You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Defense Mechanisms- DENIAL, description and examples
Good summary of denial.
I'm most fascinated by a particular type of self-denial I often encounter, cognitive dissonance. It may also be worth its own article.
Thank you for your comment! Cognitive dissonance is actually a psychological discomfort, felt like a psychological stress, when a person faces confrontational beliefs or personal values. It is not a type of denial of reality, but rather an inner conflict of contradictory beliefs. More specifically, the example of a smoker: he can use denial at first as a defense mechanism. But in time, after doing research and understanding that smoking damages health, he continues to smoke even though he knows he's doing harm. This is felt as a psychological discomfort because he continues to do a behavior that is in contradiction with the new belief that smoking is actually harmful. This is an example of cognitive dissonance.