Self-denial is about telling yourself no to something you really want

When people tell you that you’re so full of self-denial, it sounds like an insult, doesn’t it? But in reality, it’s actually telling you that you should take more liberties for yourself than what you’ve taken in the past. They are telling you to say “yes” to the things you want to do, but have told yourself you cannot.

Why do we tell ourselves ‘no’?

It may seem weird that we tell ourselves ‘no’ when we could just as well say ‘yes’. There are reasons we do, however.

Most often, it has something to do with your family and your family’s expectations on you, or what you THINK they expect of you. Sometimes the expectations are an honest mistake, for instance, who could guess a nice straight A student, the nicest girl in town, secretly dreams of a career as a prostitute? 🙂

To keep the examples a little less obvious, you could be hiding what you want ASSUMING everyone would be dead against it, and simply stating so would cause too much friction in the family than what it would be worth to confess to it. So you go for years denying yourself, lying to yourself and others what you truly want, wishing you’ll grow out of it in time.

The obvious answer

Whatever it is you deny yourself, it is quite likely linked to everything else you want. Everything is connected to everything, you see. This is no exception. You deny yourself here, and all your doors are closed or jammed for you. You may need to use the skills that you are drawn to in any area of life you choose, and for as long as you deny it, nothing in your life will take its natural place.

For as long as you are in self-denial, you won’t see the natural, obvious answers you are looking for.

Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to clear your way back to the door you slammed and bolted shut years ago.

Piling up stuff to stop yourself from walking through the door

While in self-denial, you’ve probably tried to keep yourself busy and focused on something else. You’d try ANYTHING else at all, just not THAT thing. You’ve tried to play by the rules. You’ve tried to learn to think like others. You’ve tried to fit into the box, but nothing really works or gets you TRULY excited.

Your friends and family are probably frustrated with you because you keep going around in circles and stick with nothing really. You keep trying and quitting. Changing jobs and looking frustrated and annoyed.

All of these lies you’ve told yourself are mostly to yourself to avoid confrontation with anyone else who would be affected by your choice. This will pile up like junk in front of a door over time.

The junk in question is people’s view on you. Because the people in your life “think” you are a certain way, they try to help you with your frustration and guide you towards the best answer they know. If you’d tell them what you really want, they’d feel like you’ve gone mad. They’d treat this as one more of your crazy ideas and “revelations”.

If you let them in on your plans, they will never let you go through the door without a fight. This is because to them, this is all news! Why did you ALL OF THE SUDDEN decide to take such a drastic step?! Where is this all coming from? Who ARE YOU?!

Unbeknownst to them, you’ve been thinking and processing about it for years. You’ve decided against it countless times. You’ve put it out of your mind again and again until it inevitably rises and demands your full attention.

Arguments over it

At some stage, this may lead to arguing over whether or not the people in your life actually know you. You may accuse them for trying to push you into a box. And, don’t get me wrong, in many cases, they are.

Many people in denial try to tell others who think they are “perfect” that they are not. They tell this by deliberately rebelling, doing drastic stuff, and trying to break people’s idea of who they are.

This doesn’t necessarily sink in too well.

People may have a truly persisting idea that you are “a nice person” who is simply “going through some stuff”. This is about THEIR denial about who you truly are. This also may be an idea, that “a nice person” cannot also do/like/want what you do. They know you’re nice, so they don’t understand where all this “bad” is coming from. (Or whatever word you’d use about your thing.)

Rebels

Take Miley Cyrus for example. She had to break through the Disney Princess mold. Johnny Depp had to break the Hollywood heartthrob role. I… I had to break the nice daughter of a nice small town family -role.

I think people still think Miley Cyrus is nice on the inside. 😉

The moral of that story is, that people should look at each other honestly from the start. Allow people to be who they are, even if you don’t like them, or felt you’d like them more in your box. Listen to them when they talk about themselves. If you insist what they tell you isn’t true (to make them feel better about themselves) you are telling them that they are not good enough or loved the way they are. If they feel unloved and unaccepted in their own circles, they will rebel if they are strong enough characters.

If they would be accepted for their bad qualities as their good ones, their rebellion doesn’t have to go too far.

It doesn’t have to break family bonds.

Or jaws.

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