The Lie of Hopelessness.
Hopelessness is an emotion that you may commonly experience at different points in your life. Hopelessness can show up when you are overwhelmed by your current life circumstances or exhausted from the longevity of your circumstances.
It can also show up when you are feeling deep sadness or deep emotional pain.
Hopelessness often accompanies trauma and is commonly experienced when there is a long history of trauma, especially childhood trauma. This is particularly true when there is a long history of childhood relational trauma.
When hopelessness is present, you may notice it is accompanied by thoughts and beliefs that are believable at the time, but in actuality, when reflected on later, can be identified as lies.
You may have experienced some of these thoughts when in hopelessness: ‘no one loves you’, ‘no one will miss you if you are gone’, ‘no one cares about you’, ‘this circumstance will never end’, ‘I don’t deserve to feel better’, ‘there is no way out of this’.
You may have even experienced a visceral and physical response in your body to these thoughts. Or you may have felt complete numbness in your body to these thoughts.
When hopelessness is present it is like a fog that descends and surrounds your present moment experience. This fog of hopelessness only allows you to see what is right in front of you, but through the filter of hopelessness. This fog may only allow you to experience what you are feeling right in that moment, which is pain and sadness.
The fog of hopelessness makes it hard for you to feel hope or even see a wider view of what may be true.
The interesting thing about hopelessness, is it often is the system’s way of protecting you from the pain of a hope once felt, but then not working out. This is especially true for those of you who have experienced childhood trauma and repeated relational trauma. At some point in your life, it became so much better to believe nothing would get better than to constantly hope for better and be repeatedly disappointed or let down by the circumstances. A hope dashed over and over can be devastating to ones neurological system.
So… how can you move forward when hopelessness has settled in?
It can be helpful to write down things you do know to be true, when hopelessness isn’t present.
It can also be helpful to begin to recognize hopelessness as a trigger, maybe even connected to a different moment in time, that is here trying to be helpful and protective in your current circumstances. It may be helpful to explore if you learned a long time ago not to trust hope, and recognize that when you have a glimmer of hope in your life now, hopelessness may be being triggered to protect you from a hopes being dashed.
It can be useful to talk to trust people about your hopelessness. Trusted people can help speak truth that is inaccessible to you in your fog of hopelessness.
It can also be helpful to find a way to get into sunshine and move your body with light to moderate exercise when hopelessness is present. Something about sunshine and movement seems to relieve the fog of hopelessness, even if just for a short time. The reprieve from the fog can help you ground in truth that is not apparent when hopelessness is present, and allow you to ground yourself into that truth if the fog returns.
And finally, recognizing that your thoughts and beliefs that are present only when you are in a hopelessness pattern are lies and are a function of your hopelessness. This recognition can allow you to see them more readily as lies, when they show up.
As always, our counselors at Alice Stricklin Counseling and Consulting are here to help if you find that hopelessness is taking over your present life and keeping you from living out of truth. Call 615.784.9209 to speak with an intake specialist.
If you have suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming yourself:
*CALL OR TEXT 988*
You can also click here for immediate resources: https://www.tn.gov/behavioral-health/need-help.html
Written by: Alice Stricklin, LMFT
