When our parents demonstrate that they can't change any unwanted element of their life and that we can't either, we often learn that no one can do anything about the unwanted elements of reality. We have a sense of powerlessness relative to things we don’t like about our life. So, we decide to cope with this sense of powerlessness by either accepting unwanted realities and succumbing to a false sense of powerlessness about them. Or we cope with it by refusing to see and accept unwanted realities and living in a dangerous fantasy as if what we want to have be the reality, is already the reality, when it isn't.