Ever since we were born, we’ve made decisions. Incredibly, we decided from a very young time: did we decide whether we were going to buy one toy or another, whether we were going to have an ice cream of one flavor or another?Anyway, as thoughtful and sensitive adults, we are made of the sum and interaction of each of our decisions.
Since we came into the world, we have also “counted things. ” Sometimes the importance of what happens is in the way we say it, because we are “narrators” of our own lives.
- Our very survival leads us to “distort”.
- So we generate something like “shock absorbers”.
- They make our perception of what surrounds us and ourselves “dignified.
- Easy.
- Or bearable.
- “.
One of these distortions is called denial, being one of the classic defense mechanisms: we do not face conflicts or complex realities directly denying that they exist, that are important or that have something to do with ourselves. reality that we don’t like, the mental? And the dangerous thing about negotiation is that we don’t understand what’s behind it.
We live in the face of emotional conflicts and threats that may arise internally or externally, while refusing to recognize some painful aspects of the reality around us, but others are able to see these aspects.
There are many ways to extract behavior from denial; In the strictest cases, we have dangerous behaviors or substance use: most people suffering from alcoholism will deny suffering from this disease and will always claim to be in control; in the face of it, others understand that he is lying and hiding the truth. of us, but “lies and hides the truth of himself?
In the example of substance use, we can clearly see this mechanism; but what happens when denial is also practiced in interpersonal relationships?As in addictions, negotiation prevents us from seeing reality, does not allow us to be free and inevitably leads us to establish links of dependence.
Most of the time, we reject things about our relationships, especially the couple, because of deeply rooted and self-rooted emotions or beliefs, such as fear of abandonment and low self-esteem. In addition, in the process of “passion” one can succumb to a powerful model of idealization of the couple: by denying these behaviors that hurt me, I enter into a potentially toxic bond while “telling me”. the reality of the person in front of me in an idealized way, which will reduce the impact of these harmful behaviors that do not benefit me. In this way, I build the foundations of an emotional bond as powerful as it is dependent.
Our body is surprisingly wise, our nature is magical and that is why we react physically to external stimuli: do all emotions manifest on an organic level, whether pity, anger, joy, sadness, anxiety?
There are phrases or behaviors of our partner that cause negative reactions in our body: we must listen to what our body tells us.
You can take the discomfort as an example: most dependent links are characterized by emotions such as pain, pity, if in a new relationship we feel sorry for ourselves, we will not notice the rest of the things that accompany this pity, and that is why we deny. We all know the phrases: “Does it bother me?”, “I don’t want to leave him alone, he doesn’t have friends, I’m sorry?Yes? I know you don’t treat me well, but you suffer for other things, I feel very sorry for you, you’re a good person.
Mercy is not love, mercy does not lead to passion, it leads to the establishment of bonds of dependence, it makes us feel that they need us or what do we need?Healthy couples love each other, are they self-sufficient? But they don’t need each other. They’re together because they want to, not because they need it.
The need arises when we are dependent, addiction leads to isolation and lack of personal resources, so far from helping us to solve previous deficiencies that we had not solved, such as low self-esteem or fear of loneliness, multiplies them.
If we place the whole source of satisfaction in the other, we run the serious risk of emotional chaos, since our mood will always depend on the mood of our partner, will our decisions have to be validated or approved by our partner?We depend, the lower we will feel and the fewer personal resources we will have, so it will be much harder to break these “toxic” ties, not only because of the feeling of pity but because we feel that we are alone and that it cannot be?without the other one. Worse, we add a terrible ingredient to this whole recipe: guilt.
We can identify that we are wrong when
? The beloved saddens us and we cling to him to justify his behavior.
? The loved one makes us jealous and to justify our jealousy, we blame ourselves.
? Loved one makes us feel inferior; we detect that you don’t like our clothes, our comments, our skills and you’re ashamed of our reactions.
? The loved one limits our time and our living space, creating a sense of burden and/or lack of satisfactory social relationships.
Obviously, the answer is yes. Pity is not the same as empathy; jealousy is not the same as the sense of intimate connection we establish with our loved one; feeling inferior is not the same as having different points of view; and sharing activities with the person we love doesn’t mean you have to spend all your time with them.
Don’t we choose an owner, or a son, or a parent, we don’t choose a boss or an employee, we choose a life partner. The more wrong we are, the further away we are from pure and unconditional love. Truth is necessary to be happy; by accepting reality, we can also evolve in our relationships, as Carl Jung sums it up: “What you deny, submit it; What do you accept, transform it?”