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Hope

Can you think of anything more painful than hopelessness? In my counselling practice, I see so many women on the brink of, or in the throes of this pain before they start their therapy journeys. Often, therapy in Trinidad and Tobago is regarded as a last resort, turned to by many women when they have exhausted every other option. Offering a sense of hope, the feeling that it is possible to heal and grow through the pain and trauma that have been holding them back in many areas of life, is one of the first things I aim for when meeting with a new client. Together, my clients and I take this hope and use it as our foundation for healing.

What Hope Is Not

A fine layer of something that people call hope is often dusted, like sugar, on every ailment and complaint we share with them, so much so that you start to censor yourself because their unhelpful response is always the same. And your reply is always the same – you smile wanly and nod in agreement to this sage advice, not wanting to argue against “positive thinking”. It comes in different packages, let me know if you’ve heard these before:

• “Just keep the faith and pray about it, it’ll all work out in the end.”
• “You know, someone always has it worse than you, so be grateful for what you’ve got.”
• “Don’t think like that. When you focus on the negative, you get more negativity.”

What you’re being fed isn’t hope, but toxic positivity. You pour out your stresses and anxiety, detail the exact ways in which your daily existence feels unbearable, and you are met with a platitude. Though usually delivered with good intentions, it only serves to make you feel shame for having “negative” feelings at all, shame for not being strong enough to “handle it”, shame for seeking solace, or shame for seeking help.

After many years of working with women in therapy, I’ve learned that this reaction from others is so pervasive, that we can easily fall into the trap of shaming ourselves before others even have the chance – here’s one example:

You feel the familiar tightening in your chest when you think about your job, then feel yourself starting to spiral because you’re overwhelmed, but you can’t express not being able to keep up. Your heart rate increases thinking about the consequences of losing your job in this economic climate – so you tell yourself, “At least I have a job, I should be more grateful,” and just like that, you bury the real problems under shame and toxic positivity and your anxiety grows and grows in secrecy.

It’s important, in this age where we are prompted to flaunt slick highlight reels and deterred from sharing our normal, human struggles, that we understand the stark difference between toxic positivity and genuine hope. The former casts our pain deeper into ourselves and multiplies it, while the latter can guide us to release our pain.

What Hope Is

Hope is one of THE most important parts of our lives. Think of the story of Pandora’s Box – after all manner of evils are set loose upon the earth, Hope remains in the box. Something to hold on to, something to bring comfort. Without it, a lot of people would probably choose to abandon their lives in the face of so much hardship, woes and unkindness.

Hope keeps us going on in spite of whatever life brings us, and a good therapist helps you find your way to it. Now, you may not have known this, but there are two kinds of hope.

First, there is irrational hope. This is hope based on illusions, hope that has no basis in reality – this is where the phrase “hoping against hope” comes from. This is the equivalent of holding your hands open to the sky and expecting a miracle to fall neatly into them. That’s not to say I don’t believe in miracles, but to place any belief in their guarantee is to walk into a trap of disappointment. You may want a particular outcome in any given situation, but if the evidence, over a long enough period, shows that that particular outcome would now be considered miraculous, also consider it an irrational hope, one that is unlikely to bear any fruit, no matter how long you wait.

Finding Hope

The second type of hope is rational.

This is hope based in reality and in action taken. You may want a particular outcome, but it would only be rational to hope for that particular outcome with the assurance that you are doing what you can to get closer to it.

With my clients, in the first stage of our free consultation, I translate their goals for therapy into a clinically based intervention plan which shapes their despair into realistic (rational) hope.

Do you struggle with hopelessness? Here are some tips for you:

    1. Name the hope

Some of us are afraid to name the thing we hope for. Fear and shame surround particular topics, especially for women. Say out loud the things you want for your life every day and allow hope to step in. This will feel ridiculous at first, but I promise, it works!

    2. Take a Plan of Action

Once you are able to name, out loud, the specific thing(s) you’ve been hoping for, it becomes much easier to direct your steps towards building a possible timeline for your goals, an assessment of what you can and cannot control in working on them or gauging who in your circle can help you to achieve them. 

    3. Let go of irrational hopes

This is actually one of the first steps in therapy, since many women are clinging desperately to a hope that isn’t based in reality. The chronic disappointment of unrealized hopes can cause such a knot of pain, that it has to be dealt with first before moving on to do the work in therapy.

    4. Dare to hope

Another stumbling block is accepting the fact that they even deserve to hope, to believe that they are worthy of hoping for more than they currently have, and of not minimizing their desires under the pretense of contentment. You may feel guilty for wanting more when you look around and acknowledge the disadvantages others face that you do not. Alternatively, you may be afraid to hope for something that you have never experienced but have only seen from afar. Neither of these scenarios invalidates your desire to add or subtract to your life.

Getting started

Have you been talking yourself out of hoping? Do you judge the hopes that you secretly have?

If you are ready to work on achieving realistic hopes and you don’t know how or where to start, book your free consultation today…I’m here, and I’m ready to help you.