Denial Is Not a River in Egypt

“Denial (the Nile) is not a river in Egypt” is a line I probably picked up in Alcoholics Anonymous, though Mark Twain seems to have said it long before anyone in a church basement did. People lean on denial because they tell themselves it costs nothing. It keeps me out of trouble, they figure. And the trouble can be genuinely frightening: imagine $40,000 in credit card debt while you keep sending in the minimum payment every month. Nobody gets hurt, you think, except of course you and whoever shares the bill. Part of it, too, is fear of how other people will react once we admit the thing we would rather not say out loud.

Push denial far enough and you stop living in the actual world. You can even lose track of what it was you were avoiding, which sets up a second layer of denial once reality finally lands and the consequences are sitting in your lap. By then the only honest-sounding thing left to say is, “I don’t remember doing that,” and you half believe it.

Denial is a way of coping when the stress load gets too heavy. There’s more on the plate than anyone can carry, so we quietly drop one item and forget it was ever there. That’s how appointments get missed, assignments go undone, and a health problem slides from manageable to serious. Think of how often the words “I don’t have time for that right now” leave your mouth, and then you make it worse by forgetting the thing existed at all.

“Me, deal with the stuff I’ve been dodging? Not a chance.” There’s already plenty to worry about. Much of what we sidestep this way is loaded with anxiety, and the body sometimes keeps the score by inventing a physical complaint or worsening one already underway. I’ve lived this. Hives showed up on me and, strangely, inside me too; add earaches, stomach trouble, and bowel problems to the list. None of it is purely in your head, but it isn’t entirely outside you either. Psychosomatic is the word some people reach for.

So what can be done? The plain answer is to pull a few items off the mental to-do list you keep stressing over. Hunt for the hidden stressors you’re currently refusing to look at, then actually do the thing you’ve been postponing, the one your gut insists will only crank the anxiety higher. With symptoms like these, the relief can arrive almost the instant you, to borrow the blunt phrase, defecate or get off the pot.

When I hit that point I’m already at my limit. Facing the problem usually spikes my anxiety first, but the process tends to have an endpoint, and then some relief comes. Afterward I’m left wondering why I spent so long pretending the thing wasn’t there. There’s a price, and up front it looks steeper than it’s worth, which is exactly why the denial felt easier. Often you’re choosing between two options and neither one looks good.

I’ve hauled these buried burdens around for stretches so long that, in hindsight, I can’t understand how I let myself live that way. What about you? Something sitting untouched? Some pointless drain on your time and money, like a couple buying life insurance policies naming each other as beneficiaries while, down where neither will admit it, both of you know a divorce is coming?

One more thing. When you train yourself not to see a single obstacle, you gradually stop seeing others, and before long the vision goes blurry and the blind spots multiply. More and more of what happens gets run through the filter of denial, and you drift further from what’s actually in front of you. If any of that lands, read up on mindfulness; it builds more realistic thinking and keeps you from missing the small signals, like a person’s expression failing to match their words, that would sharpen your judgment.

Say you’ve been refusing to admit that someone in your life might not have your best interests at heart, yet you feel trapped because you’re sure that person is the only one who can help you. That setup has a name: a double bind. It shows up when what someone says clashes with everything else they’re doing, the flat tone, the eyes that won’t meet yours. Denying one side of the equation or the other becomes the way to live with it, and you can probably guess which side people pick, especially the ones who already feel insecure.

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