If it's not on fire ...

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS - Emotional pain - Column

THERE IS NOTHING like a little passive-aggressive avoidance or plain old Freudian denial to make a mountain out of what could have been a mole hill. Human beings are spectacularly talented at avoiding dealing with problems until it either is too late, or so far along in the evolution of a crisis that much more effort will be needed to make a correction. Ignore, ignore, ignore and then shriek about an emergency.

Here is my short definition of an emergency: blood, flood, or fire. If person or property are not in imminent danger, it is not an emergency. It may be darned inconvenient, and of pressing importance, but it is not an emergency. In all these many years of private practice and college teaching, I have interrupted a class to pick up the phone once: my cell phone lit up with a call from "MacDill AFB" while our daughter was stationed at a combat outpost in Afghanistan. It met the criteria for a potential real emergency (it was not.). That is my benchmark.

Failing to respond to a cell phone ring immediately is an act of superhuman willpower for a lot of people. These same individuals often have an incredible ability to see around and through an elephant in the room. It happens on a variety of scales. Our national border has been hemorrhaging for years. With a few exceptions, only the people who live there and suffer the consequences have been paying attention. Now, with tens of thousands of minors, and people masquerading as minors, flooding the border, it suddenly is worthy of attention.

About two-thirds of the adults in the U.S. are overweight. Being overweight generally is not a condition acquired overnight, yet it apparently sneaks up on people, and thus we have the desperation of weight loss surgeries--more than 200,000 per year--in an attempt to lose what turns out to be, on average, 60 pounds. That is a sizable amount of weight, but there are risks, including the fact that half these people will require subsequent surgeries related to the lap band surgery.

As a marriage therapist, I see the ignore/explode pattern among many clients. A few years ago, the average wait between the onset of relationship problems and a couple seeking therapy was five years. Now, it is about five-and-a-half years. Five-plus years comprises many days of disappointment, resentment, and bitterness. This simmering emotional pain often is buried under the duties of daily life and ignored with the help of distractions such as television, social media, and...