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Key points
- Can you accept reality and act accordingly?
- Do your expectations fit what Is really taking place?
- It is possible to see through denial.
Everyone faces difficult situations, troubling relationships, and family conflicts that can be challenging to handle. One of the ways of toning down how upsetting such situations are is by refusing to see the truth.
At the simplest of levels, you ignore the weather reports because you don’t want to carry an umbrella, telling yourself it isn’t going to rain—but you end up getting wet. That’s annoying, but no big deal. Or your GPS tells you there’s traffic up ahead, but you don’t really feel like detouring. How bad could it be? So, you lose some time.
But what happens when you don’t allow yourself to see and accept an important reality because it’s scary, or you have expectations of yourself that don’t fit with what is really taking place? Then the consequences can be significant and harmful.
Maybe your spouse spends money you don’t have, plunging you into financial worry and debt. They promise it won’t keep happening and, because it’s easier than not, you believe them. You tell yourself that things will be fine, that they know better now. And yet the situation doesn't change. As I discuss in my new book Am I Lying To Myself? How To Overcome Denial and See The Truth, denial is a coping mechanism to make things seem more positive than they are. But as long as you let denial rule your life, you will never get out from under whatever it is that is bogging you down and causing you pain.
One of my patients, I'll call her Ann, is experiencing denial with regard to her brother, who has been struggling with substance use for decades. He’s been trying to get clean for at least two decades and she has been with him every step of the way, holding his hand, trying to encourage him to stop doing drugs, offering support whenever he ran himself into the ground. Despite all of her efforts, his addiction to heroin has remained intractable, so much so that in the last year he overdosed two times. But Ann believes she can fix him, that all the effort and time and concern she is putting toward him will make a difference. In fact, all the effort she is putting in is simply draining her, taking her away from her own family and her own life.
She is not alone. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has talked publicly about a similar situation in which he tried to help his younger brother with a cocaine addiction. So much of the effort is tied to guilt, feeling you have to be a good-enough sister or brother, that keeps you from giving up on a loved one. Ultimately, however, too much of yourself can be lost.
When Ann’s brother’s overdosed the second time, she gave up all her plans in order to take care of him. He never even thanked her. Instead, he shared with her that he really thinks his drug use is bigger than he is. He’s tired and doesn’t see himself able to overcome it.
Hearing that was intolerable to Ann. The notion that he couldn’t get a leg up, that he wouldn’t go to therapy or get medication from a psychiatrist, that all the suggestions she offered him didn’t help, was more than she could believe. The truth is, she can be supportive only to the point that he can take in her suggestions and act on them. No matter what she does, it doesn’t mean anything if he can’t accept it. In order to break the pattern, Ann needs clarity on her expectations of herself, what she thinks it means to be a loving sister, and to what degree she can go in offering support before her brothedr's drug use takes over her life as well.
One of the first steps to recognizing denial is finding yourself looking at a situation and saying it could be worse. It's a sign you may be telling yourself something is not so bad when it really is. You may not be ready to face what is actually going on, and so you protect yourself by normalizing the problematic behavior around you.
Ann truly believes she can heal her brother with her outpouring of love and nurturance. Sadly, nothing has helped change his situation, so each time she finds herself right back where they started. Denial keeps her wishing and hoping and trying; and each time she tells herself this time will be different, She sees herself as someone who will never give up on her brother, which is what keeps her in an impossible situation. She really can’t control his behavior, no matter what she does, and there are limits to what she can do. Seeing through her denial will enable her to identify her limits.
Accepting your limitations to help is the hardest part in dealing with problem behavior in a loved one. There comes a point when it is necessary to recognize that there are times when you can’t save someone.
One skill people can use to combat denial is what i call "threading the needle." The idea is to pull all the threads, all the facts, of a troubling situation together into a quilt so you can see the whole picture.
I told Ann to pay attention to her brother’s words and actions over the years, to acknowledge all the elements of his drug use and abuse. I told her to remember how he has managed his drug use at times and was able to clean up when necessary, but consistently went back to drugs. The goal was to assemble all the facts, not see just one instance of trouble but the entirety of his use over the years.
With that picture in front of her, she can finally see that no matter what she does he is not going to get clean. Her brother’s admission that he didn’t think he could fight it anymore was an important indicator of where he stood. If she can listen to him, and quiet the voice in her head that keeps telling her it is going to be okay, it will help call into focus what is truly happening, not what she wishes was occurring. This will help her to accept reality and act accordingly.
In many cases, problem behavior you are experiencing with a family member or significant other may never change. Instead, you have to work to change how you handle it, which means seeing through your denial. This will help you to manage an out-of-control situation and put you back in the driver’s seat of the runaway car you have been riding in for way too long.
