What is Denial? Causes of Denial: Emotional Trauma

- Updated on August 3, 2019

What is Denial? Causes of Denial: Emotional Trauma 1By Dr. Artour Rakhimov, Alternative Health Educator and Author

Traumatized and stressed ostrich in denial trying to hide his head in the sandDr. Artour Rakhimov introduces part 2 of the New Decision Therapy video with Lynn Himmelman, master practitioner, and trainer, which is about the process of New Decision Therapy itself. He asks about Denial: “What is denial? And how does it relate to the NDT process?”

Lynn talks about the common meaning of the term denial – how someone would deny the truth consciously and deliberately. Also in the sense that one person will not see something and another person would say ”Wake up for Heaven’s sake! You are in denial!” Interestingly, though, what we mean in NDT when a person is in denial is they are not able or ready to see and hear the truth. They delude themselves in order to protect their conscious mind from trauma and have forgotten the material which is stored behind an amnesiac barrier. In this state, the mind is not integrated or self-aware and cannot heal because the self is not whole.

Woman in denial with tears from trauma and stress The person is expending great psychic and physiological energy to maintain the internal schism and would actively defend themselves against someone who tried to impose the light of truth on them. They would dismiss the bringer of awareness through dismissal and hostility albeit in a defensive way. Creative energy is being expended and inventive strategies would be employed to maintain the facade of a false self-image and shield themselves from reality. Alienation is preferable to going into the emotions and physical self to deal with the stored pain. It is only ever a partial solution and their future behavior is likely to be distorted by it. New Decision Therapy is one of the sets of procedures and techniques that could allow them to meet the stored trauma safely with safety valves in place to protect the person who is simply not ready to deal with their past injuries.

Why Denial Perists and Sucks

In the second video, Dr. Artour asks Lynn about denial cause and mechanism.

In the New Decision Therapy, we are looking at denial from the perspective that this is a coping mechanism default that the person has slipped into because a situation was too painful or too overwhelming or entirely unsafe. So out of desperation, the person had to create some way of coping. That unproductive decision gets lost in the psyche but continues to run in the background and influence their present life. It affects their decisions without their conscious knowing. So denial is actually something that’s hidden from that person’s point of view.

The people using denial continue to unconsciously repress emotions because their emotions are extremely traumatic to live with. People want to go on with their lives. Therefore, they suppress, repress, deny these negative events. Thus, they live just to survive with a limited perspective on life.

So denial is actually something that’s hidden from that person’s point of view.

Denial and stress cause poor health

Stress and negative emotions create hyperventilation or over-breathing that leads to diseases such as diabetes, asthma, bronchitis, cancer and many other diseases that lead to a decline in people’s state of health. In turn, this creates a cycle where people’s poor physical health makes it hard to have positive emotions, clarity and to be able to concentrate.

Dr. Artour Rakhimov works to slow down unconscious or automatic breathing patterns and this assists in improving your physical health. Improving body-oxygen levels will limit any damage caused by traumatic experiences, denial and unhealthy habits. Additionally, there is an improvement in having more positive emotions and it becomes easier to concentrate and improve your clarity. In regards to the medical norm, a healthy breathing level is 40 seconds when measured with the control pause test. Having this level will increase your resiliency to face any stressors head on.

Also, the will to achieve and maintain balance in a healthy lifestyle is greatly benefited. People that have 40 to 60 seconds for the CP test or body-oxygen levels live with many health benefits such as sleeping less, having more energy and a large desire to exercise. In turn, these health improvements help to increase body-oxygen levels and limit the effects of the traumatic experience, its denial, and the reoccurring negative emotions.