ABOUT DENIAL AND HUMOR THAT KILLS

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of the private and inherent in almost all of us ways to cope with adversity is to refuse to accept their existence. The first reaction of a person who was informed about the sudden death of a loved one: “No!”. This reaction is an echo of an archaic process that originates in childhood egocentrism, when cognition is guided by a pre-logical conviction: "If I do not recognize this, then this does not exist." All known "positive people" who always insist that "everything is fine and everything is for the best" is characterized by denial as a fundamental defense.

Denial is the desire to avoid new information that is incompatible with the prevailing positive ideas about oneself or another person; anxiety reduction is achieved by changing the perception of the external environment. Attention is blocked at the stage of perception. Information that contradicts personal preferences will not be accepted. Protection manifests itself in ignoring and evading potentially disturbing information. More often than other defense mechanisms, denial is used by suggested personalities and often prevails in somatic diseases, when a person, rejecting certain aspects of reality, resists treatment with all his might.

Denial is viewed as a refusal to recognize a traumatic reality, as a method of self-preservation, building a psychological barrier on the path of destructive penetration of tragedy into the inner world of a person, into his value-semantic system. Denial allows you to process tragic situations gradually and in stages. In extreme circumstances, the ability to deny the danger to life on the level of emotion can be life-saving. Through denial, we can realistically take the most effective and even heroic actions. Wars leave a lot of stories about people who “did not lose their heads” in deadly circumstances and, as a result, saved themselves and other people.

But denial can lead to the opposite outcome. So parents deny the obvious mental underdevelopment of their child and do not turn to specialists in time. The woman denies any obvious signs that her husband is in a sexual relationship with her daughter. And the soft-bodied boss denies the fact that his employees do not put him at anything and do not act for the good of the common cause, but pursue exclusively their own goals, which sooner or later ends for him with dismissal or even more trouble.

Most of us use denial to some degree in order to make life less unpleasant, and many people have specific areas in which this defense dominates others.

Many people whose feelings are wounded, in a situation where crying is inappropriate or unreasonable, will willingly give up their feelings.

Denial components can be found in most of the more mature defenses. This can include, for example, the belief that the person who rejected you actually wanted to be with you, but is simply not yet ready to give himself entirely and formalize your relationship. In this case, there is a denial of rejection, as well as a higher reception of a higher order of finding justification, which is called rationalization.

Defense through reactive formation, when an emotion turns into its opposite (hate - love), is a specific and more complex type of denial of a feeling, from which one must defend, than simply refusal to experience this feeling.

Mania is the most telling example of psychopathology in which denial is at work. At the beginning of a manic state, a person denies his physical needs, the need for sleep, financial difficulties, personal weaknesses, social restrictions and even his mortality. While depression makes it absolutely impossible to ignore the unpleasant facts of life, mania makes them psychologically insignificant.

People for whom denial is the main defense are manic in nature (all the same people are positive). They are classified as hypomanic. (The prefix “hypo,” meaning “few” or “few,” indicates the difference between these people and those experiencing typical and severe manic states.) Slightly hypomanic people can be charming, communication with them proceeds easily and naturally and infect with a good mood.

Many comic and entertainers display wit, energetic exuberance, a penchant for wordplay and infectious high spirits. It is these signs that characterize people who, for a long time, successfully remove and transform painful experiences.

Humor, which aims to win the favor of others, to entertain others by doing things or saying funny things to the detriment of one's reputation, has nothing to do with the positive aspects of humor. This humor is a form of defensive denial in order to hide negative feelings or avoid constructive problem solving.

It is difficult to imagine our life without laughter and humor. In the realm of emotional regulation, humor undoubtedly plays a very important role. Humor is a great way to release emotional tension, anxiety, and fear. It happens that we are left with nothing but humor. But humor is different. And so are the consequences of using it.

The acclaimed American comedian Chris Farley began polishing his comic abilities as a child.

The fat boy was desperate to please others. The actor's professional success, which was achieved at a young age, did not save him from alcohol, drugs and gluttony.

On December 18, 1997, the body of thirty-three-year-old Chris Farley was found by his brother. Death occurred as a result of cardiac arrest due to a speedball overdose. Another popular comedian John Belushi also died from an overdose of the same drug at the age of thirty-three in 1982.

Humor, the purpose of which is to win the favor of others, to entertain others by doing things or saying funny things to the detriment of one's reputation, humor humiliating oneself and laughing along with others in response to ridicule, has nothing to do with the positive aspects of humor. This humor is a form of defensive denial in order to hide negative feelings or avoid constructive problem solving.

In this case, humor is a way of denying the seriousness of the problem and does nothing to effectively overcome the problem. On the contrary, such humor is alarming, being a symptom of severe internal deficiency.

Some people (among whom there are also many famous actors of the comedy genre) passed away by committing suicide. Relatives and friends are often perplexed: “How could this have happened! He was so cheerful."

Cheerfulness and self-deprecating humor are not the same thing. And such statements of loved ones only speak of how far they were from the unfortunate person who became a laughing stock with his own hands.