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Denial

I met with a student this morning who had to face the fact that she had not passed my class. This was obvious to me as their average for the semester over 15 assessments was below 20%. I had repeatedly asked her/him to meet me in office hours or by appointment to go over the content. They had managed to think that it would all work out without doing so.

When working with someone in denial, I always second-guess myself; did I communicate enough, or fervently enough?

I have been in denial at times in my life. Most folk have.

How do you help someone in denial? Here are some thoughts:

1) There is no approach that will make either of you happy. If that is your metric, all choices are bad.

2) The urge is to run away when someone is not hearing what you are saying about reality. That doesn't solve things and has to be resisted.

3) Bad is bad but few things are as bad as they appear to be when adjusting to reality. Life really does go on. There are options. The problem seems more to be about adjusting bearings and feeling insecure after having been wrong.

4) Trying to adapt to the fantasy world of the person in denial is no help to them.

5) Even if you can not make the person happy you can try to make sure there is a safety net from other folk for the person in denial if they go into free-fall.

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