Denial Quotes

YOU CAN RUN, BUT CAN NOT HIDE"The statement, 'after giving it much thought', hardly becomes credible when one spends less that 24 hours in that endeavor. In fact, it is really giving something very little thought at all. In that case it becomes an issue of denial. And also, those who proclaim Christ as Lord and God as Abba, who run to Them to hide from the very issues in their lives that They desire to deal with and remove, always amaze me. We as Christians should run to God with the hope that He will reveal to us that which He intently desires to deliver us from".[Just Keeping It Real]

R. Alan Woods

Denial exists when three beliefs intersect:1. It cannot happen. 2. It cannot happen to you.3. It cannot happen to you now.

Johnnie Dent Jr.

Deciding denial was the better part of valor, CK pretended nothing was out of the ordinary.

Judy Teel

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear so don't look and they'll stay farther away than you expect they would.

Brian Spellman

At the beach, fifty years later, the old man understands finally that much of what he disavowed in himself before recognizing its irretrievable value, most of the heartache he caused himself and those who chose to love him, came out of that repudiation of his true self.Such is the power of denial, the old man now realizes: a comforting ally in our struggles for survival, a fierce foe in our quest for ourselves. Denial finds us when we feel most alone, and only alone can we banish this demon that bars the long way home.

Lionel Fisher

I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just so strong and realistic like. And so I thought, Well, if this dream comes true, how can I stop it, you know? How can I change things, you know? So I thought if I, like pierced my ear or something, like alter my physical image, dye my hair, the world wouldn't melt. So I dyed my hair and this pink lasts. I like it. It lasts. I don't feel like the world is gonna melt anymore.

Bret Easton Ellis

Denial is the lid on our emotional pressure cooker: the longer we leave it on, the more pressure we build up. Sooner or later, that pressure is bound to pop the lid, and we have an emotional crisis.

Susan Forward

You can hold on to the smallest doubt and take comfort in it, stay in denial and go on with your carefree life, until one day you're finally cornered by a truth that can no longer be ignored.

Glenn Beck

Apparently, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

Z.B. Heller

I will go to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, but I shall go not as a member of the MacHeath clan — no, I shall go as a free runner. I reject you. I deny you, I refuse and repudiate you as my clan.

Kathryn Lasky

Kicking the can down the road implies that we’re accepted the galling reality that whatever it is that we’ve avoiding, it’s something that’s not going to go away; at least on its own.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

We've been working out of our tin can for half a decade. Nobody suggests moving into a brick-and-mortar office; nobody wants to peer through glass windows, in a building with a foundation, and admit that the insomnia emergency is now a permanent condition.

Karen Russell

It was clear that the house was run on a certain system, of either great pomposity or great denial - it was too early for her to make up her mind about which one it was.

Noorilhuda

He hadn't "abused" alcohol, but had spent almost four years sitting in a chair drinking jug wine around the clock and looking, variously, at the wall, the window blind, and the TV screen.

Gilbert Sorrentino

All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.

Pete Townshend

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we?

Alison Miller

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

James Patterson

Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.

Liane Moriarty

I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!

Orson Scott Card

The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality.

Zelda Fitzgerald

Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest and the Holocaust are vulnerable to this kind of concerted denial because of their unfathomability, the unjustifiability, and the threat they pose to the politics of patriarchy and anti-Semitism respectively. Over and over, survivors of the Holocaust attest that they were warned of what was happening in Poland but could not believe it at the time, could not believe it later as it was happening to them, and still to this day cannot believe what they, at the same time, know to have occurred. For Holocaust deniers this is a felicitous twist, for their arguments denying the Holocaust and therefore the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state capitalize on the discrepancies of faded memory. In the case of incest, although post-traumatic stress disorder, amnesia, and dissociation represent some of the mind's strategies for comprehending the incomprehensible, incest deniers have taken advantage of inconsistencies to discredit survivor testimony.

Janet Walker

Everyone has a breaking point. Deny it, and you'll blind yourself to know when you've reached yours.

Dorothy McFalls

Yet, Step 2 and AA spirituality is about nothing if it isn’t about faith in God. Many good reasons exist why AA makes a distinction between religion and spirituality, but a denial of God is not one of them. – p. 127

Ray A.

She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.

Jhumpa Lahiri

If I believed a giant Platypus was coming to liberate humanity and save us all, it would still make more sense than the climate denial people do......

Steve Merrick

Okay, well...how's that water feeling, then?' 'Excuse me?' 'The Nile warm this time of the year?

J.R. Ward

It's important to avoid mirrors if one is unprepared to accept their daily news, and I think, in something as insignificantly devastating as appearance, denial is more socially constructive than despondency. Not that there's anything especially wrong with me--just the usual.

Rivka Galchen

Why do we procrastinate leaving? The denial phase is a humbling one. It takes a while to come to terms with our miserable luck. Rowley puts it this way: 'Fires only happen to other people.' We have a tendency to believe that everything is OK because, well, it almost always has been before.

Amanda Ripley

One sure way I can avoid facing myself is by refusing to look into the face of God.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Since when has outright denial of truth become a Nigerian factor?

Sunday Adelaja

Not everything needed to be processed. Some things needed to be ignored and slept on.

Max Wirestone

Continuous denial of rational arguments represents a contempt of common sense.

Eraldo Banovac

If you always want to have whatever you want any time you want it with no delays, and denial of self, you would end up ruining your life.

Sunday Adelaja

He slumped down into the pen, and the puppies immediately leapt on him. "Perhaps I'll see you later tonight.""If you're lucky," Celaena purred, and walked away. She smiled to herself as they strode through the castle.Eventully Nehemia turned to her. "Do you like him?"Celaena made a face. "Of course not. Why would I?"You converse easily. It seems as if you have...a connection.""A connection?" Celaena choked on the word. "I just enjoy teasing him.""It's not a crime if you consider him handsome. I'll admit I judged him wrong; I thought him to be a pompous, selfish idiot, but he's not so bad.""He's a Havilliard.""My mother was the daughter of a chief who sought to overthrow my grandfather.""We're both silly. It's nothing.""He seems to take great interest in you."Celaena's head whipped around, her eyes full of long-forgotten fury that made her belly ache and twist. "I would sooner cut out my own heart than love a Havilliard," she snarled.They completed their walk in silence, and when they parted ways, Celaena quickly wished Nehemia a pleasant evening before striding to her part of the castle.

Sarah J Maas

Avoidance is paying forward that which I would be much wiser to pay off.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Denial has rented a room in my head and frequently stomps around slamming doors.

Sarah Noffke

Denial couldn't be maintained.

Dean Koontz

If you want to know the real character of man, intentionally and timely give him the test of 3d’s; delay, denial and disappointment

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

In very rare cases, people will be self-satisfied and content within themselves. More often than not the very same people who choose to live alone are simply in denial after a painful experience or the failure in an intimate relationship.

Nityananda Das

Vanishing cream for the mind, English writer Jeremiah Creedon calls it.It's beholding the mote in your brother's eye, says the Bible, while disregarding the beam in your own.Denial is refusing to listen to the voice that awakens you in the night and whispers, "You know, you really are an incredible jerk and you ought to do something abou

Lionel Fisher

We cannot live side by side with obviously distressed people unless they are to blame and we are innocent. Nothing inside them or the way they live can be allowed to disturb our lives.

David Brandon

It is not what you don’t know that hurts you; it is what you do know, which is not the truth that does your spirit the most harm.

Shannon L. Alder

If you look at your average contemporary person, the potential for tragedy is immense. The people and things we love and value are strewn across the globe. Any number of health disasters can befall you or them.The truth is depressing. We are going to die, most likely after illness; all our friends will likewise die; we are tiny insignificant dots on a tiny planet. Perhaps with the advent of broad intelligence and foresight comes the need for confabulation and self-deception to keep depression and its consequent lethargy at bay. There needs to be a basic denial of our finitude and insignificance in the larger scene. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah just to get out of bed in the morning.

William Hirstein

In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on.

Elizabeth Howell

What most people call spontaneous recall usually involves memories that have been denied, not repressed. The survivor has always been aware that the sexual abuse happened, but he or she has studiously avoided thinking about it. A catalyst sets the memory process in motion, but the essential factor in the memory surfacing is the readiness of the survivor to deal with the reality of abuse.

Renee Fredrickson

Oftentimes what we do to minimize a problem maximizes it! Embrace truth helps us to let go!

Evinda Lepins

To heal from child sexual abuse you must believe that you were a victim, that the abuse really did take place. This is often difficult for survivors. When you’ve spent your life denying the reality of your abuse, when you don’t want it to be true, or when your family repeatedly calls you crazy or a liar, it can be hard to remain firm in the knowledge that you were abused.

Ellen Bass

All people express a fondness for truth and sincerity, yet many people prefer to live with their illusions and delusions. A person’s sincere desire to believe only what is true oftentimes does not trump their ingrained resistance to truths that fail to coincide with their deeply held desires. People reject truth because it undercuts what they wish was true and despise or discredit anyone whom offers a different version of truth than they are prepared to accept.

Kilroy J. Oldster

In his recent guest editorial, Richard McNally voices skepticism about the National Vietnam Veteran’s Readjustment Study (NVVRS) data reporting that over one-half of those who served in the Vietnam War have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or subclinical PTSD. Dr McNally is particularly skeptical because only 15% of soldiers served in combat units (1). He writes, “the mystery behind the discrepancy in numbers of those with the disease and of those in combat remains unsolved today” (4, p 815). He talks about bizarre facts and implies many, if not most, cases of PTSD are malingered or iatrogenic. Dr McNally ignores the obvious reality that when people are deployed to a war zone, exposure to trauma is not limited to members of combat units (2,3). At the Operational Trauma and Stress Support Centre of the Canadian Forces in Ottawa, we have assessed over 100 Canadian soldiers, many of whom have never been in combat units, who have experienced a range of horrific traumas and threats in places like Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. We must inform Dr McNally that, in real world practice, even cooks and clerks are affected when faced with death, genocide, ethnic cleansing, bombs, landmines, snipers, and suicide bombers ...One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients." Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.

Colin Cameron

In 2006, there is no army of recovered memory therapists, and Dr McNally’s assumptions about patients with PTSD and those working in this field are troubling. Owing to past debates, those working in the PTSD field are perhaps more knowledgeable than others about malingered, factitious, and iatrogenic variants.Why, then, does Dr McNally attack PTSD as a valid diagnosis, demean those working in the field, and suggest that sufferers are mostly malingered or iatrogenic, while giving little or no consideration is given to such variants of other psychiatric conditions? Perhaps the trauma field has been “so often embroiled in serious controversy” (4, p 816) for the same reason Dr McNally and others have trouble imagining the traumatization of a Vietnam War cook or clerk. One theory suggests that there is a conscious decision on the part of some individuals to deny trauma and its impact. Another suggests that some individuals may use dissociation or repression to block from consciousness what is quite obvious to those who listen to real-life patients."Cameron, C., & Heber, A. (2006). Re: Troubles in Traumatology, and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory/Reply: Troubles in Traumatology and Debunking Myths about Trauma and Memory. Canadian journal of psychiatry, 51(6), 402.

Colin Cameron

Yolanda Gampel utilizes an expanded concept of the "uncanny" to outline the results of violence: Those who experience such traumas are faced with an unbelievable and unreal reality that is incompatible with anything they knew previously. As a result, they can no longer fully believe what they see with their own eyes; they have difficulty distinguishing between the unreal reality they have survived and the fears that spring from their own imagination.

Nicole Waller

It was early in my career, and I had been seeing Mary, a shy, lonely, and physically collapsed young woman, for about three months in weekly psychotherapy, dealing with the ravages of her terrible history of early abuse. One day I opened the door to my waiting room and saw her standing there provocatively, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flaming red, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a snarl on her face. “You must be Dr. van der Kolk,” she said. “My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you about her?” I was stunned but fortunately kept myself from confronting “Jane” and instead heard her out. Over the course of our session I met not only Jane but also a hurt little girl and an angry male adolescent. That was the beginning of a long and productive treatment.

Bessel A. van der Kolk

Denial is a very effective human trick. People often tell how a situation was "unbearable," though, clearly, they have borne it. Lived to tell, so to speak.

Lorna Jane Cook

I want to thank everyone out there who has chosen not to drive after they have had something to drink.

Audrey Kishline

In my experience, it is entirely possible to watch something happen and not to see it at all.

Anna Funder

My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal.

Erin Merryn

Maybe we can stay in denial together forever?' I suggest....'No, I mean, maybe there's a town called Denial, and we can literally move there and forget about college.

Emily Henry

Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone.

Maureen Brady

(Sometimes it seems that haters are just fans who are in denial.)

Steve Maraboli

A refusal on the part of psychiatrists and therapists to validate the horrors of their patients' tortured past implies a refusal to take seriously the unconscious psychological mechanisms that individuals need to use to protect themselves from the unspeakable. Such a denial is, however, no longer ethical, for it is in the human capacity to dissociate that lies part of the secret of both childhood abuse and the horrors of the Nazi genocide, both forms of human violence so often carried out by 'respectable' men and women.

Felicity De Zulueta

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Denial Quotes

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