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Classic Denial Mechanisms

5 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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0:34

A short YouTube clip by Amber Hollingsworth describing classic denial mechanisms people use around problematic behaviors (e.g., heavy drinking, smoking). The speaker explains that people often acknowledge a problem yet immediately justify it ("it's a problem, but...") with reasons such as self-medication for anxiety or reactance to being told not to do it.

Chapters

It's kind of like the person's maybe acknowledging, like, okay, I'm like a heavy drinker or problematic drinker or I smoke too much or whatever it is, you know? So they're acknowledging that whatever the thing is is probably more than it should be, but there's a justification for it. So it's like, yeah, it's a problem, but fill in the blank. Right. But it's the only thing that helps me with my anxiety. But I'm really just self medicating. But you know what? Only reason I do this, because you're always telling me not to. And when you tell me not to, then I pretty much have to. These are sort of like cl, Classic denial kind of things happening here.