Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holiday Break

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Accountability

Mathematics as a discipline teaches accountability. Every claim, whether it be a computation result or a statement (theorem) about how things work is accountable. We teach this accountability developmentally, with lower expectations at the beginning, and sometimes folk who study mathematics casually don't understand this. In my multivariable calculus classes, which I teach most frequently, I usually phrase my expectations as "give me a reason to believe your answer", citing my time working at an investment bank where my recommendations had financial repercussions and my supervisor never took my word for anything. In higher-level mathematics classes such as Abstract Algebra or Analysis I can be more explicit: these are the things we all agree to assume, these are the proof techniques which we understand; can you make an argument that convinces the community who have accepted those axioms and rules of inference that what you claim is true? We work hard to remove the ego fro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Contents of Most Recent Email to NC Senators

 Sent to Senators Tillis and Budd of NC this morning: My uncle was a police detective in Philadelphia before he retired. He showed his face and his badge to all he talked to on the job; he gave his name and business card to the public he served. This is what law enforcement officials have done in this country as policy until now; what if anything has changed?   The violent thugs serving in ICE are not law enforcement. They do not protect and serve; they attack and refuse to identify themselves. They are a paramilitary force responsible only to President Trump and his minions, who reflexively desecrate the memory of their victims. All dishonor themselves daily, all lack integrity. Immigration is a serious issue. Using brutal thugs to deal with it is like using a chainsaw to remove an appendix. The appendix may need to come out but using a chainsaw is a silly solution that kills people. It is painful to think of all the children incarcerated by ICE. It is unthinkable to all...
Post a Comment
Read more