PSYCHOLOGY- Denial, Admittance and Acceptance - I

Imagine you stole some money from your dad’s wallet a couple of times in your childhood and were never caught. Although you were never happy about it but you were just attracted by the sheer effortlessness of doing it and using some easy money with your friends and so you did it a few times. But every time you did it, you felt a subtle feeling of guilt and eventually, you stopped doing it later. Subconsciously, guilt never left you even as you grew up. Many times you thought to confess to your dad or even mom but were not able to gather the courage to do it.

The guilt was subtle, so every time it came up and made you feel bad, you suppressed it. The more your mind rehearsed this, the more it accepted it as a fact that it was nothing you did to feel ashamed about. This is where you started denying yourself that you did anything wrong. This state of existence is called denial, which is the most common method of self-defense mechanism propounded by psychologist Sigmund Freud.

It was easy and so life moved on. But then, it was never deleted permanently from your system. The cognitive dissonance that followed left an unpleasant impression on your self-esteem and confidence. So finally, after a lot of introspection you decided that it is okay to admit that you did wrong in your childhood but also put a caveat there that you were after all just a child. You expected some relief henceforth but to your dismay, things didn’t go as planned. Surprisingly, the mental heaviness persisted and you were clueless.

The reason the heaviness persisted was that while you had admitted that you did wrong by stealing money from your dad’s wallet, you didn’t have the courage to confess this in front of your parents even though you were an adult now. This was because even you were not able to accept this for a fact in spite of the admission. The admission was a fake after all. So to raise your self-esteem and be free from anxiety, it is important that you sit and contemplate with a pen and paper what is weighing your mind and accept that it happened through you. Unless that happens, your kind friend - the mind won’t leave you alone!

When did you last introspected on what things you are denying especially since long and what are their repercussions in your personal and professional life. Is it too difficult to admit and accept everything you did and you are and be free?

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