All in one breath denial confesses helplessness and claims omnipotence.
Denial goes to different lengths and depths depending on our inner psychological circumstances. Sometimes denial can simply veil an unpleasant reality, still allowing us to work on the problems posed by the shape so draped. In fact, it may help us to do the work we need to do by lowering the intensity of our response. If denial goes deeper, it may seriously compromise our capacity not just to deal with this aspect of reality, but with all that are like it or remind us of it.
Denial is always evidence based: it takes unacceptable evidence of what we already know to be true to provoke it.
Life goes by in the blink of an eye. This is why so many of us refuse to open our eyes at all. We apply a theory very familiar to all misers, who believe that their satisfactions are increased by an absolute refusal to spend. They live poorly and die poorly. Even so, we try to deny that we are alive in the hope that this will postpone or prevent our deaths.