It’s both sad and understandable why most of us choose to live in denial over things not yet resolved that we need to deal with. But I also know that if we chose to address those things, we would begin to change so many aspects of our personalities, our relationships and of our lives.

Denial is refusing to accept or believe and recognise that something that has happened may be true. We tend to put distance between our experiences so that we get to lead normal lives, but the irony is that our lives can never be normal. Sadly, being in denial acts as a buffer and diverts our attention to other distractions, whilst the bigger issues lay dormant.

I was angry and had a reputation to go with it. Being angry wasn’t something I was consciously aware of, nor was it down to me. The source lay with my parents because they should have been addressing my disability.

As a general rule, we fit our experiences into our own positive image. This allows us to maintain our integrity and makes us feel secure about ourselves. Because it’s not something we consciously think about, us being in denial about things goes completely unnoticed.

When the demands of our lives begin to exceed our capabilities and resources, these problems may begin to make us feel threatened or exposed. At that point, we may still choose to stay in denial, because to address those things means us having to come out of our comfort zone.

Sadly, when we subconsciously live in denial, we will have a hard time functioning in our relationships on a more open and personal level. Being in denial also means we refuse to accept our own truth and that means we can never be honest with ourselves.

When we fail to be honest with ourselves of course that means we also fail to be honest with everyone else.