Denial has gotten a bad rap.  Elizabeth Kubler Ross did wonderful work in raising awareness about death and dying.  However, I think our cultural misunderstood her work to mean that denial is a bad thing that a person needs to move out of as quickly as possible.  By companioning people through the dying process, I have come to see denial as coping mechanism.  It is a wall of protection that people need until they no longer need it.  If we bulldoze the wall down in an effort to get people to except the harsh reality that they are not yet ready to face, then we leave them with no means of protection.  Rather than bulldozing through a person’s wall of denial I have found it is better to stand with them behind the wall giving them courage to take the wall down brick by brick as they are ready.

I like what Melody Beattie says about denial in her book, The Language of Letting Go.  She writes, “Denial is a protective device, a shock absorber for the soul.  It prevents us from acknowledging reality until we feel prepared to cope with that particular reality.  People can shout and scream the truth at us, but we will not see or hear it until we are ready.   We are sturdy yet fragile beings.  Sometimes, we need time to get prepared, time to ready ourselves to cope.  We do not let go of our need to deny by beating ourselves into acceptance; we let go of our need to deny by allowing ourselves to become safe and strong enough to cope with the truth.  We do this, when the time is right.  We will know what we need to know, when it is time to know it.”

The truth of the statement, “We will know what we need to know, when it is time to know it,” was played out in a woman who was living into the reality of her mother’s death.  Four months after her mother died she said to me,  “I think of her as being on vacation.”  She was expecting me to say, “Are you crazy?  Your mom is dead.”  I could literally see her relief when I said, “That is ok.  When you are ready to think differently you will.”  Six months later she is thinking differently.  The wall came down brick by brick and she is now using those bricks to rebuild a new life without her mom.