I remember when the alcoholism field was budding and there was a bumper crop of pop literature about alcoholic families, a buzzword du jour was “denial.” Of course, this was long before social media made everything viral in a hot minute, and we didn’t even use the now everyday term “viral”, so I don’t know how things buzzed around so fast, but a little joke that went around with it, was “Denial is not a river in Egypt.” Ha ha, a play on the Nile River. We all thought we were so clever. But it was a long time before I really learned what that word meant. I alluded to it in last week’s blog, but I realized that it is worth coming back to for many reasons. Most importantly I had no idea how powerful and truly tangible denial can be until I experienced it from the inside.
I might add that I learned something similar about the overused, similarly buzzy clinical term “Narcissism.” I am decidedly opposed to diagnostic labels, seeing their value primarily for getting insurance companies, to pay. Beyond that, they tend to be insults and slurs and attempts to show off. And worse, in the case of partners diagnosing and analyzing each other, something they will never get away with on my watch. I remember once hearing Bessel say “Diagnosis is a political instrument!” And I thought, “Hear hear!” But I admit that the few times I have encountered the real thing, denial was rather like a living mule with blinders. I discovered the intransigence of a person truly incapable of empathy. I mean they could not see the point of view of another person. It was as if there was a physical block or blinder that made it impossible, truly impossible. It was hard to believe. No matter what I did or said, I could not facilitate standing in the shoes of the other, even for a nanosecond. I remember once sitting with a couple struggling with healing from infidelity. The “betraying” partner was literally incapable of imagining what it would have been like had the tables been turned. It was as if it were structurally impossible. Apart from being unmoved by the tears and devastation of the other, only perhaps guilt and confusion were achievable. I was amazed. And only once in 40-plus years have I been able to help put a dent, even facilitate healing from that disability. I remember in AA they would say “Those who cannot recover are those who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.” And although I heard those words hundreds, even thousands of times, only much later did I come to truly understand them.
Blindness
My own personal experience of denial was, however, an indelible learning experience that I had to have myself to really get it, and believe it. That is what I want to tell you about because I think it is relevant and perhaps useful in our larger topics of trauma and neglect. And yes, it was about alcoholism. I told you the story of my alcoholic partner. I was in love with him like only a young, romantic, lonely child of neglect can be. I was 24 when we met, and it was one of those crazy experiences of young love that really never happened again. He was like a Greek god, and everyone thought we were siblings because we looked like a matched set. We were inseparable, and we started living together almost instantly. Drinking together was a big part of our daily home life, and it was idyllic: delicious European foods, roses, and lots of wine. He loved art and when we looked at beauty, we saw the same thing. As time went on, typically, especially when there was a lot of alcohol involved, things were not as perfect anymore. And as more time went on, and my drinking got more and more out of hand, even I was forced to look at it. As I have often said, my therapist in her infinite wisdom, knew that for a long time, the alcohol was keeping me alive. We did not yet know it was keeping my trauma at bay. But she knew that without it I had probably near lethal depression, in spite of my euphoria about my partner, the alcohol was managing that. She knew it was a symptom but also a kind of lifeline, and then she also knew when it was becoming lethal in its own right. At that point, she nudged me and then sent me to AA. Grudgingly, and also ashamedly I went. And speaking of denial, my parents insisted that “Jews do not become alcoholics” and continued offering me wine for about two years into my sobriety. Thankfully I was able to decline. I had the good fortune of getting and staying sober on my first try which I consider to be grace and a gift. I have absolutely no idea why some of us can and others simply can’t. My beloved partner turned out to be in the latter group. I have no idea why.
Not immediately, but sometime after I did, my partner got sober too. And he stayed that way for a while. Unlike me he came from a Mediterranean farm family, his father was a winemaker, and he grew up drinking wine. For his family, it was even more unacceptable and unthinkable to stop. He fell off a time or two but eventually, I thought he was solidly in recovery like I was. By then I was pretty busy. I had finished grad school and was working at the VA (US Veteran’s Administration) in a dual diagnosis unit, PTSD and substance abuse, with largely Viet Nam veterans. I was saddened and outraged to see the revolving door of that system. These guys (and all of the patients I worked with there were men,) were trapped in a cycle where if they got better, they lost part or all of their benefits, so there was no incentive to recover, even if there had been any effective modalities for treating the newly named PTSD diagnosis at the time. So, most of them stayed addicted and symptomatic and many of the very same poor souls are sleeping in doorways in Haight Ashbury, only blocks away from my home, even still.
Trauma and Neglect
Meanwhile, there was “trouble in paradise.” My supposedly sober ex began to stay out late at night, and I didn’t know where he was. But he would come home with the oddest cock and bull explanations of where he had been, concocting truly wild and unlikely stories. But somehow, I can scarcely imagine how I believed him. They got weirder and weirder. One night the cops brought him home. When they knocked on the door, they asked me, “Does he live here?” I said “Yes.” They said “We found him passed out in a driveway…” My ex stumbled off to bed I took him to the hospital in the morning, and he explained that he had some unlikely lung diagnosis that I don’t remember. And again, I believed it! He was such a relentless tobacco smoker, that I figured it was related to that. And in a weird inconceivable way, I had some kind of blinders on. Love perhaps? Fear? I don’t know. But the truly obvious happenings went on for months longer. And I continued, blinded by whatever, to not “see”. Until one night when he didn’t come home at all. In the morning, I got a call from the county jail, where he was locked up for drunk driving. Finally, my denial was punctured. And finally, I was able to do one of the hardest things I had ever had to do: pull the plug on the relationship with this man whom I still loved so incredibly much. But not before learning an indelible and invaluable lesson. Denial is much more than a river in Egypt. It is an undeniable and serious defense mechanism, not to be underestimated. Denial enabled me to ignore and not deal with what I most did not want to see. Until ultimately undeniable events forced the issue. This did not excuse or justify my failure, but it did somehow make sense of it. We block out what is most painful, unbearable, terrifying, shameful, and impossible to accept.
Previously I had incredulously wondered, how do you not see your 13-year-old daughter vanish to 79 pounds (36 Kg) on her five foot three (160 cm) little frame? How do parents fail to “know” other kinds of unthinkable trauma happening to their children under their very roof? Now I began to have an idea. Many of us often wonder about our own neglectful parents, how can they not see? How can they close their eyes to these cruel realities? How can they go unconscious about seeing their child’s needs for all kinds of essentials? Do they simply not care? How could my mom, and my parents turn blind eyes? Did they truly not give a darn? Or were they brittle, terrified, or paralyzed by their own trauma, guilt or shame? Or did they, like me, cluelessly love “too much?” Who can know? But perhaps it gives me a bit of comfort to have a modicum of understanding about denial.
Today’s Song:
