelessness, and the democratic disguise state.
Denial becomes a maladaptive coping skill or character defect when we continue to use denial patterns to avoid addressing our problems, such as minimizing our involvement in the crime that landed us in prison, rationalizing our criminality or blaming other individuals or circumstances for our substance abuse.
The facilitators of module four, Chris Rigsby and Kenny York, did an amazing job keeping everyone engaged with the material by asking the participants to give examples of denial patterns they used in their life. They also had two other facilitators put on a small skit and then asked the participants to identify the denial patterns present.
We then learned about the emotions that usually drive denial: pain, anger, feat, guilt and shame. It is key to be in tune with our emotions, which almost act like warning signs in the middle of a traumatizing or difficult situation. If we recognize and identify those emotions, we can then deal with the problem in a healthy pro–social way.
Consider the following example. Tony goes to Bob’s house and asks “What’s up with you lately? Why has your wife left you?
Bob says, “I don’t want to talk about it! She didn’t leave me, she just went to her mom’s for the weekend. She will be back.”
Tony then asks, “Why did Jane take all of her things?”
Bob says, “It was only one kiss with her friend. It’s not that bad; it’s no big deal.”
In this example Bob is in denial about his relationship conflict, avoiding confrontation and minimizing his actions. If Bob recognized his emotions over his actions, he would be able to take accountability and responsibility for them. He might then have a better chance of repairing his relationship, as opposed to staying in denial and expecting his wife to return.
According to Gorski, the antidote to these feelings is a sense of detached perceptiveness, otherwise known as acceptance or “being centered.” It is not enough to teach a person how to recognize and label the emotional drivers of denial. We need to teach them to recognize and activate the feelings of detached peacefulness. To be peacefully detached doesn’t mean that you don’t feel the feeling. It means that you develop the capacity to feel the feeling without it activating irrational thinking and physical stress responses that intensify the feelings. Basically, we have to practice staying relaxed and checking in with ourselves when we are stressed out.
So why do we need to manage denial? Because denial is a natural defense mechanism that if left unchecked only leads to more problems. Problems like a denial at board. Don’t get denied because of your denial. Learn to recognize it and manage it.
