How do you help a friend who willfully denies the crisis that is her life?

That’s the question I posed to myself last Friday after reaching a point of utter incredulity in my conversation with Nadia (name changed for privacy).

“Are you fucking with me or are you utterly demented?” I had just asked in response to her latest statement in our increasingly escalating discussion.

Her statement was so insanely ludicrous, even for Nadia, a person I’ve known for 4 years who has the unique ability to say things so mindblowingly naïve, bizarre and wrongheaded that repeated exposure had rendered me immune from slackjawed surprise…or so I thought. But this time, we weren’t talking about something of little consequence like the time she looked for research in her nursing assistant textbook and on the web about how the limbic system worked for the express purpose (learned after much prodding and suggestions of neurobiological resources in med school libraries) of figuring out how she could turn off the love she was starting to feel toward a man who was not good for her. Only Nadia could believe that there was some limbic on/off switch that we could just flick for feelings to just stop. That’s how her mind works. As she always says, “It seems so simple.” What I’ve told her more times than I can count is, “Nadia, whenever you start with ‘It seems so simple’ just stop yourself and understand what I’ve always told you: 99 times out of 100, nothing is as simple as you think it is.” This situation is much more critical, I’m afraid. And I’m at a loss as to how to help her.

I’ve known Nadia for the past 4 years. She’s an immigrant from Eastern Europe who has lived in the states for almost a decade. I mention where she’s immigrated from only to distinguish her from brown or black immigrants who often see America quite differently than she sees it. Yet her post-Cold War view combined with a sense of entitlement does frame her current scenario, so it is relevant to this story.

When I met her she was married with 3 kids, all boys. During the deep phase of my infertility she got pregnant with her fourth, a girl. That was tough for me, though she didn’t understand it. Yet even within her it-doesn’t-make-sense-so-I’m-not-going-to-pay-it-any-attention framework, she understood that the tears of this Strongblackwoman are not shed lightly, so even she was gentle with me. That meant a lot. And, as luck would have it, Zara was born 3 months before her daughter. We ended up bonding a lot around that as well. I couldn’t stand her husband, but then again this uberfeminist doesn’t do well with domineering bullies who love ordering people around. Gratefully I didn’t see him much.

Nadia is a kind, eager to help, devoted friend. She is also a person who frames life as it should be rather than how it actually is. As such, it took me a while to learn that her husband and father of 3 of her 4 kids was actually not her husband martially at all. And that he beat her. (Upon learning this, it took all my restraint not to go shiv him myself since I take a very dim view of spousal abuse…a very dim view.) Of course she framed all this from the classic “it’s my fault” point of view. It was like watching a bad Lifetime movie, but it was deadly serious. She was completely dependent on him and saw no way out (again, typical). I opted to do what a friend could do for someone in that situation: provide support, resources, and encouragement to form an escape plan.

The long story short of what happen almost 2 years ago is that he escalated, she called the police and let him get arrested. The she dropped the charges so that he could pay the bills, but then he escalated again. Cycle repeated few more times until she was thrown out of the house with oldest kid as he kept “his” children. Then she was done. She left him in jail but still was without money to pay the bills. After 6 months of his being in jail she didn’t object to his release, believing that he would start paying child support. “Why wouldn’t he support his children?” (Remember what I said about her simplistic mindset.) He didn’t. More ugliness. Restraining orders. But fast forwarding to today, he remains out of the house barred by a restraining order, though the nastiness continues.

But my freak out last Friday concerns not him, but something else really dear to her heart: her house. Again, when you find out the truthy truth and not the Nadia truth, you find out a lot. The main piece is that the house is in her name but stupid-ex is on the mortgage and the second mortgage (one that has a prepayment penalty, no less). Nadia couldn’t afford to pay her mortgage after idiot boy was kicked out of the house. So (get this) she just didn’t pay it. For 17 months!

If you are anything like me, your stomach dropped to your feet upon reading that last bit. But if you are like Nadia, your mindset is what’s the big deal? I started school to become a medical assistant so that I could begin to pay the mortgage. If the bank is just patient, they will have their money. I’m not a deadbeat. I’m doing what I need to in order to pay them back. And she did write them a letter or two explaining this plan and her hardship. Having graduated in June and getting a job, she is all set to pay back her debt. So what’s the problem?

Well if you were at all an inadvertent witness to the phone call I heard two weeks ago between her and someone at the bank, you would see that it is a big problem indeed. They want their money and they want it now. And her main defense during the call consisted of shrieking, “Do you want me to starve my children?” This went on for about, oh, 45 minutes. She would say something like, “You want your money. I want to give you money. What’s the problem? You get your money and I keep my house for my children!” Then there would be listening, next her asking, “Where am I supposed to get that money?” followed by more listening and then, “I don’t have money to feed lawyers!!” finally cycling back to “Do you want me to starve my children.” I wanted to stop it, but realized that I had to step back and let her handle it as she saw fit. Yet I just kept seeing that she just didn’t get it. She really didn’t get it.

I learned midway through our friendship that this Happy Happy Land that Nadia seemed to live in was not an actual place but was borne from a feature of her personality (psychopathology?) that I call willful positive reframing. I first figured that out after the umpteetenth time she described how wonderful her childhood/adolescence was in her country while not two seconds later letting an incident slip that would, for most of us, lead to some subsequent trauma, before moving on to more Happy Happy Land talk. Yet when I called her on the incident, and how it affected her, it was clear that she had willfully reframed it away from trauma into something that was but a mosquito bite in the grand scheme of life. But I wasn’t buying it. After that I noticed that each time we got into a deep discussion about her life, choices, and ways to avoid making the same mistakes (our pseudo-therapy), by the next time we saw each other, her actions/behaviors/feelings had all been reframed into I was right and everything/everyone else was wrong. Even her marriage…if you ask her today, she’ll tell you that she realized that he was wrong for her and just decided to leave (finger snap). Her mind has scrambled reality into a place where nothing bad happens based on her decisions and choices. This is what I refer to as willful positive reframing.

Now I can get back to last Friday’s frustrating exchange. I was so shaken after hearing her end of the conversation with the bank that I pulled out all the stops to find out what she could do. I called lawyer friends. I got local numbers for housing relief. I even sent her suggestions about discussing the situation with the criminal attorneys who handled her abuse case. I sent all the information all the while fretting and freaking out about what’s going to happen to her and the kids. Yet when I saw her on Friday, I asked her how the resources had panned out.

“I haven’t called any of them yet,” she said evenly.

And then my head exploded. “What do you mean ‘You haven’t called?’” I blurted.

“I haven’t gotten to it yet,” she answered.

It was at that point that I realized one of us was not connected to reality. “Wait a minute! So I’m running around trying to move heaven and earth figuring out how to keep you from being foreclosed and you do nothing?!”

“I paid them $3000.”

“And did they say that was OK? Did they say that you’re no longer in foreclosure?”

“They haven’t said anything,” she replied with half a smile.

“You cannot think that this means everything is OK, Nadia!”

“I haven’t heard from them again, so…”

“That only means that you’re living there on borrowed time! What the hell?! Are you just going to wait until the sheriffs show up and start tossing all your belongings into the street?!!” I was getting totally worked up now.

“Psh,” she scoffed, “No one would ever evict a woman with 4 children from her house!”

It was at this point that I looked at her really closely and asked, “Are you fucking with me or are you utterly demented?”

You see in the Happy Happy Land of her reframing, women with children never get evicted. “How could that happen?” she asked quite seriously.

It hit me then that her denial as coping mechanism is keeping her from seeing the freight train heading straight to her face.

“I just don’t see the problem,” she continued. “I have money now and I want to pay. Why is there a problem?”

“Because you didn’t pay for 17 months!”

“Yes, I had a hardship. It happens. Now I’m ready to pay.”

In Happy Happy Land it is that simple. The bank has lots of money. They should be understanding of her situation.

The train is barreling down right at her and she thinks it’s just a glorious summer day. How do I help her (and the kids) get out of the way?

PS She told AdoringHusband that “for some reason” the bank won’t accept the money she’s been trying to pay them. But oh well, must be a problem on their end.

Kill me now.