The Ugly Truth About Denial

We are getting ready to start our 4th year of Celebrate Recovery at Cottonwood!! AMAZING! I m so grateful for the changed lives that we have seen these three years. So, tonight we kick off year number four. 

Celebrate Recovery involves 12 steps, which take one year to go through. We will start next week with our first lesson, which is Come out of Denial. I was thinking how hard that is sometimes. 

The problem with denial is that if you are in denial, you may not know it. You may have hidden your problem for so long that you actually believe it is ok. Or you may think that it is just something that you have to live with, not something that you need deliverance from. People who live in denial don’t always know they are in denial.

There is a funny line in the movie “Steal Magnolias”. One of the characters is an older woman named Weizer. She is VERY difficult. She complains all the time and can’t get along with anyone, very negative and unhappy. One of her friends suggests that she may suffer from depression, and her reply is, “I’m not depressed, I’ve just been in a bad mood for 50 years.” That might be denial. 

If you are convinced that you don’t have a problem or an issue, and you are sure that you are not just in denial, spend time the next week listening to yourself, and then to the people around you. Do you hear yourself saying things like this?

·  “Can’t we stop talking about it? Talking only makes it worse.”

·  “You don’t have it so bad. I am a better husband than John..”

· “If I tell him that it hurts me when he says that, I’m afraid he will leave me.”

· “She really doesn’t drink that much.”

· “It really doesn’t hurt when he does that; I’m fine!”

· “Joan has been married three times; I’ve only been married twice.”

·  “If you didn’t nag me all the time, I wouldn’t …”

· “Look honey, I have a tough job; I work hard. I need a few drinks to relax. It doesn’t mean that I have a problem.”

·         “I don’t have an anger problem, people just do things that make me mad.”

Many times, we know we have a problem, but we accept it, thinking, "that's just the way I am". " have always been...sensitive, melancholy, a worrier, timid, hot-tempered..." That's just another form of denial. 

Face it, quit denying and get on the road to recovery.