How To Deal With Hopelessness?
How could we define hopelessness? This term refers to the loss of hope, to feeling an inner emptiness, to thinking that there is nothing left in the desert by which we feel surrounded, that all our efforts are now in vain, how could we face the loss of strength to get ahead? How to deal with despair?
When this feeling invades us, doubts arise, why keep trying? Why keep getting up every day? People who have had this emotion feel that they cannot with their work, with their day to day, with their obligations, that perhaps the best solution is to abandon themselves to stop suffering.
For this reason, despair can become one of the worst enemies, because it puts a blindfold on us and it takes away our strength and desire. It does not let us see beyond the wall that covers the light: it whispers in our ear that this will not happen, that nothing can be better, that everything is finished and we can only resign ourselves to living like this. Faced with this panorama, how to face hopelessness?
Hopelessness is met with patience; with minimal work, but with enormous effort, with small steps, with small achievements. With huge people who help us get out of the well and make us see that there are still wonderful things to continue living for and for which to continue fighting.
Hopelessness, our worst enemy
When despair invades us, the worst thing we can do is be pleasant with the guest. Perhaps it has entered, but from there the solution is to make an effort and (above all) be smart so that it comes out as soon as possible. Hopelessness is cunning, it knows the fears of the one it attacks and feeds on them. Thus, if we learn to manage our fears, hopelessness will have no food to feed on and will end up emerging.
In this sense, all the emotional management tools that we have can help us to face hopelessness. The range in this sense is wide: we are talking about those tools that cut negative cycles of thought, but also about those that make us socially skilled and intelligent in choosing strategies.
Perhaps we cannot see beyond what we have now: when we are in the dark it is difficult to see the light on the other side. However, let us not forget that we ourselves can become a very powerful source of light if we find the key to “turn on”. Hence, hopelessness flees especially from those people who dedicate resources to organizing their thought patterns.
Your best weapon to face despair is your will to live
Here is the most important thing, you are more than your current situation, you have gone through difficult situations and have known how to overcome them, you are capable of achieving goals of great value. You are above all your faith, which is why it is so important that you keep it. Think that our mind works with what happens to us, but still works more with what it thinks will happen. More than being what we think, in reality we are more what we believe or what we are willing to believe.
In the past we have very difficult situations that we have already overcome. In addition, thanks to those situations that we overcome, we now have resources that make us stronger. In the immediate future we have the opportunity to continue living. Finally, for a more distant future we can make plans: illusions that are still the seed of motivation that moves us.
This approach, simple and easy to elaborate, is at the same time difficult to maintain, either because of fears or because of the times in which fortune has turned its back on us. However, it is still worth it. Like the people who have not left our side, even though it is not a good time and we know and recognize that we are not the most pleasant company. If they believe, why don’t we give ourselves a chance?
In other words, despair is still an illusion. An impossibility: that of being blind to the alternatives that provide us with a way out. However, as worrisome as it may seem, it is hardly sustained when we choose the courage to fear … or trust in ourselves to anxiety.
