Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says,
‘Denial is a conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, reality, etc. relating to the situation concerned. It’s a defense mechanism and perfectly natural. Some people can become locked in this stage when dealing with a traumatic change that can be ignored. Death of course is not particularly easy to avoid or evade indefinitely’. So how can we deal with this you might ask? Everyone has their own way of dealing with trauma and stress but some tips that may be useful are:- Use the people you have as a support, test out your reality with them, talk to them.
- Try not to avoid anything and everything that evokes a feeling in you, photos, letters and so on. Use them to help you express your emotions rather than ignore them as though they don’t exist.
- Do not ‘do’ too much, let others help you plan and arrange the next steps, ‘doing’ too much means you are avoiding ‘being’ with your feelings and they need to be acknowledged.
- Speak to others or seek others who have experienced a similar situation, maybe they know what it is like to feel denial.
- If you start to feeling anger, embrace it, it’s another stage, if you know you don’t really ‘do’ anger you may remain in denial to avoid it, you need to grieve.