Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’
Audrey Hepburn
Years ago, I saw a therapist who told me that I shouldn’t have hope.
She told me, that hope was nothing more than a defence-mechanism and therefore, hope can be dangerous. It meant to her that i am not wiling to face reality and the cold, hard truths of my life. I was speechless, when she said that, and completely taken aback.
Hope had always been a substantial part of my healing process. Hope for better times and better things to come my way, hope for relationships to improve…Hope, simply, for a better tomorrow.
Luckily, I figured out quickly that this therapist might not be the best match for me and I moved on and found a GREAT one. However, I remember clearly losing hope (if only for a moment) back then. After this discouraging experience, I thought for a moment that there are simply no therapists out there, that might be able to get me through my piled up emotional baggage. This may seem unreasonable, but I’m sure some can relate. Losing hope can happen oh so quickly. Sometimes, you are not even aware that you lost it, only an outsider might be able to tell. I believe that, unfortunately, it is easy to lose hope, especially for abuse survivors.
So, I’m trying to remind myself of all the happy endings, I already experienced: I did find an amazing therapist, who helps me more than I’d even be able to describe with words. And that is by far not the only story, I know of, that proves that hope is worth having.
In all fairness, I believe what at least some of the ‘no hope enthusiasts’ might talk about, is the concept of ‘false hope’. And you might want to defend them, saying that they simply mean well and don’t wish to see you get disappointed. But, how could they possibly predict, how things will develop for work out or you? There are so many possibilities in this world, for better or worse – they are chances you’ll have to take.
One day, I got talking with my co-worker about all the places, we always dreamt moving to. But all of our dream destinations come with the visa issue attached, you cannot just pack your bags and move there. So, the question is, is something like this possible at all, given all of those obvious obstacles?
The answer has to be yes, because difficult simply does not mean impossible. You could also make an argument for something being ultimately more satisfying, if you had to fight for it, if you had to overcome obstacles to get to where you wanted to be. And maybe some things are actually meant to be.
This chat with my co-worker reminded me of another true story about hope, I heard years ago: There was a man living in the UK, going through a very hard time. He had just been through a difficult divorce and he had been out of work for a couple of months at the time. Another thing, you need to know about this English man is that he had always been dreaming about living in Canada, at last for the last 25 years or so. And mostly because it had been such a long time, without him seeing any way to make this dream come true, he had pretty much given up on it. One day, he went for a walk to distract himself from the fact that he hadn’t been successful with his jobs applications for quite some time and passed by a public library. His gut feeling guided him to go inside, although he had never even been in that particular street before. He started browsing through books and felt drawn to grab one of them, when a business card fell out of the book. Believe it or not, the card belonged to a Canadian business man. Our guy recognised it for the sign that it was and contacted them. And the The story has a true happy ending – the Canadian business owner employed the English man, who moved to Canada and has been living there ever since.
Remembering this story then got me on a roll and I realised that I heard countless stories, just like it. People who got back together with their high-school love, sometimes after 50 or 60 years; people who have been told that they were infertile and believed this for decades but then became parents after all; or some creative spirits who never thought, they would do anything with their talent suddenly becoming successful…The list actually goes on and on.
I have been thinking about possible motives of people, advertising the concept of ‘false hope’, a lot. Often they may mean well, they may worry that you might get hurt….but sometimes, I think, you need to question their motives, especially when you’re dealing with an abusive person. They just might not want you to be happy and fulfil your own dreams, because the happier and more fulfilled you’ll get, the more they will lose their control over you. Whenever somebody is cautioning you to ‘not get your hope up’, you should ask yourself: Is there something they might get out of you not being hopeful?
Personally, I believe, there is no such thing as false hope. Hope is simply the essence of not giving up. As Abraham Hicks were once saying: “You cannot give up on a big dream!”
So, remembering all of those real life stories, helped me to remind myself that I do believe in the validity of hope, that dreams can come true and that some things are indeed meant to happen for you. I believe that if you cannot let go of a dream for years and sometimes even for decades, it means that it is yours to experience.
If we really want something, it is simply not in our human nature to give up hope. This ‘thing’, we want means something to us – is all that is. And dreams and visions are meant to be pursued, they are with us for a reason. Especially, when the reason is to move forward with your life and heal from abuse.
Never give up.
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