Denial: Not Just a River in Egypt

"Don't be such a crybaby," a sibling teases.
(Sobbing) I'm not a crybaby!

My oatmeal tastes nasty.
"It's not nasty. Eat it," the parent warns.

"You'll hardly feel it," the doctor says.
Oww-oww—before the shot, oww-oww-oww—afterwards.

Some of us learned early that our emotions and sensory experiences were not acceptable to those around us. We learned that, by all indications, they cannot be trusted.

We were wrong.

So now we say, "Problem? There's not a problem," to avoid a confrontation.
I am so mad I could spit nails.

"Of course I'll help with your garage sale," we agree.
I really don't want to. Why did I say "yes"?

"It's okay. I don't mind," as friend or family member oversteps the boundary. I guess I've got to be okay with this if I want to be a good daughter / wife / mother / Christian.

And we are still wrong. We are keeping stuffed deep inside ourselves our feelings, our opinions, our instincts. This makes us, to some degree, inauthentic in our interaction with others. More dangerously, however, it creates a duplicity in our own thinking. Eventually, this will either erupt in anger and open damage to our relationships, or it will blunt our perception and cause us to abandon our personal selves. We tell ourselves over and over again, "This doesn't really matter," when it does matter, or "I shouldn't let this bother me," when it would bother any reasonable person. That self-talk takes us back to the immaturity of our childhood when we were taught that we did not know what we felt or that it did not matter.

We do know what we feel, or we can learn to feel it. Denying that it matters will do nothing for us except to make us a "Queen of Denial," which is not just a river in Egypt.

Marjorie

To read more about truth-telling, see some earlier posts on my "Finding the Faith Way" blog. Click on these titles:
Things Mama Taught Me: Tell the Truth
To Thine Own Self Be True
Crossing the Bridge