At a glance
Denial is not lying to yourself on purpose, it is the mind closing over something before you have decided anything. This article describes how denial and repression work, where each shows up, and what they are protecting. It also looks at what happens when you begin to see what you kept out.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- The knowing is usually already there. When clients describe the moment they finally saw it, most say some part of them had known for months.
- It protects a relationship, not only a fact. What clients cannot afford to know is often what would change how they have to treat someone they love.
- The body argues first. Clients often notice sleep going, or a tightness before one particular conversation, long before they can put a word to what is wrong.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
What is a defence actually for?
A defence is not a flaw in your thinking. It is the mind keeping you able to function while something is too much to take in at once.
Nobody decides to use one. By the time you could decide, the work is already done: the thought has gone quiet, the subject has moved on, the feeling has arrived as irritation instead of fear. That is why being told to face facts so rarely helps anyone. The facts were never the obstacle.
Defences buy time, and time is often exactly what a person needs. The cost appears when one stays on long after the danger it was built for has passed, so that a part of your life goes on being managed by something you cannot see working.
How is denial different from repression?
Denial keeps something outside. Repression keeps something underneath.
- Denial. The fact is available to you, and its meaning is refused. You can say the sentence out loud and still not feel that it is about your life.
- Repression. The feeling or the memory is not available in the first place. There is nothing to refuse, because nothing presents itself to be refused.
- Rationalisation, which travels with both. A reason arrives to explain what you are doing, and it is a good reason, which is what makes it so hard to question.
The distinction matters in practice. Something held outside by denial can usually be approached by staying near it until the meaning lands. Something repressed does not respond to effort at all, and tends to surface in its own time, in a dream, in a sudden reaction out of proportion to the moment, or in a feeling that arrives without a subject attached.
Where would I look for it in myself?
You rarely catch denial by thinking harder. You catch it by noticing where your attention refuses to go.
These are places to look rather than tests to pass, and any one of them can have an ordinary explanation.
- The subject that always gets changed. There is a topic you move away from quickly, and you are usually the one moving.
- Certainty without curiosity. You are very clear that something is fine, and you have no interest in looking at it again.
- The message you have not reread. Something sits unopened, and the reason for not opening it keeps sounding reasonable.
- The people you have stopped telling. You notice you have been editing what you say to a friend who knows you well.
- What your body does on the way to a conversation. Tightness, dread or a flat heaviness before a particular person is information arriving ahead of words.
What would knowing actually cost me?
Usually it would oblige you to act, and that is the real obstacle rather than the evidence.
Knowing is not free. If you let yourself know that the drinking has become a problem, or that your marriage ended some years ago in everything but address, or that the job is damaging you, then the next day asks something of you. A good deal of what looks like stupidity in another person, and feels like fog in yourself, is the mind calculating the cost of knowing and declining to pay it yet.
It also protects a picture: of a parent you need to keep good, of a partner you love, of yourself as someone who would have noticed. Those pictures are not vanity. They are often holding a relationship together, which is why they give way slowly, and why doing it alone is harder than it sounds.
Defences are not fixed features of a person. In one small study, the defences used by 41 people in inpatient treatment for long-standing depression were rated from session transcripts, and the pattern shifted over the course of a brief psychodynamic therapy, with the shift related to who responded to the treatment.1 That is a small group in a particular setting, so it says nothing about how long anything takes, and it does show that what a person defends with can move.
What can I do if I think this is me?
Go towards the discomfort in small amounts rather than demanding the whole truth in one sitting. The aim is not a confession. It is to let something be looked at long enough to be felt.
- Write the sentence you do not want to write. One line, for nobody else. The resistance to writing it is itself the useful part.
- Ask what would have to change if it were true. That question often reaches the real obstacle faster than asking whether it is true.
- Let one other person know the question. Not the conclusion, the question. Saying it to someone makes it harder for it to go quiet again.
- Leave the conclusion open. You are trying to look, not to arrive at a verdict by the end of the week.
Repression is different, and there is no technique for it. What has been kept under tends to come up when the conditions are steadier, which is one of the plainer arguments for having a regular hour with someone whose attention is not divided.
This approach is the wrong one where what you are not letting yourself know concerns being frightened, controlled or harmed by someone close to you. Pressing yourself to face that alone is not the useful step, and who is in the room with you matters more there than any exercise on this page.
If something here is uncomfortably familiar, you can book a video session from wherever you are, or begin with a free 30-minute call.
Questions people ask
Can therapy help if I do not know what I am avoiding?
Yes, and not knowing is the usual starting point. We work from where your attention stops rather than from a conclusion you are meant to reach.
Will you tell me what I am in denial about?
No, and I would be guessing if I did. What I can do is notice where something closes in the telling, and ask about that.
Does this kind of work translate to video?
It does, and in some ways a screen makes it easier to say the first difficult sentence. What matters is a regular hour and someone paying close attention, both of which travel.
Is it harmful to look at what I have been keeping out?
It is uncomfortable, and the pace stays yours. Nothing useful comes of forcing something open faster than you can hold it.
What happens in a first session?
You talk, I listen closely and I ask about the places where something closes. Nothing is decided in the first hour, and booking one commits you to nothing further.
If there is something you keep not quite looking at, online psychotherapy is a place to approach it at your own pace.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
