The Reversal of Self Denial

The following is pretty much everything I know about psychology. Be warned, it’s elementary, My Dear Watson.

So I learned a new word today, mercurial #TheColbertReport. Quick synopsis, it is a synonym for fickle. It means something that is ever changing. And from that quick Dictionary.com definition, I thought the following random thoughts:

-   The “Don’t Go Changing” song, sung by Shrek of course

- “Be the change you want to see” quote from I Don’t Know

-  The library scene from Bloomington #LesbianDrama #DontJudgeMe

So, I decided to blog about Bloomington and what I learned from this movie. (FYI: To all those who live outside of the Rainbow Coalition, Bloomington is possibly the greatest free gem found on Hulu. It’s Brokeback Mountain, except with lesbians.)

Quick Rundown: A female psychology professor falls in love with one of her female students. However, in this one scene the directors (who literally emphasized the idea 3 times) explain this concept that blew my mind, the Reversal of Self-Denial. This is what the lesbian prof tells her academic lover:

If you deny yourself something for long enough, for whatever self-imposed reason, the moment that you’re faced with any real external imposition, you are going to voluntarily want to do the thing you were trying so hard not to do.

This is the theory, in a much clearer explanation:

- You try to deny yourself something, you succeed!

- Something else denies you of that same thing, you fail!

And for the slow ones:

Only YOU can deny yourself something, but nothing else can.

At first, it’s kind of a weird idea, a lot like reverse psychology, but for some reason it stuck with me. I think this applies to more people than not. Let’s use “success” as an example.

So according to these Fox5News organizations, minorities (Blacks, Latinos, and the like) have this self-imposed fear of success. I would like to retort that that there are people of ANY ethnicity, the life-challenged if you will, who seek to deny themselves good opportunities by being self-destructive. However, when an outside force, aka a Hater, actually attempts to prevent them from being successful, suddenly the life-challenged will have all the ambition in the world to be successful. Their driving force, you might ask? To prove their “Hater” wrong. Although, before said Hater spoke, the biggest hater was their self. #Deep

Usually, I just call this ironic. But the lez-ban movie calls it the reversal of self-denial. Whatever. Potato tomato let’s make a soup!

I thought about this for a while, wondering how and/or why this reversal of self-denial happens. Why do people create restrictions for themselves? It’s strange how, unchallenged, we create our own barriers? But when we are pushed to create barriers, we strive to cause friction. Is that it? Do we simply live in Opposite world, where every day is opposite day? And our main goal is to argue with outside forces? Is conflict soothing? Must we be so different? So stubborn? So much like crabs in a barrel.

Quick Review: Crabs in a barrel is a reference used for Black people. It is the idea that the Black race is like crabs in a barrel. Whenever one crab seeks to climb out of the bucket, the other crabs pull it down. Hence, crab fishers have no need to constrain the crabs with barrel tops. The crabs will simply hold each other down. And I don’t mean hold you down in the loving and protective sense, I mean hold you as in refrain you.

The one thing I learned in Mr. Jean’s Music class in Gorman Crossing Elementary School is to not have excuses. They are the tools of incompetence to build monuments of nothingness. And those who specialize in the use of them seldom excel at anything, other than creating excuses. Thank you Mr. Jean!