Food for thought: Living in denial will never change the facts as much as we’d like to believe they will. We can live in denial, we can shut the truth out for a finite time, but the truth will always come back. The further we drift away from the truth, the more we will hate others who speak our truth for us. We cannot change the truth, but the truth will change us.

Ilana Estelle is a mental health and wellbeing advocate who combines educational insight with her personal experience of living with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. She holds diplomas in Counselling, Diet and Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Stress Management. Through her writing, Ilana supports others in navigating their emotional, mental, and physical health challenges. In addition to writing for The CP Diary, her work has appeared in healthy lifestyle magazines. Ilana is also the author of three books: Cerebral Palsy: A Story – Finding the Calm After the Storm, Spirituality, Healing and Me, and Survival: The Covid Years – Time for Change.

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6 comments on “Denial and the facts”

  1. It's best to deal with the truth from the start, so we are able to live in peace. As difficult as it is running from the truth, it's more difficult trying to hide the truth. For the longest time I have tried to hide the truth in how CP has affected me emotionally. I always pretended everything was fine, until I had an emotional breakdown.

    When I was going through the nervous breakdown, my conscious was confused about what was going on. I think it was just a way of my subconscious telling me that I don't have to pretend that everything is alright.

    1. I agree, thanks Maria. I'm not sure why we feel we've got to be so brave around what we deal with and therefore choose to live in denial.

      The irony of life is that whether we choose to live in denial or not, the facts of what we deal with will remain the same and is our truth.

  2. I'm thinking that it should be pretty easy for me to tell the truth about myself, if I knew what the truth was; and people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

    Perhaps people are incapable of the telling the truth, the whole truth. But if we dared to tell the truth would that really be the truth?

    1. Thanks Tim. Perhaps we tell others what we want them to hear and convince ourselves it's our truth even though unconsciously we know it's not.

      I believe that if we want to tell the truth we will. I have always told the truth, but generally speaking, we tend to be a little conservative with the truth.

      We tell people what we want them to hear and on the other person's part, they have no reason to doubt. Perhaps it's because we want to believe what we tell people.

  3. Being in denial will only make things worse. We may miss symptoms now that something could have been done about, but when we deny things we're only hurting ourselves further.

    1. In terms of our health, you're absolutely right. Living in denial on a particular health issue is wrong and may make the difference between living and dying.

      But your last sentence sums your response up Lisa and I agree with you. When we deny things, we are in effect only hurting ourselves further.

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