What causes denial?

BJs wrote:I keep coming back over and over to this thread. So I figure I should try to write something.

Denial plays games with my mind constantly. I read everyones words here and they ring true but I cant retain what they say. Denial inside our head is like “double think” where we can manage to make 2 opposite ideals coexist – and not notice the contradiction at all.
Like Myce said in their post. We found a way to want someone whom we were terrified of at the same time - and found a way to make this plausible in our head. But it has seeped into all our thinking processes and affects how we work from day to day. One idea drops out so another can go in even when there is no contridiction… because that’s the way its always been done.

This. It makes perfect sense and I love how you explained it. A double think we dont notice. I feel like I am in a movie sometimes where my life or thoughts get constantly reset and I have all the information available to realize it but I am clueless. I pick up on the occasional thing that makes no sense but it's mostly "non blissful ignorance"

I dont want that anymore. I am the person putting up reminders on post its on my bathroom mirror and putting up pictures and quotes from my life in random places that clearly show i am not "just going through a stage" & "glad to be thinking normal again" AGAIN .. Thats its DENIAL and this is the hallmark of my "disease". It happens so often its glaringly obvious and all I need to do is look closer. Sudden denial and normalcy is my blood count that came back wrong, its my xray that shows the fracture, its the main symptom dr house circled om his big board before he figured it all out and came to my room and try and save me. Its my reset button.

Im ######6 tired of losing my life to a disease i can't even remember i have. I know its an amazing skill that saved my life and i am grateful but i am tired of paying for my abusers choices.


I love what you said. Gah.. seriously have a problem with ranting and getting way off topic but if i try and delete it i feel guilty. so, im Sorry. :/

I was thinking about this yesterday and I think denial is so common and easy for people with DID, because it's sort of the way DID starts in the first place.

Thinking of how the infant or child has to process the dilemma of needing their abuser for their life needs, so they start to sort of deny the abuse or trauma, and it gets split aside. I think of it in these terms:
The [abuse] did not happen.
The [abuse] happened, but not to me.
The [abuse] happened, but [my caregiver] didn't do it.
The [abuse] did not happen.
Except that you still know the stuff really did happen, so you end up denying the part of you who knows the truth, and that part stays separate.

So you sort of grow up and your brain develops so that denial is hardwired right into it. I think from this point of view, dissociation is sort of like expert / pro level denial, and we're all masters at it.

So like back in March when V1 got triggered into denial, it was super hard for her to break out of it, and it really messed her up because of the cognitave split between knowing all her experiences are real and knowing the rest of us are real, but feeling like it should all be un-real: "the [dissociation] isn't real, the [dissociation] does not happen. And if it's not real, then I must be crazy, or faking..."

V2