By Kristen Wright, LMFT

There are some mental health diagnosis and or struggles in life that are really difficult to overcome and it spurred me to want to write about hope.

Having hope is actually not always easy to have. In life, we can learn that a lot of people are not about hope for various reasons, so it becomes very important to guard one’s hope while in recovery and emotional healing from the many forms of anxiety and depression.

Hope is a sensitive topic for those with severe life threatening issues that affect work, relationships, income, access to health, etc.

We know we need hope! We know hope can feel far away when faced with intense circumstance. So I wrote this article to share how I work with hope and my understanding of it as a therapist. 

1) What is hope?

Defined on the web, the noun of hope is “The longing or desire for something accompanied by the belief in the possibility of its occurrence.” 

Here are my interpretations of hope. Hope is the endorphins, the joy, the motivation, the energy to put to action the steps towards recovery. Hope is essential to recovery and daily living. Hope is how we live and without hope we can bring about more unnecessary suffering. There is an old wise saying, “Hope deferred, makes the heart sick.” The opposite of hope is actually fear. Fear is the enemy to hope, the stealer of hope. In therapy we work on setting realistic standards and beliefs that we can test and work on that grow and nurture hope for each person’s individualistic needs. 

Hope matters!

2) What does having hope look like in therapy?

Because healing, is a fragile journey, learning how to talk about hope with others is something to work on over time and talking to your providers in private how to navigate conversations with difficult people. Overall the safest term to use about recovery is “What might work in treatment for one person might not work with someone else.”  

Hope can change daily too, based on mood fluctuations, life’s curve balls, traumatic experiences, and set backs. Hope can be tested. Therapy is usually a safe place to test belief systems. And hope for certain beliefs, may have to be adjusted, reframed, or exchanged at times based on the individual’s needs and experiences. 

Hope in recovery is not a race, it is not a game, it is not to be compared, and it is not to be joked around with. It is something super beautiful and delicate that belongs to each person. Someone who has fully learned how to be hopeful in their own life will eventually not be easily triggered or dismayed by anyone else’s say and grumblings. Hope is something that we can learn to cultivate, nurture, so it inhabits how we talk about anything and everything. 

Hope is beautiful. 

3) When treatment doesn’t work and triggers fears.

Hope is the foundation for any treatment attempted. Hope is the cornerstone. If one treatment doesn’t work, there are always other treatments and providers out there, there are even new treatments being discovered….and learning to reframe things in hopeful statements is hopeful too. 

When we don’t have hope we can become hopeless. Hopelessness happens when so much fear has come in it leads to a very sensitive and desperate place that must be treated by professionals. (Note: Please seek help if you have felt hopelessness). Often hopelessness happens because someone has perhaps an unrealistic expectation, or has not met their expectations in life and doesn’t know what to do or think. Therapy is so crucial to helping navigate in those times of hopelessness and to learn new ways of thinking and coexisting in this world. 

Hope is vital.  

4) How does a therapist provide hope? 

As the writer I will speak for myself. I believe as therapists, we provide it by how we look at someone. It is our helpful internal bias, but a positive one. I know what treatments I provide and if it doesn’t work, I can recommend something else or assist my clients with finding a new provider. We have so many different methods out there now that we should have lots of hope. We also know our limits in what we can provide based on our specialties but we can still hold onto hope for each person that comes our way.

Hope is really an emotional feeling and overtime should be independent of treatment modalities itself. Hope after time becomes a lifestyle. For example the ultimate gift I hope as a clinician to give for my clients is teaching this, “I hope to embrace each day, one day at a time, no matter what happens in life.” Hope is an emotional experience that can become strengthened  to live out every day, embrace every day, and nurture every day. 

Hope is often a spiritual and sacred experience. When clients come to therapy they start out wanting hope away from symptoms of some major illness or experience, but what they gain is hope to believe and love themselves every day. Loving one self is actually a VERY scary concept for many people. So as therapists, we know this (not really a secret) secret about loving oneself and self compassion and we know when we teach that to our clients, they too can experience hope as an every-day lifestyle; a hope to have fun, a hope to have joy, a hope to have friends and keep them. Whatever that hope needs to be. Hope is an emotional experience and very malleable. 

Hope is teachable. 

5) How do the western medicine and holistic medicine view hope?

Hope is framed very differently in Western medicine and Eastern medicine. Western medicine is very much solving the problems presented and holistic medicine is solving root issues to how those problems originate. But hope is mostly the same as helping the wellness and quality of life. I understand and respect both. Often people in recovery will argue what is best and this is very sensitive as most people are just working on protecting the “hope to feel better.” 

It is best to not get into debates. It is best to learn who respects what method of treatment work for each person. It is best to always be hopeful for everyone and not control things. It is best to find a doctor to work with that understands your needs and gives you hope. And realise we as individuals cannot stop the divide and war between the two medical models. Find what works for you and guard your hope. 

Hope is not a debate.

6) How do I know I am talking to someone who is safe, and that I can share my hope to recover?

Sadly the majority of people are usually not safe. Since everyone is also healing from their own pain and trauma and disappointments or conflicted with internal biases, it takes time to find “SAFE” people who can have non-judgmental conversations about the journey you are on. Many people in this world have hit closed doors, or slammed doors in their face when it comes to finding hope in mental health recovery, that even thinking about hope can be triggering. There can also be a passivity prevalent in many places to just not try anymore, accept the status quo, forget about consequences, gaslight and ignore etc. In some circles, we can call them “Internal Biases.” 

7) Some ways on how to guard hope

• Learn to set boundaries on what you want to share. There are many books on the subject of setting boundaries. 
• Learn to have rest periods after conversations. 
• Practice talking about your recovery with someone safe so it is very easy to access when people ask. 
• Learn to understand that what you do in your private life can remain private. 
• It is not always best to share recovery and healing on social media. Understand that the world has what is called “Trolls” that love to devalue and harp on any recovery. So if sharing publicly, be prepared to guard hope.
• Recognise who is in your community and thinks like you.
• Listen or read stories about those who have recovered from similar circumstances.
• Learn to cultivate small joys each day  towards  larger goals.