My Adventure In Denial

 I was recently referred for a prostate biopsy.  I was told I would have the results in "3 - 5 days."

Since it was beyond the 3 days of the biopsy procedure, and I had not yet heard from my doctor, I was asked by a friend if I planned to call to get the results.  I responded that I was in no hurry to hear, and planned to simply wait until the doctor reached out to me with a report.  My friend was surprised by this, saying her approach would be to be proactive in getting the information, so if something needed to be done, the process could begin as soon as possible.  That makes a lot of sense.  I had a different motive for my choice, however.

 

I replied that was rather enjoying not knowing the result of my test, and appreciated the opportunity to consciously choose the denial of not knowing a few more days.  

 

Most of us spend time in denial from an unconscious place.  I realized I had the opportunity to choose denial from a conscious place – so I could observe the benefits of denial, not from a clinical point of view, but from the vantage point of watching from the “inside out”.  I wanted to understand more about what it is that leads us into our fantasies and why we stay there.

I became aware of the following:

 

I felt at peace, realizing that guarding myself against bad news in this way gave me a chance to stay distant from the truth, in case it was an unsavory truth.  If I don’t know there’s a problem, I don’t have to face doing anything about it.

 

I felt the power of excusing myself of responsibility of changing my life in some way to cope with the truth of my diagnosis.  Not knowing meant I didn’t have feel uncomfortable about what was really going on, and I was not required to do anything different, or even think anything different that would upset my status quo.

 

My life was not threatened immediately, and denying knowledge would not hurt me or my family for quite some time down the road.

 

This gave me expanded insight into why I believe some people assume what’s comfortable rather than choose to learn about what causes problems.  It allows me not to care about those less fortunate than myself so I can ignore: 

 

·      sick people who can’t afford health care,

·      immigrants in need of safety, a place to live, and a job, 

·      the effective ways to prevent abortions rather than insisting on methods that have proven again and again not to work, 

·      how I can maintain comfort believing the myth that everyone has an equal chance to get ahead because I was able to do it, 

·      the droughts, the floods, the fires, the melting glaciers, the decades of data that show if we don’t change our direction we’re headed for an early demise,

·      my safety in staying with my own kind and not risking the unknown of associating with people different from me racially, socio-economically, educationally, etc.,

·      how my denial can allow me to create in my imagination the outcome of an election without evidence, rather than supporting an outcome supported by evidence,

·      disturbing the comfort of simply judging those I don’t understand because learning can sometimes be hard (the LBGT community, racism, how my prejudice hurts people, etc.), 

·      that denying history means I don’t have to think about injustice to those around me, 

·      that it’s OK to steal what belongs to someone else regardless of how it affects others,

·      that banning books deepens my ignorance and that of others, and that I am not helping others by drawing them into my own fear,

 

and so on …

 

In short, I understood there’s a lot of payoffs to entertain and remain in denial, and it helps me understand why people do so, as I did, to maintain a comfort level not knowing what the truth is, so I don’t have to adjust my life in light of it.

 

With my new realizations, I can now choose whether to hide my head in the sand about things that make me uncomfortable, or choose to deal with them asap to make my life and the world a better place.