Perceiving and acknowledging what drinking and alcohol use means for your life is an essential first step in resolving obsession. If you’re intentionally uninformed about whether your alcohol and substance abuse is truly harmful and giving you problems, it may prevent you from seeking help.
Learn how to recognize denial, understand what it implies for the compulsion pattern, and how to help yourself or someone you love move past it.
What Exactly Is Denial?
When someone disregards, diminishes, or mutilates reality, they are in denial. You might consider denial as a way to protect yourself from having to see, manage, or admit the truth about what’s going on in your life.
Individuals who abuse alcohol and medicines frequently have difficulty managing their emotions. You may turn to alcohol or prescription medicines to help you escape your feelings. Another technique for ignoring problems is denying.
When someone with substance abuse or alcoholism problem is intentionally denying, it doesn’t imply they can’t see how they’re abusing drugs and alcohol. They can see the drugs and alcohol as a diversion from their worries.
Denying can be effective for a short time while handling what is going on. Denial is harmful because it prevents you from seeking aid or dealing with a situation.
What Role Does Denial Have in Addiction?
Enslavement may be a never-ending loop because drugs are both a source of comfort and problems for those addicted to them.
Often, someone addicted to alcohol or pharmaceuticals will remain wilfully oblivious of their captivity until their problems become harder to ignore. This could happen as a result of overindulgence or other serious health events, a legitimate challenge, or relationship tension or catastrophe.
Recognize Denial: Step-by-Step Instructions
It’s difficult to tell if you’re in denial. Assuming you’ve been invited by someone you trust, take a step back and assess the situation from a distance. Consider the small and large ways that alcohol or drugs play a role in your life.
Consider the following scenarios if you think about your drinking and substance use in the following ways:
- You restrict the role that alcohol or drugs play in your life because you can still meet your duties. “It doesn’t matter if I occasionally sleep late after a night of drinking because I usually do my task.”
- You compare your alcohol or medication consumption to that of others. “I don’t put in as much effort as others.”
- You place blame on others for your worries. (“If my parents hadn’t ____, I wouldn’t have been____.”) Alternatively, “If my work wasn’t so unpleasant, I wouldn’t need to drink as much.”
- You argue that you deserve a drink since you’ve had a long day, finished a difficult task, need to unwind, and so on.
If you’ve experienced concerns like those listed above, you may want to speak with someone you trust or an advisor to furtheranalyze your proclivities. At Taylor Recovery Center, our team of experts can assist you in recognizing and overcoming denial, improving your proclivities, or locating support for a substance abuse problem.
