95. What’s So Bad About Denial?

No Stupid Questions

The episode explores whether denial can be a healthy coping mechanism during grief, using a listener's anecdote about physically feeling better while pretending a deceased uncle was alive. Hosts Stephen Dubner and

Key takeaways

• Listener Anna reported that repeating 'he's alive' in her head at age nine temporarily eliminated stomachaches and headaches caused by grief over her uncle's death.
• Angela Duckworth explains denial as a form of selective attention, comparing the mind's focus to a pen light that can be directed away from painful stimuli like fight scenes in movies or roadkill.

Main topics

• Grief and mourning psychology
• Denial vs. suppression as defense mechanisms

Notable quotes

Denial is, moving your attention away from something. And in most cases, I think, away from something that's painful.

Conclusion

The episode offers listeners a nuanced psychological framework for understanding grief,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:02) They asked me to contract certain muscles in my stomach, and I was like, what muscles? I'm Angela Duckworth. Speaker 6 (0:10) I'm Stephen Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Speaker 4 (0:14) Today on the show, is denial a helpful method of dealing with grief? I Speaker 2 (0:20) think that every single one of us has been in denial at least once. Speaker 6 (0:25) Not me. Never denied anything. Speaker 6 (0:31) Angela, we have a question here from a listener named Anna, which I think you will find very interesting and fairly provocative. Are you ready? Speaker 2 (0:41) Yeah. Speaker 6 (0:41) So Anna writes that she's 23 years old. She's a biology research associate, and she wants to know, is there recorded evidence of denial having a comforting effect on the negative physiological responses to grief? Speaker 2 (0:59) This sounds like not a question that people just ask out of pure academic curiosity. Speaker 6 (1:03) This is true. She writes, literally, there is a story behind my question. When she was quite young, around nine years old, a beloved family member passed away. She writes, though he was sick and the family suspected his death was nearing, the news still came suddenly and felt unexpected. My family was driving towards Disney World when we got the call. We finished our day at the park and made plans to return home the next day to attend the funeral. But for the entire day at the park, she writes, after receiving the news, I felt horribly sick. I had a headache, stomachache, felt motion sick. And then she writes, I pretended in my head that my beloved uncle who had died was still alive. He's alive, I said over and over to myself in my head. Suddenly, my stomachache and my headache ebbed, and then they were gone. Repeating denial words over and over to myself made me feel. physically better. Though I was just nine years old, I knew that denial didn't make the happier fiction playing in my head true. I stopped repeating he's alive in my head. And guess what happened? My stomachache and headache returned almost instantly. This is sounding like a true crime case for a psychology TV show that hasn't been made yet. I spent the drive home and most of the funeral being violently ill. I'm curious if there are any studies on or literature about the physical comfort that denial brings in the stages of grief. Or maybe I was just a very odd child who had an abnormally severe physical reaction to grief. Angela, what do you make of this? Speaker 2 (2:38) Well, I think this question that Anna asks is partly about grief. It's also partly about attention, because what denial is, is. Moving your attention away from something. And in most cases, I think, away from something that's painful. She also hints at the stages of grief idea that, you know, a lot of people have heard of. This Speaker 6 (3:05) is the famous Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the model that she popularized. Yes. Speaker 2 (3:10) Actually, you probably know more about it than I do. I don't know whether there's a lot of scientific basis for it. But what are the stages of grief? There are five of them, right? Speaker 6 (3:19) Yeah, so I do know this. And you're right. It is a popularization. There is very little empirical evidence that this is either universal or... Even Speaker 2 (3:29) typical, right? Speaker 6 (3:30) Or I would almost say, I hesitate to use the word useful because who's to say what's useful for someone. But Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was a famous Swiss-American psychiatrist, and she was popular for this model about the stages of mourning. The argument came to be that people who were in grief or in bereavement would go through five separate sequential stages of mourning. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. But we should say that her career was spent helping patients who were dying, terminal patients, confront their own death. And so this was developed largely from her observations of her dying. So it somehow got ported over to how we grieve for other people. So like a lot of the conventional wisdom or dogma about grief and bereavement, there just isn't a lot in the way of empirical evidence to support it. What always made me a little bit reluctant to pay too much attention to this five-stage model is that If one is grieving and doesn't feel one of those stages or steps, then one might feel that they are somehow failing to experience it the quote right way. And I should also say, I don't think she meant it to be this universal model that needs to be followed like a blueprint. But anyway, it has come to be thought of as a universal way of dealing with grief. And going back to Anna's note. The first distinct stage of mourning is, yes, denial. The Speaker 2 (5:08) sort of like nothing happened, this alternative reality that you create for yourself where there was no tragedy. I think another problem, perhaps, with this five stages of grief is that you think of them as kind of. being lockstep. So for example, you're on your way to the funeral and all of a sudden you're experiencing an episode of denial. And then you're thinking like, oh no, did I go back to the first step? Because I thought I had already gotten through anger and bargaining. So I think there could be some issues there. But as I said, I think this is a question not only about grief, which spares none of us, but also about attention, focusing on one thing that's going on and neglecting everything else that's going on. That's what attention is. It's like a spotlight. Maybe a better analogy would be that your attention is like a pen light. It's like a tiny pinprick of light in a very dark room. And when you cast your attention onto the water bottle that's sitting next to your laptop, previously you hadn't thought about the water bottle at all. Now, all of a sudden, the water bottle looms large. The same thing, by the way, happens when you think about how attention works when it sweeps across the vast, dark landscape of your internal mind. I mean, I could... dredge up a memory for you, Stephen. I'll do it right now. Can you remember a time where you had a stomach virus when you were in elementary school? Did you ever have a stomach virus when you were a little kid? Speaker 6 (6:33) I don't remember. Although I did have one about two months ago and it depressed the crap out of me. What Speaker 2 (6:40) happened? I Speaker 6 (6:41) was traveling. Being sick away from home is the worst. It's kind of my greatest fear, honestly. And it happened. Speaker 2 (6:47) Oh, that is so terrible. Well, Stephen, look, I dredged up this unpleasant memory of when you were sick and you were away from home. And until I dredged up that memory, until I adjusted the pen light of your attention to that memory, it was there. You just weren't paying attention to it. Thanks Speaker 6 (7:05) a lot. Speaker 2 (7:05) Yes. Yeah, you're welcome. So the idea of denial is that the pen light of your attention is. being directed away from something. It just tends to be the painful things that we're motivated to not think about. And the thing about human attention as get ready to drink, Danny Kahneman. would often say, nothing is as important as what you're thinking about while you're thinking about it. So the penalty of attention illuminates some tiny, tiny fraction of reality. And while it's illuminated, it's real. And when it's not illuminated, it's not real. It's why I think if you're for a moment going to just pretend that your loved one is still alive, then of course you don't feel bad anymore. Speaker 6 (7:53) When Anna talks about the physiological response she had to this grief, or I don't know if we'd say it's physiological response to grief per se