If you have read the previous articles under this topic of Healing After Abortion, you have some beginning understanding of why these problems, behaviors, and anxieties are happening to you.

Following any trauma, or emotional upheavals, we all engage in what is known as defense mechanisms.

When we use defense mechanisms, and we all do, we use them to keep us safe from further hurt. We also use them to avoid dealing with the event. Defense mechanisms help us to survive the initial emotional trauma. But eventually, and the sooner the better, we need to deal with our hurts so that we can heal from them. Remember, any feelings we bury, we bury alive so our hurts begin to surface in many areas of our lives. If we do not deal with the pain in our lives, the pain will deal with us!

Grief and its Resolve:

STAGE ONE: DENIAL

The first stage of grief, and the first defense mechanism we all employ after an abortion, is denial. Denial has many faces and can take many forms.

Simple denial says “I don’t know why I feel this way, I know I did the best thing for me.” This is really a rationalization, not a truth. We need to see the difference. We don’t normally choose evil/bad/wrong things for ourselves. We must rationalize things that are against our nature and conscious, so we can support our actions as being good even if it was not good.

Denial that sticks around with us for a time, takes on even more defense mechanisms.

Suppression: We erase any negative thoughts that come to our minds.

Minimization: We acknowledge the problem, but not the severity or intensity of it.

The Blame Game: Blaming others takes the focus off our responsibility and ourselves.

Excusing: We excuse our own behavior to justify our actions.

Generalization: We avoid depth of feeling by dealing with pain at a distance, not personally.

Attacking: Criticizing others, anger at others involved, but not ourselves.

Dodge ball: Changing the subject if someone brings it up!

DENIAL RESOLVED:

To make your way out of denial, begin to get in touch with how you feel. This can be very difficult, as you likely have pushed many feelings down deep. The problem with stuffing one feeling is that you stuff them all. If you have stuffed anger, you also stuff your capacity to love. If you have stuffed shame, you stuffed your hope of being loved by others. If you stuff guilt, you never seem to be able to live above it anyway. No matter what you have stuffed, you have stuffed it alive, and it lives in spite of all your efforts to make the feelings go away. The best thing you can do to help yourself is to get in touch with how you really feel. Being honest with yourself is the first step toward healing. Get yourself a notebook….start listing what you are feeling each day. Start journaling your responses to events and people. Take a look at all the feelings that are surfacing. You will begin to deal with how you feel about yourself as well as other emotional upheavals. But remember, it is only when you begin to acknowledge your own responsibility in the matter that healing can come, and along with healing will come wholeness and peace.