People tell lies to reassure. They don’t mean to tell a lie, they look at the wrong moment.

Take a kid who’s going to be vaccinated. It’s an injection and he doesn’t know how he’s going to feel about it. Telling him that it’s ok is a lie. There are a lot of chances that the injection will frighten him or hurt. For him, it’s not ok. It’s when it’s done that he will know if it’s ok or not. There are a lot of chances that it will indeed be ok then. There is no use in denying the fear or hurt. There is everything to be won in learning that he can deal with it.

But once people have learned that denying an emotion is a method to deal with it, there are chances he’ll apply it to himself.

When a new project comes up these people don’t acknowledge the fear anymore. They disconnected themselves from it. As they can’t see it, they can’t use it to assess the challenges they’ll encounter nor can they detect why they develop resistance, move into procrastination or reject engaging in the project.

Emotions don’t go away from denying them.