**🔼 Up:** [[Defence Mechanisms]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #Psychology #DefenceMechanism > **🌱 Planted:** Fri 3 January 2025 --- ***Denial is the inability or refusal to acknowledge or accept reality.*** Denial is a [[Defence Mechanisms|Defence Mechanism]] where someone has an inability or straight out refusal to acknowledge or accept What Is. It acts as a protective shield which allows the person to maintain a sense of stability by rejecting truths that might otherwise overwhelm them. Denial can be conscious or unconscious. Where there's an inability to process reality as it is, the denial is unconscious due to situations that are overwhelming or [[Trauma|Traumatic]]. Where there is a straight out refusal to process reality as it is, the denial can be more tactical in nature and therefore conscious where the person may have partial or even full awareness they are not accepting the truth. The refusal to accept reality as it is enables someone to maintain a sense of stability (albeit incongruent with reality) through rejecting truths that might otherwise be difficult for them to handle. Although denial is an external rejection of reality, the body still remains attuned to the underlying truth and therefore still remembers and reacts to the unconscious material, which can have a deep and lasting impact on us (see [[Character Strategies]] and [[Muscular & Emotional Armouring]]). In this way, it often works hand in hand with [[Dissociation|Dissociation]] and [[Publish/Elements/Dictionary/Repression|Repression]]. Denial is different to [[Suppression|Suppression]] though, which is where someone is aware of their emotional truths but chooses to set them aside. An example of denial might look like someone hearing about a health diagnosis where the doctor has told them it is quite serious, but when they speak about it later they might say something like "there's nothing wrong with me, I'm fine". The person has consciously chosen to deny the reality of the situation here. Meanwhile, underneath the surface and in the body, the fear and anxiety associated with the diagnosis might be [[Publish/Elements/Dictionary/Repression|Repressed]] which then blocks them from experiencing or processing those emotions.