Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

Part of the denial is that when we finally realize what has
happened, we can't figure out how it happened. Look at a truly
healthy woman, someone from that top 5% of the normal curve
who really does have it all together. She dates a guy who seems to
be on the ball. Because they're dating, he's on his good behavior.
He has a cocaine problem, but she's one fine catch and so he
doesn't use much around her. In fact, he probably uses less around
her than anyone else. And we all know, though, cocaine addiction
is about much more than using too much cocaine. It goes much
deeper. It means that all kinds of other things are missing in our
developmental picture. It means our cups are not very full. Think
about it. Don't you think a truly healthy woman is going to spot
something else wrong? Of course, she will.
It's elementary, my dear Watson. After a few dates she'll get a
funny feeling when she's around him. She may not even be able to
label it in words, but that won't matter. Being healthy, she will have
learned long ago to trust her gut feelings about people. She'll notice
that he may get uncomfortable in certain types of intimate

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conversations, or that his moods fluctuate a little more than she
would like, or that there are certain parts of his life that he seems to
have blocked out, or any number of other subtle cues that aren't so
subtle to her.
If she's truly healthy, she probably won't back away from him right
away, but she will keep the brakes on the relationship enough until
her gut feeling tells her to go forward, because she's learned from
her own past experiences. When she was younger, she may have
rushed headlong into a relationship like this one and eventually
been burned. She probably did it when she was still a teenager or in
her early twenties. Being healthy, and having a pretty full
emotional cup, she was able to get out because she wasn't desperate
for love. Sure, it hurt for a while, but it wasn't the end of the world.
And best of all, because she wasn't in a constant state of

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denial, she learned from her experiences. That's the saddest part of
denial. It keeps us from ever learning from our mistakes.
And so she waits and watches. Sooner or later her friend's
underlying dependency will be exposed. He will want to "catch"
her. He will want to possess her. He will want to capture her now
and for all time, to fill in that terrible void in himself that he has
been filling up with cocaine. He will want to get married. He will
want to spend more and more time with her. Or in punishment for
her not giving him all that he wants when he wants it, he will pull
away for no reason for periods of time. He will become "gamey",
and the relationship for him will become like a chess match instead
of a healthy, respectful interaction.
Eventually, he will make a big mistake. He'll pout or explode in a
rage, or he'll go on a binge when he least expected it and she'll find
out about it. With her gut feelings confirmed, she'll honestly and
tactfully pull back. As she pulls back his symptoms of severe
dependency will escalate. She'll pull back some more in healthy
self-protection. Then it will be over. She'll breathe a sigh of relief.
He'll mutter that she's a "bitch". She will have had her reality
confirmed. He will return to his denial.
"At least I can use when I want to now," he'll say to himself. "She
wasn't such a fine catch after all."
And the continuing darkness of denial will again envelope him.
"The last time I talked to her, she said she thought I had a cocaine
problem and that I should get some help for it. Humpfh! I've got a
problem? She must be kidding. Everybody knows I don't have a
problem. She's the one who has the problem. It's so funny that she

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should say I have a problem when it's so obvious to everybody that
she's got the problem."
Martin Short, eat your heart out. Someone's trying to outdo you
again, and he's doing a darned good job of it.
Many psychotherapists have a saying, "It's going to have to feel a
lot worse before it feels better." Denial keeps us from ever feeling
truly better.
It's like a friend of ours who had a mild infection under her
fingernail. The tip of her finger began to swell up until it was pretty
painful. She finally consulted her physician, who immediately
became concerned, injected her finger with novacaine, and
proceeded to rip off her fingernail and dig out the underlying
infection. Did that ever hurt! Strangely enough, a few days later,
the pain went away. Within a few weeks, her finger was as good as
new.

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Denial is just like that. It's like the tissue encasing a boil, protecting
the rest of the body from the infection. And just like with boils, we
sometimes can't heal ourselves.
In the case of the denial surrounding our addictions, this is almost
universally true. The casing of psychological "tissue" gets thicker
and thicker, the boil gets bigger and bigger and we experience
more pain. The more pain we feel, the thicker the denial gets. We
repeat the same mistakes over and over. The boil gets bigger and
bigger. Without help, it finally bursts, and then we have a real mess
on our hands. With addictions, this mess isn't just a little blood and
pus. It's divorce, abuse, depression or death. Long-term denial
simply doesn't do anybody any good. Ever.

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11 
The Feelings