Denial is not just a river in Egypt. More than narcissism, perfectionism, the drive to overachieve, or to keep yourself from achievement, denial will put the breaks on your dreams.

Denial is the refusal to be held accountable for your actions. The Blame Game. Pointing the finger. When you give the power of your life over to events and other people, there is no hope for improvement. There’s no ability to improve, and your skills are seen as worthless.

The Power of Responsibility

Self-confidence relies heavily on feeling good about your ability to change and improve your situation. Faith on yourself. People suffering from denial take themselves out of the question, and leave their lives up to others to fix.

It’s very hard to take back responsibility of your actions once you’ve given it away. In essence you say nothing you do does anything at all, so someone else must be doing things for you.

Giving responsibility over your life has some subtle benefits, for the right person. If you honestly believe nothing you do has consequences, you never feel guilty. That leads to a lot of confusion when your actions hurt someone, especially those close to you.

Giving responsibility to someone else also means you never have to worry about leaving your comfort zone. You can stay who you are, where you are, forever, and anything results – in your mind – was meant to happen to you.

Because people in denial do not believe they control their actions, they don’t focus on how what they do affects what they want. They’re often found sabotaging their own needs to fulfill the expectations of other people. The self-destructive behaviors that result will not end until the person takes back responsibility for their lives.

Taking it back

The first issue for anyone in denial to overcome is their sense of worthlessness. People don’t just give up their rights to get out of responsibility. They have a serious need of proof that they’re competent.

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