Course 3: PL 102 - Denial & Distractions (Discussion 3)

Discussion 3:

1) For me I would describe denial as avoidance and not being accountable. It is about not accepting something that deep down you know is true.

2) One of the most important things I learned about things that operate outside of my awareness is that they are usually day-to-day skills you need constantly. For example, I don’t think about ‘how do I drink’ I just know, and I do it. It is natural. I also learned that our thought process is usually based on patterns and is usually repetitive and constant.

3) Top 3 Distraction systems: Accomplishments, Money and Social media. I think the most powerful distraction for society is social media as it is quick and easy to access and always available no matter what. However specifically for me, my accomplishments are the most powerful distraction. This is because I like to spend a lot of time comparing my achievements to others and I measure my self-worth by my accomplishments.

@GlenM

Q: How would you define denial in your own words?

A: I would define denial as something that we don’t want to face and that we would make it look or seem better than it actually is. But denial can also be denying something that you’ve done. I could define denial in a lot of ways, you could deny things in a funny and cute way but you can also do it in a more serious matter.

Q: What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

A: That those are things that we are not aware of or things that we simply just don’t know of.

Q: What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

A:

1: bad thoughts or just thoughts entering our mind - when we’re doing for example school work and we’re just working on it but the second that thoughts are entering our mind we can get easily distracted by it, we can get sad or just really distracted in them. Sometimes they can make us stop doing the thing that we’re working on.

2: tiktok - the app might seem lovely but it’s very distracting, in my experience I just get lost and I just keep scrolling throughout the app. Even if I think that it was just a few minutes, I realized that a few hours have passed. It makes time go so much faster and it seems like days just fly by.

3: music - after a rough day or just when I can use some distraction I listen to music. It can help to distract my mind and it can help me to lose track of time for a bit. It can also make me feel safe and secure, like I’m in a different space where nothing matters for a second but me. For me this is a good distraction.

For me tik tok is the most distracting one, it sometimes keeps me scrolling for hours and it makes me lose track of time and it makes time go so much faster and it just feels like the days are flying by without me actually doing something.

- Lena

@GlenM

1. How would you define denial in your own words?

According to me, denial is ignorance or simply avoiding the inevitable.

2. What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

That it's a learned behaviour.

3. What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

Food, the internet, and books.

The most powerful (in a positive way) would be books and (in a negative way) would be the internet.

@GlenM

1. How would you define denial in your own words?

Denial, from what I've heard is one of our coping mechanisms that we use to not deal with the uncomfortable emotions, by ignoring it. Denial is harmful for most of the time as it makes us push away the things that we're afraid to face, and it eventually negatively affects us and the ones we love

2. What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

The most important things that I learnt about the things that operate outside our awareness is that they are the emotions and feelings which we have pushed down because it weren't accepted by our parents and loved ones. And because of that it get suppressed to our deepest parts of ourself.

3. What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

The top three distraction systems are food, social media, and other online distractions. I think the most powerful distraction are the online distractions which we possess at hand. As they can offer an instant kick to our brain's reward system, that we prefer doing those, instead of performing tasks or activities that are monotonous to us

@GlenM

1. How would you define denial in your own words? ÃÂ

Knowing the reality of a situation or thing, but not being able to accept it because it is too difficult to process.

2. What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

When we repeat a certain habit or pattern, it is because our minds are unconscious of our actions. However, there is a difference in the way our mind processes things, when we learn something new, we are more aware of what we are learning.

3. What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

a.) Social media

b.) Computer games

c.) Television

The most powerful distraction system is television, because it influences our lifestyle and the way we think and sometimes see the world.

@GlenM

1. How would you define denial in your own words?

refusing to admit the truth or reality of something unpleasant

2. What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

that we can not control the things happening outside of our awareness but for sure we can control our reaction and our perspective towards them.

3. What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

social media. family .foods

the most powerful one is social media cause it makes a great role in our lives and it may cause depression , sleeping disorders and etc...

@GlenM

1- Denial is not acknowledging the truth in order to give oneself the illusion of safety.

2- To make space for new knowledge, the data gained before moves to the unconscious, this means that a person can perform according to the data gained before without a second thought.

3- Social Media, Games and Sleep

According to ny opinion, Games are the most powerful as they suck a person into their world and then the kids and the adults don't realize how it is just a waste of time. I know many people will disagree but i had a friend 22 years old of age who spent at least 4 hours daily playing football with a bunch of other guys, it wasn't that he was doingit for his career or that he will go play in university and use it to his benefit. He has been doing it ever since he was a 9. You would think he was good at it, but he really wasn't. It was just the rush of it that drove him to spend a quarter of his day playing football for 13 years of his life. But it didn't end there, he spent hours after that playing a video game about football. He did all this during the time when he should have been studying or focusing on his career because he was kicked out of the university earlier this year.

This is the story of just one guy who was very dear to me. I have seen so many grown-up people ruining their posture after some video game. Spending tons of money on games that are never gonna benefit them.

@GlenM

1. How would you define denial in your own words?

For me denial is blocking away our sight from seeing our problems or facing them head on, we may know what we are pushing something to the back of our heads, but we still do it, as denial gives us a sense of comfort, as if we are doing all right.

I believe denial is helpful and necessary at times. It sometimes protects our brain from the whole tremendous shock when facing a tragic event. And in this case, denial is only temporary.

2. What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

I learned why we do keep doing certain activities over and over for no clear purpose, we just do it. And it is how these things are meant to be in the first place.

3. What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

The internet - the food - the educational system

I believe the internet is the most powerful. Lots have taken the internet as an escape from their realities. It contains countless resources and many people from every country and speakers of every language, it is an ocean of information and a whole force.

@GlenM

1. How would you define denial in your own words? ÃÂ

What I think denial is is when you already have the awareness of something wrong with you and your life whether you see it as an actual problem to you and others or not and decide to push it aside or hold it off as unimportant. For example if someone starts to experience sleepless nights and they recognize that this started to happen when they slowly stayed up later and later using their phones but instead of facing the truth that it is because they’re using their phones longer and longer, they push that thought aside and continue with that habit because it already feels comfortable for them to do.

2. What is the most important thing you learned about things that operate outside of awareness or the unconscious?

The most important thing I learned about things that operate outside of awareness or unconscious is is that they primarily operate based on what we’re taught in our youngest ages and what our first caregivers would express to us as good or bad. The relationship created between us and our first caregiver is what we come to relate to in future relationships with different people. This happens because our first caregivers were the ones who had the power and influence in our own survival and for us to be able to receive the basic things we need we had to come to terms with our first caregiver whether the way the person treated us was healthy or not and depending on the culture we were initially exposed to. As we grow up we learn about differences in people and if we make the conscious decision to we learn and unlearn things to become better.

3. What do you believe are the top 3 distraction systems? Which one of these is the most powerful and why?

1-Food

2-Online Distractions

3-Accomplishments

The most powerful distraction system is accomplishments because it disguises itself as something fulfilling and guaranteeing us to feel more relaxed and overcoming our fears and denials of fears. We’re taught that people with more accomplishments can face their fears easier and will have less problems in their life. The tricky part is that while yes accomplishments in itself are something natural and desirable to grow, learn ourselves and others, people who seek to accomplish for the sake of getting that a complement done because it was something other people said was good without figuring out for yourself if it fits to your own needs, it Simple’s becomes addictive to search for something else to accomplish and to compete with people in how accomplished they are instead of going at your own necessary path at the right times.