If I were still a licensed alcohol and drug abuse counselor, I would not be making public comments about the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, which I watched. Several years ago, I retired after 37 years of counseling teens, adults and their families, including many abuse victims. When assessing clients, I would look for signs of denial, defensiveness, minimizing and elusiveness. Honest people, whether discussing current or past behavior, have nothing to hide, thus they do not use these techniques to avoid answering questions.

However, people with unresolved alcohol/drug abuse issues, become masterful at lying to themselves and everyone else, because they have, or had, been living a double life. The majority of alcohol abusers I worked with were high functioning to the outside world, but they had a serious hidden health problem.

As a counselor, the initial very challenging task was to use various intervention strategies to break through the denial, self-delusion and confusion. It was much like trying to nail Jello to a fence post.

While watching the recent hearings, I found Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony very courageous, open, honest, thus believable. It didn’t appear she had a hidden agenda for testifying. However, not so for Brett Kavanaugh. In fact, he sounded like many of my former Jello-like clients.