Denial & the Drain of the Everyday
There are many things in life one could rightly consider boring and inane, and all of these things, broadly speaking, can be categorized as doing the laundry.
Exercise. Budgeting. Studying. Difficult conversations. Together they make up the minutiae of life, and people are loath to do them sometimes. Not because they are painful, but rather, because they are unpleasant, and it is upon discovering the many variations of displeasure that arise in day-to-day life, that denial steps in to serve a greater function.
Denial is a psychological defense mechanism, the core function of which is not only to protect the mind from threats (pain), but also to preserve one’s relationship to pleasure, which if we had it our way, would be unceasing and constant. Human beings are incredibly attuned to good feelings and just as sensitive to any marker of their absence.
The mind seems to have a way of guiding individuals away from inner turmoil and conflict. Away from the small tasks that compromise them by becoming a significant drain on their energy and time. This is what denial is really a defense against, not the simple act of folding clothes, but the greater threat it represents by encroaching on human finitude.
What is Denial?
It is a refusal to accept facts which are as incontrovertible as they are inconvenient. It is not the surface reality that is difficult to tolerate, but the awareness of the underlying meaning of investing precious resources into things one does not really care about.
Denial is mostly an unconscious process that people are not aware of, especially not in the moment it is employed. Freud called it the “ostrich policy” invoking the image of the animal sticking its head in the ground to avoid what threatens it. Which is what denial is tantamount to, sticking one’s head in the ground to avoid distressing reality. Doing so can be necessary and protective at times, but it can also hinder growth and development.
How Denial Works
Imagine a person who is at risk of losing someone close to them, such as an aging parent. They love this person and cannot imagine living in a world without them. The thought of it is simply too severe, and rather than allow oneself to be overwhelmed, the psyche kicks in and activates the defense of denial.
Thoughts of one’s parent miraculously recovering or being saved by some miracle treatment occur, and if not that then by the sheer force of their will to survive, and if not that, then finally by some sort of divine intervention.
In such scenarios these outcomes are unlikely if not impossible, but the psyche produces them in order to provide relief and protection from feelings of fear and authenticity. This response can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the context.
Common Types
Denial can manifest in different ways and should be judged accordingly based on how it is categorized.
Simple denial is the most straightforward type, which is characterized by direct denial of reality. It is a simple refusal to believe what has happened, has really happened.
A close companion of this simple denial is minimization, which involves a partial admission of the truth but stops short of full recognition by downplaying the significance of what has occurred. This partial admission of the truth makes minimization the most difficult type of denial to identify because it easily passes for honesty.
The next type is not always thought of as a form of denial but it is one. It is projection, which occurs when you attribute unacceptable feelings or impulses to others. When one is criticized or held at fault for something they’ve done, rather than be accountable, they may accuse someone else of doing the exact thing they are guilty of.
And of course there is avoidance, the type of denial that most people are familiar with. It involves the subtle unconscious choice to avoid all together anything and everything that could leave you feeling exposed. Avoidance stands in direct opposition to reality and truth.
Denial in Everyday Life
Despite occasionally producing a positive outcome, on the whole denial has a negative effect on multiple areas of life. People suffer personally, socially, physically, and spiritually when they live in denial. They turn a blind eye to the warning signs that trouble is on the horizon and do nothing to stop it. They miss out on some of the most meaningful and rewarding aspects of life. In this regard, denial ceases to be a form of protection and becomes a barricade between who someone is and who they could become.
Working Through
The question of how to work through denial is really the question of how one tolerates and eventually works through pain.
Practicing self-compassion is necessary in order to do this. When someone makes a mistake or doesn’t live up to their standards, the temptation is to avoid the painful uncomfortable feelings that come with this reality. Self-compassion is an antidote to such avoidance.
Writing is a practical way of employing it. Reflecting on what was done and getting all of one’s thoughts and feelings, whether good or bad, out on the page, can help to tolerate them. It allows for working through them.
If the issue is that someone denies their feelings by unnecessarily courting conflict, the solution is to slow down and direct their skepticism towards the sudden urge they have to fight or argue.
To push themselves to have open conversations instead, and in doing so, acknowledge how difficult it is to admit one’s wrongs, not only to others but also to themselves. Dealing with the difficult is how one becomes more courageous than they imagine they are.
Final Thoughts
Though ineffective, denial is not a flaw. It is a necessary defense at times. It is a natural part of psychic life. Not one that should be employed without discretion–there are times when the use of denial as a defense mechanism is what must in fact be denied.
It is important to be aware and take stock of where denial shows up in one’s life, and what thoughts and feelings lie just beyond it, which is how a person can locate, find, and face whatever it is that denial is protecting them from.
Why Success Has No Deadline
So many of people think that life is over if they don’t achieve their goals by a certain point in time. Usually, the date that is set is arbitrary and comes much too soon. People think that if they haven’t realized their dreams by 25 that they never will but that is a foolish and destructive way to think.
Most people are barely even aware of who they are at 25, much less what they want, and many people will enter into their 30’s still with only a vague notion as they try to figure it out. One should not let the narratives they see and hear on social media trick them into believing that this is not the case. In fact, some of the greatest achievements of mankind have been accomplished by late bloomers. People who were well past the point in life when they were supposed to be successful according to society’s standards.
Popular examples are people like Ford and Edison, both of whom did not achieve success until after 40 and represent the quintessential rags to riches story.
Some of my favorites in this category are people like Toni Morrison, Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, and Charles Bukowski. Lesser-known figures to be sure, but all of them possessed the same strength of will that told them to keep going, defy the odds, and define success on their own terms.
No one has it all figured out, and they don’t have to succumb to the notion that they are supposed to. They’re not. No one arrives at a point where everything is forever perfectly aligned. Maybe a person experiences it from time to time, but only for a moment, and one soon finds out that life is mostly about just having the courage to try, regardless of whether one succeeds or not, and more than that, they soon find out that the greatest achievement is in having the willingness to, if necessary, start all over again.
The Only Way Out is Through
Life is difficult and trouble is inevitable. While the desire to avoid trouble is understandable, it is ultimately unrealistic.
The only remedy to trouble is perseverance, not avoidance, which tends to have the opposite effect. It solves problems in the short term, but multiples them in the long-term.
Dwelling on problems doesn’t work either because it increases their impact and their ability to harm someone. Most problems people encounter in life come and go quickly, but dwelling on their problems allows them to take up residence in their minds and affect them for much longer than they would if a person could simply let them pass along.
The power a person has is in their ability to choose the attitude they take towards their troubles.
Start Small. Speak Truly.
It’s not easy to find your own voice, but it’s worth the effort, and it’s better than the alternative. Most people use someone else’s voice when they speak without even noticing it. They have adopted someone else’s beliefs and values and keep on repeating them and using them to solve issues that arise, even when there are better options. Which creates another problem. When you don’t take the time to find your own voice you become stagnant mentally and emotionally.
It seems like the longer you wait to find your voice the harder it is to find it at all. The more work you have to do to wade through the thoughts and opinions that are not your own. Thoreau talked about the men who lived lives of quiet desperation. There are many ways to live a meaningful life, but a common theme among all of them is choosing not to resign themselves to this quiet desperation.
Finding your own voice is an act of rebellion. Sometimes it is a battle, but it isn’t always drama-filled and world-shattering. Breaking out, rebelling, can happen through small daily actions that might not be noticeable to anyone else, but they still have an impact and you know they matter.
The Fall Comes First
The journey towards mental health often starts in reverse. What I mean is that people usually start to elevate and rise towards mental health only after they have fallen, after they have experienced a descent that has taken them so far down, they are not sure if they will be able to get up again.
Falling is a common part of life. We do it all the time as children, but with enough perseverance, most of us master the art of walking. The same process applies to the art of living. Most people learn how to get along well enough, eventually. The Fall takes place after you think you’ve got life figured out, and the reason it’s so difficult to overcome is because all the knowledge and information you’ve used to get through life becomes insufficient.
Most of us feel like failures at this point. The confusion and inadequacy that come with the fall are enough to break some of us, at least temporarily. But it is in that very moment, when you are sitting in your brokenness that you are able to begin your journey to being healthy again. It’s impossible to ascend without falling. In the end it’s even possible to be thankful for our struggles. Sometimes we need them to learn how to heal and overcome difficulties.
From Court to Couch: What the Luka Dončić Trade Teaches Us About Group Dynamics
As a preface to what I’m writing about now and hopefully in the future, I’ll briefly speak about the origins of my love for basketball. My earliest and most vivid memories of the sport are watching the 2001 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers. Without really understanding anything about basketball, I was still entranced by the competitiveness and aerial acrobatics that were being put on display. That was the start of me harboring dreams of becoming a professional athlete. Dreams which did not come to fruition, but birthed in me a love for the sport, and sport in general, ever since then.
I’m a therapist, not a professional athlete, and I cannot help but to blend these two facts of my experience, to examine sports through the psychological lens of my profession and perhaps share the combination of these two things through my writing.
A transaction took place between two sports teams last week that by most accounts is viewed as the biggest trade in the history of the NBA, if not the history of professional sports. The Dallas Mavericks traded their start player, Luka Dončić, to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for one of their star players, Anthony Davis.
Other details were involved but that was the headline, and rightfully so. Decisions involving someone who is considered to be one of the best in the world at their sport do tend to reverberate across multiple channels. The media coverage has been extensive and warranted, and rather than rehash what has already been said, or focus on individuals alone. I want to examine what happened from a group context in order to highlight the other characters involved and understand the situation from a different perspective.
Why Was Luka Doncic Traded?
The decision to invite a new person into a group or to kick someone out of a group is not made on impulse alone. There may not be an abundance of forethought, but there is at least some consideration given to this decision before it is made. The feeling of wanting to make a change is present in the group before it is ever given verbal expression. It is a process in and of itself for a group to accept and acknowledge the presence of hostile feelings towards one of its members and the possible implications of allowing those feelings to surface in the group. Typically the group allows (or elects) one person in the group to take on the task of being the first person to verbalize their feelings. It is only after this that the rest of the group members can openly respond to the hostile feelings which have been present.
The Mavericks seem to have made their first acknowledgement of their hostile feelings towards Dončić sometime in January. They did so in the form of a hypothetical question, a soft lob thrown in the direction of the Los Angeles Lakers. Well, would you trade for Luka Dončić? As is the case in groups, strong sentiments are initially shared in a manner that hides the depth of feelings behind them. Hypotheticals often hide the reality of strong desires.
Reasons for the trade have been discussed ad nauseam. Dončić drank and ate too much and worked out too little. He was temperamental and by their estimation, too expensive. I’m not particularly interested in any of that. My interest is in examining the privileged position Dončić had within the Mavericks organization (their figurative group), how he came to occupy it, and the reasons his position changed so drastically.
On the face of it the answer is simple. Dončić is a phenom and the culture of the NBA is that players of his caliber are empowered almost immediately. Because they are exceptional, organizations quickly become beholden to them. Every NBA team is a group with established norms and ways of functioning.
Drafting a player is tantamount to inviting a new person into the group. In most cases the new member must quickly adjust to the rules of the group, but in the case of Dončić, who was so unique, he did not have to make the same adjustment. When someone who enters the group is viewed this way, the group responds by changing to fit the needs of the individual. There is an immediate shift in power within the group.
This shift represents the renegotiation of a new agreement amongst the members of the group. Under these circumstances the new agreement is essentially this: the group will give up its individual and collective power in exchange for the benefits the individual can provide. In sports, teams give up control to star players because they believe their individual performance will result in organizational success. Such is the case with the Mavericks, who believed Dončić was the key to future success.
Or at least they did. The first domino to fall, which led to this sequence of events, was the Mavericks losing their belief in Dončić. Ironically it was their success, not their failure, that led to this conclusion.
The Mavericks have been criticized for trading away a player who led them to the NBA finals just last season. This is taken as proof of Dončić’s ability to eventually lead a team to a championship. But the Mavericks view it as proof positive of the exact opposite. Their loss to the Celtics in the NBA finals did two things. It showed the Mavericks they were good enough to get to the Finals but nowhere near good enough to win a championship. Secondly, it removed the spectre of hope from the Mavericks. Not completely, but resoundingly enough to cause some people to lose faith in Dončić, the person who had been given so much power within the group.
The Underlying Power Dynamics
General managers of sports teams at times function like group therapists. They are responsible for looking after the safety and well-being of the group members and ensuring the group is functioning well as a whole. Managers do not act alone and operate within the structure created by ownership, whose presence also impacts the group even if they are not explicitly a part of it. My view is that Nico Harrison, the Mavericks general manager, acted freely in deciding to trade Dončić, but his actions were not free from outside influence.
Harrison, as is typical of people in his position, was chosen by the group to carry out their wishes. A lot of time has been spent trying to understand exactly whose wishes Harrison was carrying out, but this hard to know because there appears to have been factions or subgroups within the Mavericks organization. These subgroups exist within the Mavericks organization and the larger group that is the NBA and can be identified by the way they responded to the trade. These groups can be divided into players, management, and ownership. Each groups response reveals something about their competing agendas, all of which impact the group dynamics.
The player’s response has mostly been a negative one. They were shocked by what occurred, protesting the unfairness of it, pondered what it meant for them, and quickly came to the conclusion that it meant no player was safe.
Groups will sometimes elect one of their members to play the role of scapegoat, to take the blame for the group’s lack of progress. As the pressure builds, the scapegoat is eventually expelled from the group. Their may be a momentary feeling of relief now that the problem is gone, but relief is followed by fear and panic.
This happens because on a deeper level members are aware that the problems of the group are always about more than one individual, and will persist even after the individual is gone. They know that if someone like Dončić can be scapegoated and unceremoniously traded, the same could also happen to them. The group trembles at this realization, and the part they played in bringing it about.
The common response from players is to think about the personal impact trades have on them. Management, acting as de facto group leaders, must respond by trying to help the group adjust to this change and restore group cohesion. Harrison has done this by trying to instill hope and outlining a positive vision of the future of his group, His belief is that the group will function better now and is better positioned to accomplish their ultimate goal, winning a championship.
This is the appropriate response, but it is not always easy to restore group cohesion but doing so can be a challenge. For the Mavericks, they have had to contend with raucous and emotionally charged reaction from their fans, one they likely did not fully anticipate. This highlights another important aspect of group dynamics. While not directly involved, fans, like family and friends of group members, can exert a large amount of influence on group dynamics. Especially when they are activated by something going on within the group.
Ownership could take a supportive stance which could bring clarity or help the group move their discomfort towards acceptance. It seemed like Mavericks ownership would have rather not done that given their initial silence in the aftermath of the announcement. A silence that was broken via an interview that was published over the weekend, and almost certainly was motivated by the fact that fans staging protest in front of the American Airlines Arena where the Mavericks play. They seem to prefer to stay in the background, but this choice along with others they make may be the most significant because they lead to a repetition of the same group dynamics that led the Mavericks to this moment in time.
It has already begun to happen. After the trade a narrative quickly began to emerge about Kyrie Irving now being the leader of the team (group). Over the weekend, after Anthony Davis made his impressive Mavericks debut there was a coalescing around the idea of him being the potential leader of the Mavericks. Another uniquely talented player whose presence once again entices the group into placing their hopes and wishes and power inside of him.
The storm within the Mavericks organization reached its climax with the trade of Luka Dončić and that storm will inevitably come to an end. A new group is forming. They are establishing their own norms and formulating their own agreements, and despite an overall structure that mostly remains the same as it was previously, their is hope that this particular group will take them to new heights.
We shall see.
Why the Family is the First School of Love
Since there are not, and in my mind, it is hard to fathom that there ever will be, a multitude of schools that exist primarily for the purpose of cultivating the skills necessary for loving and fostering healthy relationships, one must be resigned to the fact that the family, by default functions as the primary school of love. This being the case, there are as many schools as there are families, most with some overlap in terms of the similarities and differences and very few that can be counted as being the same. It is within the confines of the family that love is defined. The family is where the meaning of love is given a structure and a shape.
This meaning-making is carried out in both verbal and non-verbal ways. The memory of childhood is imperfect and prone to alteration as time passes, but certain moments are indelible and leave lifetime impressions on the mind and the heart, and oftentimes these moments deal with the particular topic of love. What it is and what it isn’t. Looking back, I surely thought love was the feeling I got when my mother took care of me when I was sick, or on days when I wasn’t sick, the feeling I got when my father let me play hooky and stay home from school. Those moments are easy to recollect because of the positive association I have with them. Naturally my world was defined by emotion, and all my value judgments were subject to the approval of my feelings. It takes a long time to realize that love is more like the nights your mother worked overtime at the hospital, the club, the restaurant, the office, wherever, to make sure you had school clothes that fit, and possibly a new pair of shoes to go with them.
Most families are too busy trying to survive and advance, and ironically, trying to love, both individually and collectively, to pay much attention to the actual business of modeling what love is and what it isn’t. When one is accosted on all sides by the trivial and serious, the personal and the political, it is difficult to mind what is happening within the four walls of one’s home, and yet this is the task that is always important, until it becomes urgent.
This difficulty leads to confusion about love and acceptance of some faulty assumptions. The most common of these is the assumption that love is only ever about feeling good. This assumption is understandable on the part of a child who is more than anything else concerned about holding onto whatever good feeling they can find. For some children, the unbearable conditions they are forced to endure, in which they still manage to conjure up some amount of pleasure testifies to that fact.
But at some point, you have to realize that love is not always about feeling good and may in fact have very little to do with happiness, at least not the way we usually think of that word. Love produces a happiness that comes from giving rather than receiving. A fulfillment that comes from nurturing someone or something else rather than satisfying one’s own desires. This kind of love is difficult to understand and difficult to practice, and one comes into it gradually.
It is the responsibility of the family to help its members grow into this understanding. To gently disabuse its members of the faulty belief that love is synonymous with feeling good. What you find is that unhealthy families are ones where the adults themselves are just as preoccupied with feeling good as everyone else. This wish makes them incapable of guiding other family members towards a healthy definition of love. No one is able to receive the kind of nurturance that leads to growth and maturity and instead everyone within the family becomes locked in a battle to preserve their own pleasure. This is in essence a form of neglect that ensures long-term dysfunction due to the fact that everyone is stuck at the level of a child when it comes to understanding love, viewing it only through the prism of reward and punishment.
How Vague Goals Produce Vague Results
It is impossible to find success if you don’t start out with a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve. Sometimes people don’t know what they want and choose to adopt the wishes and desires of other people because it is easier than deciding for themselves.
But just as bad is when a person doesn’t clarify what they want. Most people say they want to be happy, but happiness is a vague and subjective term that means something different to everyone. Even if you simplify happiness and say it consists of the basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter, etc., there is still a lot of difference amongst people in terms of what and how much of each they think they need to be happy.
Having a specific goal in mind that you can measure and track your progress towards gives you a daily routine to follow. It gives structure and order to your existence because you know what you are working towards. It also tells you when the journey is over, which is just as important. One of the qualities that successful people share that is not talked about enough is their ability to recognize when it is time for something to end. When it is time to change directions and embark on a new journey, a moment that usually comes well before the majority of people realize it. They keep the end in mind even when they start, because they realize that a decision not to plan for change, for the time when something is over and done with, is a decision to court stagnancy and complacency. It’s deciding, in essence, to fail.
The end goal in therapy might involve helping a person resolve whatever issues initially brought them to therapy, or being able to accomplish the goals outlined in a plan of care. Most people come to therapy with a combination of the two, some things they want less of in their lives, and other things they want more of. Therapy is such a dynamic process that inevitably new issues will surface throughout sessions and new goals will be formulated beyond the initial ones. This can make it difficult to determine when therapy has come to an end. There’s a fine line between needing to continue helping someone with new problems as they organically arise, and looking for problems to avoid having to say goodbye. The latter could be considered a form of self-sabotage.
For that reason, I judge therapy to be over when a person is living the life they want to live, paradoxes and all. This means they have resolved or gotten control of most if not all of the problems they initially came to therapy for, and they have accomplished their personal goals. Having this end in mind at the very beginning helps to guide the therapeutic process.