It’s a very old cliche, but it’s true: Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt

By David McElroy · December 3, 2011

No matter what evidence you show some people about where things are headed in this country, they’ll tell you that everything’s going to be OK and then change the subject. In other words, they’re in denial.

I’ve really been thinking about this a lot lately, because I seem to be seeing lots of examples of people with their heads in the sand to avoid painful realities. I used to be confused about why people did it. It seems insane to deny a painful reality that’s obvious to others, so why do people do it?

I’ve come to a simple conclusion. People stick their heads in the sand and ignore painful truths because they don’t know what to do about the issues. If they admitted to themselves just how bad things were, they would have to seek solutions. But since they don’t see any potential solutions, it’s easier to pretend that reality isn’t what it really is.

Whether it’s about political reality or financial reality or the reality of your personal life, it’s easy to slip into this way of living. It’s not about intelligence or honesty or anything else. I think it’s purely a question of whether someone sees any possibility of change. If change seems possible, it’s psychologically safe to accept reality and deal with it. If change doesn’t seem possible — for whatever reason — into the sand the head goes.

I started thinking about this seriously Thursday night when a friend was telling me about the people in his life — including his mother — who are in denial about political and economic reality in this country. As I thought it about it all day Friday, though, it occurred to me that I know plenty of people in denial about a range of things. I’m sure it even applies to me at times.

If you pretend that very real problems aren’t real, you can keep living your current comfortable life and not worry about where it’s leading. You can pretend your country is stable. You can pretend that prosperity is just around the corner. You can even pretend that you’re happy with your own life (when problems are of a personal nature). I think it’s a result of cognitive dissonance. If you believe that change isn’t possible — or that the change that might fix something is too painful to contemplate — it creates cognitive dissonance from trying to hold two incompatible ideas in your head. So the brain lies to itself and finds ways to ignore reality. It’s a coping mechanism that allows us to survive without going crazy and staying suicidally depressed all the time. But it’s a coping mechanism that can’t last forever.

If you’re under the delusion that you’re not going to be affected when the U.S. economy collapses, you’re in denial. If you’re under the delusion that you’re happy with a life you’ve built for yourself that can’t ever bring you fulfillment, you’re in denial. If you’re under the delusion that you and your family are going to be spared when things start falling apart around you, you’re in denial.

We need to pull our heads out of the sand and force ourselves to face serious questions. If the idea of the collapse of the U.S. economy frightens you, you have to get serious about searching for ways that you can prepare yourself — whether your conclusion is to stay here or go somewhere else. Whatever it is that you’re in denial about — whether it’s political, economic or personal — it’s time to quit living on autopilot and face harsh realities — and make hard choices.

You still have time to confront reality and make a conscious choice about how to change your life — about how to untangle the contradictions that scare you. There will come a time when the choice is no longer yours. I strongly encourage you to take a chance while you still can.

I’m going to start talking more about this in the coming weeks. I’d like to focus less on the ugly realities and more on potential solutions. I hope you’re ready to step in that direction with me.

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I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

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