We tend to feel hopeless when we’ve tried very hard for something to happen and our efforts didn’t work. We feel flat, exhausted, and collapsed with no light at the end of the tunnel.
When we feel hopeless, we become convinced that no matter what happens, our situation cannot be helped or changed. And so we lose heart, we give up.
In this blog, we will discuss how to get out of a state of hopelessness and depression. It’s not an easy task, but it is possible to find hope again.
How to Get Out of Hopelessness
There’s plenty of anger and sadness in a state of hopelessness. Get in touch with this anger and express it with the help of a therapist in a safe setting. Yell if you have to, move your body, and let your anger speak without doing any harm.
Keep moving this energy and soon you’ll get in touch with your sadness and grief over the fact that you don’t have what you want, at least for now.
Healing from hopelessness requires real commitment. It can be difficult but try and choose to not get lost in mental theoretical scenarios fueled by your hopelessness.
Is All Hope Healthy?
In short, no. Hope can sometimes leave us hanging onto a relationship or situation to avoid the grieving process. Here’s a scenario:
Your friend betrayed your trust in a big way 3 years ago. Then they promised this would never happen again until they betrayed your trust one more time only 4 months after. This has happened 3 more times in the past year. You keep forgiving them each time after they promise to be better, but nothing ever changes. Your hope for them to treat you better (one day) is keeping you stuck in a toxic pattern with your friend.
What you need to see is how hurt you are and that nothing has changed. In this case, letting go of the hope for your friend to change and grieving the lost trust is what will bring you healing. This is how you can move on from a relational pattern that doesn’t serve you.
Moving Past Hopelessness and Opening to the Unknown
Perhaps the healthiest way we can stay open to the future is through faith. This word is often associated with a religious context, but it simply means to put your trust in the unknown and believe that everything will sort itself out. Faith doesn’t require abandoning our healthy boundaries, nor does it require a denial of what is happening now.
When we have faith, we are open to not knowing what’s next. We step into the unknown without trying to control a situation and without needing ultimate guarantees.
Having faith in life in this way frees us from having to hold on to a future that isn’t our reality. We open more fully to what’s happening right here instead of getting lost in mental scenarios, whether negative or positive.
Faith is a fully embodied feeling of living here and now with our eyes and hearts open. If you’re stuck in a spiral of hopelessness, continue holding on. Speak with a friend, a doctor, or a professional about why you are feeling down and lost. There is hope for you yet.
At Sunshine Coast Health Centre, our non-12-step program methodology for treating addiction, mental health, trauma and PTSD comes from Dr. Viktor Frankl’s proposition that the fundamental motivation in humans is the will for meaning. To learn more about the services we offer, please visit our website or call us today.
