Maggie's Farm

"We have to face facts."

Do we?

There is a common and normal human capacity to both know and not know something at the same time. Maybe it's politics or maybe some recent patients that got me thinking about the avoidance of reality - a maneuver which falls far short of the defence we call "denial" (which itself can also be entirely healthy at times, but often not).

I notice this in myself. For example, I noticed that I have not opened my last 2 quarterly 401-k statements. I know it's ugly inside those envelopes, but I see that I have avoided facing the facts squarely. It's avoiding the sharp pain, while tolerating the dull, nagging pain in the back of my mind. Besides the sharp pain, it's also avoiding whatever difficult or impossible decisions might or should be made.

I consider it to be a character flaw in myself - a weakness - but not a fatal one. Many of us dodge facing painful, pride-injuring, disappointing, or bias-challenging truths about ourselves or about reality and how reality works. I am in good company, but I do not approve of it.

I am not referring to an unconscious defense mechanism like repression: I am referring to a conscious and deliberate maneuver, like the suspicious wife who refuses to check to see if her husband is really at another very late business dinner. A reality-ducking means of coping.

There is a spectrum from psychotic denial and distortion (anorectics believing they look fat), to ordinary denial (I don't have a drinking problem, or I am not doing anything wrong), to repression (my brain won't permit me to think this unpleasant thought), to seeing but not believing (It just can't be!), to the sort of avoidance I am talking about (I know what is there, but refuse to look or listen because it will upset me), to the gold standard of bravely facing and dealing with facts, problems, and the limits of reality. As I say daily, Reality is the best but harshest teacher of all.

She - or he - is one tough and ruthless SOB.