Posted by morgan miller on December 26, 2010, at 12:55:30
In reply to Re: Are cancer patients maladaptive too? Dble standard » violette, posted by SLS on December 26, 2010, at 11:49:33
>How do you know when someone is in denial?
I'm sure Violette will have a good answer, but I'm going to also take a stab at this one. I believe many people that are close to someone start to realize they are in denial. In the case of a therapist/patient relationship, the therapist realizes the extent of denial their patient is in as the patient reveals more and more about their life and childhood. The therapist has the expertise to know that we just do not escape certain inadequacies or traumas during developmental periods of life without them having some kind of detrimental lasting effect on our psyche and brain chemistry(Scott, I know you and I have discussed this before). It becomes very evident that when the patient either is not fully aware of the impact these things had on them or the completely deny the impact, they are in denial. Then there are friends and family that have personal knowledge of the person they are close to, that know there is something wrong in this person's life, that know this person could be more aware of their own reality, but continue to deny anything these realities.
There are certainly cases where it may not be very clear that someone is in denial. I think this is when no one is sure if there is really anything to be in denial of. In terms of what is being talked about in this thread, if there is no reason to believe that something else besides biology is at the root of one's depression, than there is no reason to believe that one might be in denial of the possibility that there may be other contributing factors than biology. Sorry Scott, I'm not talking about you here, just thought it was a pertinent example for the discussion : ) I also may have stated the obvious to everyone. If I did, sorry if you find yourself saying, "Ah, yeah, daah".
I believe there are levels of denial, some much deeper than others.
poster:morgan miller
thread:973794
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101218/msgs/974688.html