2/5 In times of change, denial can be a comforting but temporary refuge
When the ground shifts under us — a job ends, a relationship changes shape, a diagnosis lands, a market we built a business on quietly disappears — the first thing most of us reach for isn’t a plan. It’s a story that lets us pretend nothing has really changed. That story has a name. It’s called denial, and it is the most comfortable, most dangerous room in the house.
This is Part 2 of 5 in the emotional-stages-of-change series. If you’ve just arrived, the Watch page has the rest of the journey. In the video above I sit with the denial stage specifically: what it feels like from the inside, why it’s so seductive, and the moment it stops protecting you and starts costing you.
Where denial sits on the change curve
The map I’m leaning on here is the Kübler-Ross change curve — the model that grew out of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s work on grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and was later adapted to make sense of how people move through any significant change, not just loss. Denial is the second beat, the one that follows the initial shock.
And here’s the thing nobody tells you: denial is not stupidity. It’s a buffer. Your nervous system throws up a temporary shelter so the full weight of the change doesn’t hit all at once. For a short while, that shelter is genuinely useful — it buys you time to find your footing.
Denial is a comforting but temporary refuge. The danger isn’t that you visit it. The danger is that you move in.
The two faces of denial
In the book, every challenge gets split into what’s happening on the outside and what’s happening on the inside — because the visible symptom and the real root are rarely the same.
On the outside, denial looks productive. “I’m fine.” “It’ll blow over.” “This is just a phase.” You keep showing up, you keep busy, you carefully avoid the one conversation or spreadsheet or scan result that would force you to see clearly. To everyone watching, you look like you’re coping.
On the inside, something quieter is going on. There’s fear that if you fully admit the change, you won’t handle what comes next. There’s grief for the life you’d planned on. Denial is the mind’s way of saying not yet — and that’s human. But the longer you stay, the more reality piles up at the door.
Why this matters across all eight spheres
Change doesn’t politely confine itself to one corner of your life. Making Change Happen tracks it across eight spheres — business, finances, relationships, the physical, the mental, the spiritual, family, and lifestyle — and denial wears a different costume in each. In business it’s “our customers will always want this.” In finances it’s not opening the statement. In the physical sphere it’s ignoring the symptom. In relationships it’s pretending the distance isn’t growing.
The sphere changes; the mechanism doesn’t. And this is where denial collides with the core argument of the book: the gap is never information, it’s execution. Denial is the purest form of that gap. Somewhere inside, you already know. Denial is simply the agreement you make with yourself to not yet do anything about what you know.
The Delta-4, effortless trap
There’s a line I keep coming back to: “What’s effortless to do is just as effortless to neglect.” Denial is the most effortless response available to you. It requires nothing — no hard conversation, no new plan, no discomfort. That’s exactly why it’s so sticky, and why it quietly compounds against you.
The book’s spine is effort to effortless: you put deliberate effort in early so the right response eventually becomes your default. Denial offers the reverse bargain — effortless now, brutal later. Every day you stay, the climb out gets steeper.
What to actually do
Awareness first, then one small honest action:
- Name it out loud. Say the sentence you’ve been avoiding: “This has changed, and I haven’t accepted it yet.” Naming denial strips most of its power.
- Find the one fact you’re not looking at. The unopened email, the number, the conversation. Look at it today. Not all of it — just the one thing.
- Separate the fear from the facts. Write what actually happened in one column and what you’re afraid it means in another. Denial blurs those two; clarity separates them.
- Take a micro-action that assumes the change is real. Not a grand plan — one small move that only makes sense if you’ve accepted the new reality. That move is your foot stepping off the refuge floor.
Denial isn’t a failure of character; it’s a stage. The whole point of the change curve is that it’s a curve — you’re meant to move through it, not park in it. Watch the video above, sit honestly with which sphere you’re quietly refusing to look at, and take the one small step that proves you’ve stopped pretending. The free toolkit and the book are built for exactly this work. Denial is where the journey stalls. Acceptance is where it begins.