denial

Hope is the denial of reality.

To regret one__ own experiences is to arrest one__ own development. To deny one__ own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one__ own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest and the Holocaust are vulnerable to this kind of concerted denial because of their unfathomability, the unjustifiability, and the threat they pose to the politics of patriarchy and anti-Semitism respectively. Over and over, survivors of the Holocaust attest that they were warned of what was happening in Poland but could not believe it at the time, could not believe it later as it was happening to them, and still to this day cannot believe what they, at the same time, know to have occurred. For Holocaust deniers this is a felicitous twist, for their arguments denying the Holocaust and therefore the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state capitalize on the discrepancies of faded memory. In the case of incest, although post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia, and dissociation represent some of the mind's strategies for comprehending the incomprehensible, incest deniers have taken advantage of inconsistencies to discredit survivor testimony.

Denial exists when three beliefs intersect:1. It cannot happen. 2. It cannot happen to you.3. It cannot happen to you now.

I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!

The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality.

Deciding denial was the better part of valor, CK pretended nothing was out of the ordinary.

Yet, Step 2 and AA spirituality is about nothing if it isn__ about faith in God. Many good reasons exist why AA makes a distinction between religion and spirituality, but a denial of God is not one of them. _ p. 127

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we?

Everyone has a breaking point. Deny it, and you'll blind yourself to know when you've reached yours.

YOU CAN RUN, BUT CAN NOT HIDE"The statement, 'after giving it much thought', hardly becomes credible when one spends less that 24 hours in that endeavor. In fact, it is really giving something very little thought at all. In that case it becomes an issue of denial. And also, those who proclaim Christ as Lord and God as Abba, who run to Them to hide from the very issues in their lives that They desire to deal with and remove, always amaze me. We as Christians should run to God with the hope that He will reveal to us that which He intently desires to deliver us from".[Just Keeping It Real]

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.

(Sometimes it seems that haters are just fans who are in denial.)

I had to feel sorry for Bubba's wife. In AA we called it denial. We take the asp to our breast and smile at the alarm we see in the eyes of others.

Raffe arches his brow at me. __ou should be with a nice human boy. One who takes your orders and puts up with your demands. Someone who dedicates his life to keeping you safe and well fed. Someone who can make you happy. Someone you can be proud of._ He waves his hand at the Watchers. __here__ nobody like that in this lot._ I glare at him. ____l be sure to pass him by you first before I___ settle for__ __hoose him._ __ou do that. I__l let him know what__ expected of him._ __ssuming he survives your interrogation,_ says Howler. __ig assumption,_ says Cyclone. ____ like to be there to watch,_ says Hawk. __hould be interesting.

All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.

Oftentimes what we do to minimize a problem maximizes it! Embrace truth helps us to let go!