The Brain’s Evolutionary Bias Toward Denial.

Why family, friends and loved ones ignore your disease and suffering - Long Covid

It’s All Human

People often get angry because they are protecting something. Maybe it’s a belief, an identity, or a personal truth that feels threatened. Similarly, when someone denies reality, it’s not usually ignorance at work—it’s often a defense mechanism, away of shielding themselves from a deeper, perhaps more unsettling reality.

Imagine this: you’re certain of your stance and have a list of facts to back it up. But remember, the people who oppose you have their own list too. You make them mad because your facts challenge something that feels essential to them. You believe you’re right; after all, you have logic and evidence on your side.

So, you lay out your facts, one by one, expecting clarity to dawn on your opponent. It’s straightforward—facts should win, right? But they rarely do. Our minds aren’t just logical processors that update with new information; they’re emotional fortresses that defend existing beliefs. Think about it: when was the last time someone rattled off facts that changed your mind on a topic you felt deeply about? Probably not often. Now, reverse the scenario. You’re the one with the facts, hoping to change someone else’s mind. You present your evidence, but they reject it. And your first thought? You assume they’re foolish, incapable of seeing the obvious truth.

Here’s the catch: facts and truth aren’t exactly the same thing. Facts are concrete, objective, and verifiable. Truth, however, is a more fluid concept. It’s shaped by experience, emotion, and personal meaning. While facts exist independently, truth is what we believe, what we hold onto—often fiercely. Trying to change someone’s mind by merely stating facts is like knocking on a door that’s been bolted from the inside. You have to understand why that door is locked before you can open it.

This same collision between facts and truth is strikingly evident when it comes to chronic diseases like Long COVID. It’s not just a matter of data versus denial; it’s a confrontation between cold, hard evidence and the mental frameworks that have kept us alive—both literally and psychologically—for millennia. We humans have evolved to maintain beliefs that protect our sense of order and security, even when those beliefs clash head-on with reality.

When it comes to Long COVID, the facts are often presented in a neat, logical package: persistent viral presence, immune system disturbances, multi-organ damage. Advocates and researchers point to study after study, thinking that this cascade of data will shift public perception. But as with any chronic condition, facts alone rarely shift minds. Why? Because accepting the full reality of chronic disease isn’t just about absorbing new information; it’s about rewiring the very circuits that have been conditioned to maintain a sense of safety and predictability.

Think about it: for most of our evolutionary history, denying an immediate threat could be fatal, while denying a slower, more ambiguous threat was often adaptive. This is why our brains are built to treat chronic threats differently—less urgently, more abstractly, and with a degree of emotional distance. The denial of chronic disease, like Long COVID, isn’t just a modern quirk; it’s a built-in, evolutionarily honed defense. Acknowledging Long COVID, with its pervasive uncertainty and potentially lifelong implications, threatens the psychological scaffolding that helps us feel like we’re in control of our bodies and our futures.

So, when someone rejects the severity of Long COVID or any other chronic disease, it’s not simply a failure to process facts. It’s the brain doing what it’s been designed to do: defending a worldview that keeps existential terror at bay. Presenting facts alone is like trying to convince a zebra to worry about hypertension instead of a lion. Our brains are wired to resist threats that don’t seem immediate or clear-cut, regardless of the scientific evidence.

The real challenge with chronic diseases, then, is not just a matter of presenting data but of navigating the evolutionary biases that define how we process that data. If we want to shift perspectives, we need to address these biases directly, acknowledging that humans are not just cognitive processors but creatures shaped by a long history of avoiding existential dread. Facts might not crack the cognitive.

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