Key Points
Denial is a natural defense in early childhood.
Narcissists resort to routine forms of denial to distort reality.
Some forms of denial are denial, rationalization, minimization, negation, and the reverse.
Denial is the refusal to acknowledge a threatening, uncomfortable, or inconvenient truth, and is a natural, unconscious defense mechanism in early childhood. Children may deny a “bad” feeling such as jealousy to maintain their self-esteem, or they may deny a destabilizing feeling such as fear of an abusive parent to maintain attachment to that caregiver.
Like trauma, short-term denial can serve as a temporary protection against the full impact of something painful or overwhelming. But persistent denial in adulthood, a hallmark of pathological narcissism, becomes a choice to engage in distorting reality.
Narcissistic Denial of Comfort
Unless they suffer from a psychotic detachment from reality, as can happen with schizophrenia, people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) know the difference between fact and fiction, truth and lies. But because their personality structure is built around inflated self-importance (designed to support their unstable self-esteem), they keep their distance from reality and scrutinize information to suit their desires. Add to the mix their exaggerated, unmoderated entitlement to empathy from others, and you have a personality type that is predisposed to manipulatively and selfishly denying comfort.
Forms of Denial
Narcissistic denial becomes a form of self-deception in which accurate perceptions are ignored and replaced with preferred distortions. Such distortions can range from subtle distortions to unrecognizable alterations of reality. Examples of common forms of denial include a mother denying that her angry husband physically abused their son.
Related : Deciphering Covert and Grandiose Narcissists
Denial: Denial pushes away the truth as unworthy of attention. Example: “That happened so long ago that I can’t remember what happened. Didn’t you get over it?”
Rationalization: Rationalization justifies a fact to make it seem reasonable. Example: “Your father disciplined you for your good because you were out of control and needed a firm hand.”
Minimizing the truth: Minimizing the truth means acknowledging it but minimizing its importance or impact. For example: “Your father sometimes got angry, but he was always there for you.”
Denial: A denial is an outright denial of the truth. For example: “Your father never laid a hand on you, and you know that.”
Contrary: The opposite asserts an opposite version of the truth based on wishful thinking and fantasy. For example: “Your father was always kind and loving to you. He’s a saint, and you’re lucky to have him.”
Effects of Denial
Sharing information and reflecting reality are fundamental dimensions of human relationships. In early childhood, we rely almost entirely on our parents to teach us about ourselves and the world around us. If our primary caregivers and role models reflect inaccurate or outright false interpretations of reality, this creates a persistent cognitive dissonance between what we feel and perceive and what we’ve been told is happening. Such distortions lead to a decline in confidence, alienation from our bodily instincts, chronic self-doubt, and other profound disruptions in our identity development and ability to form attachments.
OvercomingDenial
Children who experience persistent forms of natural denial at home are more vulnerable to denial-based manipulation and coercion later in life by narcissistic partners, friends, and others in positions of power and authority. To overcome this confusion and vulnerability, it becomes imperative to identify the patterns of denial we have experienced and to recontextualize these experiences within our growing knowledge and understanding.
As we work to disengage from the false narratives of narcissists and other disturbed people in our lives, many of us find ourselves reconstructing reality in line with what we have intuitively known to be true for far too long.
