One of our family members has a devastating disease. Witnessing their struggle has led me to a surprising discovery, one that has quietly turned a long-held professional conviction on its head.
As a therapist, I spent decades gently walking people away from denial. Helping them see the situation clearly. Face it. Name it. Move through it. I believed then and still do that denial, left unchecked, can calcify into a wall that keeps us from healing, from feeling, from living fully.
But I am seeing denial up close and that has shifted my thinking.
There are situations so painful that seeing them whole, all at once, would be more than the human heart can bear. And in those moments, denial isn’t weakness. It isn’t avoidance. It is mercy. It is the psyche’s own wisdom, revealing reality in glimpses, we can survive.
Denial, when it arrives in exactly the right measure, is a gift. It lets us approach the unbearable slowly. We experience it one step, one breath, one small truth at a time as we build enough inner strength to face it.
Can it go too far? Of course. Like any gift, it can be misused, clung to past its usefulness, turned into a permanent residence rather than a temporary shelter. But denial can also hold us gently while we gather our inner resources.
How do we know when we’ve reached that right measure?
Only we can answer that. We may need to find someone who has walked a similar path before, someone who can sit quietly beside us while we find the courage to fully feel where we are. We need time to see clearly that yes, this too is part of your life.
Surprisingly, I am becoming a champion of denial. Because we are remarkable, complex, beautifully fragile human beings and we each deserve every tool our inner life offers to meet what is difficult.
Most of all, we need patience and kindness. A flower doesn’t open all at once.
Neither do we.
The Bench Image is from my novel in progress, The Three Questions of Grey Wolf