Dear Dick
articles about wide ranging psychological issues
from "The Local Bulletin" (Brisbane Australia)
by Dick Rigby
©all articles are copyright 2006

October 2000
"Lies, dammed lies and denial".  We all do a bit of denial from time to time.  Denial is when a person will not accept something that they are doing or feeling even when this something is obvious to others. 
Classic example:
Mary: "You sound really angry"
Peter: "I am not, and stop accusing me all the time".  (In a raised voice as he thumps the table.)
Second example: 
Jane is a 19 year old student.  She has a problem with alcohol consumption.  Whenever she gets drunk she engages in dangerous risk taking behaviour such as unsafe sex and driving under the influence.  Everyone knows Jane has a drinking problem.  Jane's mother confronts Jane about he drinking, but Jane denies that there is any problem.
The reason that Peter and Jane are in denial, is that while they are denying that there is a problem, they don't have to face the problem.  It is easier to pretend that it is not happening.  More often than not, the person who is in denial believe their own lies.
What to do if you are trying to deal with a person who is in denial? 
It is a very difficult problem.  If you are the sort of person who needs to keep the peace, then you may be prepared to put up with the denial so that you don't have to keep confronting the person about their behaviour. 
Even worse, you may find yourself doubting your own perceptions.  You might say to yourself that "I'm making a big fuss over nothing".  However, if you don't confront the person who is in denial, then they will not change their behaviour.
The first step in finding a solution is to get some outside reality checking about what is going on.  Jane's mother insisted that she and Jane see a counsellor together.  The aim was to get some unbiased guidance on what was happening in the family.  The counsellor was able to work with Jane in a non confrontational way the help her to see that her behaviour was causing damage to herself and to others around her.
It wasn't easy for Jane to face the consequences of her drunken behaviour.  It was even harder for her to change it.  But in the long run she was able to moderate her drinking so that she no longer became drunk and she was then able to stop her risk taking behaviour.
A happy ending for this story.  But others have to make more difficult decisions whether or not to stay with someone they love who is also in denial and doesn't want to change.

Avoindance

Meant to be's

May 2007
“Meant to be or not meant to be, that is the question”.  Peter and Andrea lost there daughter to cancer when she was just 6 years old.  They couldn’t make sense of it.  Andrea was a deeply religious person so she resolved it by saying that it was God’s will.  Peter was less religious and explained it by saying it was “meant to be”.
I believe that Peter and Andrea resolved their terrible grief as well as they possibly could.  Some sort of “meant to be” or divine plan can help make sense of something like a child’s death and facilitate the grieving process.
The “meant to be” philosophy runs into trouble when a person uses it as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for their life.  Mal was drop dead gorgeous and he knew it.  He had a never ending series of relationships.  Each followed much the same pattern.  He would fall in love with a woman and use his abundant charms to woo her.
They would live together in loving bliss for about 6 months or so.  Then Mal would loose interest and want to move on. 
Mal’s latest conquest was Jill.  When Mal eventually left Jill, she couldn’t understand what went wrong.  They were so much in love.  Mal had an answer.  It was a “meant to be”.  It was just part of life’s rich plan over which he had no control.
You guessed it - there was something wrong with Mal.  He was an avoidance addict.  By using the “meant to be” explanation, he was able to absolve himself of responsibility for any part that he may have played in the fiasco.
An avoidance addict is one who can become very intimately involved, but doesn’t have the ability to maintain that intimacy.  When Mal fell in love with Jill, his feelings were intense and genuine.  He wasn’t a cad and he wasn’t trying to use women.  It’s just that after the honeymoon wore off, Mal didn’t have the skills to manage the next stage of the relationship.
What Mal should have done was look at his repeating pattern of failed relationships and ask the question, “What am I doing wrong?”  If he had gone to therapy, he could have learned to overcome the deep hidden fears that powered his avoidance addiction.  He could have also learned to develop the skills to manage a long term relationship.
Lets hope that one day he will do something to fix his problem.