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Dealing with Difficult Emotions: What are denial and repression defences and how do I spot them?
- Mark Colclough
By Mark Colclough, Couples Therapist and Fully Qualified Psychotherapist M.A.
Denial: Refusing to accept reality. Repression: Keeping disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious.
What are denial and repression defences and how do I spot them?
Defence Mechanisms: An Overview
When we feel physically threatened, we instinctively defend ourselves. Imagine a person approaching you with a knife. You body and mind would automatically enter ‘fight or flight’ mode, giving you cause to either flee the scene or fight against the armed individual.
When it comes to our emotions and experiences, we do the same – we defend ourselves against unpleasant or unsafe thoughts and feelings. These are called ‘defence mechanisms’, and in the DSM-6 (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) 31 defence mechanisms are described.
Denial
Denial is when we block difficult environmental events from our consciousness. If a situation is too much to bear, we deny its presence altogether. Denial is a term frequently found in addiction and recovery communities. When a person addicted to a substance cannot accept the presence of their addiction and its devastating consequences, they deny the problem altogether and may try and find something else to blame for the carnage surrounding them.
Another example is death and bereavement. When a person dies suddenly, we may find it impossible to accept, and go into deep denial about the event occurring – or how it occurred.
Denial is a barrier to truth. Bringing truth to the consciousness in a safe and supported way can allow you to feel difficult feelings and process them properly. Individual psychotherapy can help you with this.
Repression
Repression is where we try to prevent threatening or disturbing thoughts and feelings coming to the consciousness. Unlike denial, repression is more about what’s happening inside of your mind, rather than an environmental factor.
An example of repression is guilt and shame surrounding sexuality. The repression of sexual thoughts and feelings can occur because we feel disturbed by them – for cultural, religious, familial or even legal reasons. If you have feelings towards the same gender, but are from a country where being gay is illegal, or are married to someone of the opposite gender, your natural instinct might be to repress these unwanted feelings.
Other feelings that might be repressed are:
- How we feel about our families (you might repress hatred or anger towards a parent to ‘keep the peace’).
- Our inconvenient desires for the future (you might repress the desire to live abroad or do something radically different, out of fear of disturbing the status quo at home).
- How we feel about ourselves (you might repress deep seated feelings of self loathing, envy of others, or violent thoughts).
Again, this forces you to live a lie, and never discover and bring to the surface your truth. I can help you bring these feelings forward without causing harm to yourself or your partner.
