Maintaining hope During Disparaging Times

As I write this the news is abuzz with the recent draft that was leaked on the US Supreme Court’s decision.  While the country as a whole is having different responses, I have been seeing some feeling of hopelessness resurfacing for a few folks in my clinical care and in my social circles.  How do we manage to maintain hope during times like these when it feels like all is lost?  How do we not lose ourselves in the pit of hopelessness where it feels like we can not move?  

I reflect on this thinking of the classic psychology study on learned helplessness.  In a study done by Martin Seligman in the late 1960’s he had placed a dog in a cage. One group of dogs were placed in a cage where they were shocked but could stop the shocks by pressing levers or moving.  Another set of dogs were shocked, but nothing they could do could stop the unwanted experience.  These dogs learned that they could not do anything and were powerless in dealing with painful situations.  So when new painful situations happened and they could do something they did nothing to stop the situation.  Also no amount of treats, rewards or punishments seemed to help teach the dog to move out of their painful predicament.

This to me is a classic example of of we learn hopelessness.  We feel overwhelmed and learn there is nothing we can do.  Many folks are still unlearning this from dealing with the pandemic. It was easy for us to feel overwhelmed and powerless, particularly at the beginning of the lockdowns.  Or maybe it was 2016 that made you feel hopeless.  Or the murder of George Floyd.  Or the inaction on our climate crisis?  Or many other things that had happened.  

So it can be easy for us to fall into hopelessness and it can be a learned condition.  What about hope; is that also a learned state?  I hear many people say that they do not know how to feel hopeful at these times.  Can we just make ourselves feel hopeful?  I think about the activist Mariame Kaba who takes the stand that “hope is a discipline” 

Kaba's stance in her work as an abolitionist takes a philosophy of hope.  “I think that for me, understanding that is really helpful in my practice around organizing, which is that, I believe that there’s always a potential for transformation and for change. And that is in any direction, good or bad. The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago who was talking about it in conjunction with making sure we were of the world and in the world. Living in the afterlife already in the present was kind of a form of escape, but that actually it was really, really important for us to live in the world and be of the world. The hope that she was talking about was this grounded hope that was practiced every day, that people actually practiced it all the time.” (Full interview can be found here)

From Kaba’s stance we can see that hope is a choice we make to go out into the world and make this one a better place.  Hope is a discipline and a practice.  It is not just a feeling and she is quick to add that you can take a stance of hope while still feeling anger, despair, or anxiety.  Her words ring true to me right now and through many of the challenges we faced in these last few years.  

What about the dog who learned helplessness?  How does Kaba’s philosophy meet with that poor soul?  Again threats and rewards had no impact on changing their behaviors of helplessness.  What did help the dog was the research team moving the dog by either picking them up or moving their feet.  After a few times the dog learned to use their own body to move out of helplessness.  So helplessness could be unlearned, not by reward or punishments, but by others helping us find our own strengths.  

Kaba speaks of being part of the world is what the discipline of hope is about.  We may need to be with others to work on what is hard.  When we are isolated we have a tendency to ruminate which has various negative effects on our mental health.  Ruminations are circular thinking that we can often feel stuck in our own thoughts.  Ruminations can lead us to a similar experience of the dog in the learned helplessness experiment.  Talking and connecting with others is key when we have a lot in our heads.  We may also doomscoll during these times and this is just another practice of rumination and disconnection.  We need ways to actually connect with others to talk about these items.  

So much of what we need right now is the ability to connect.  Technology can be a tool of disconnecting from the community (doomscrolling or negatively comparing ourselves to others) or it can be a way of actually connecting (finding community, Zooming with friends).  

Some advice to work on building hope during trying times:

Grieve

We can hope, but we also may need to grieve.  Are you feeling helplessness or are you feeling grief?  I have a wide definition of trauma as “I thought I was safe and then I learned that I wasn’t.”  When we go through a traumatic experience we may need to grieve the loss of safety we had before.  We need time to grieve this part of ourselves.   However do NOT grieve alone.  Grief is the loss of attachment and we need other attachments to help heal and process grief.  Many communities and faiths have practices in regards to grief when there is a death involve and all of them involve connecting with the community.  Who are the people who can go through with you and help each other grieve?  

Practice Hope as a Discipline 

Looking at Kaba’s stance of Hope as a Discipline how would you practice that in your life? Many therapists use the practice of As-If.  What would you do as if you had hope?  What would you do as if you felt confident? What would do as if you felt like you had the strength.  This was an Alderian technique to get people to think about who they wanted to be that felt incongruent with their current situation.  Kaba’s stance of Hope as a Discipline makes us think about what behaviors would we need to do to act hopeful.  By acting on these behaviors we can build hope.

Manage your pace

Do not feel like you have to do everything at once.  One rally will not fix everything.  If we take Hope as a Discipline it should also include patience.  The practice of self-care and preventing burnout is a key part in all things we need to do that are challenging.  When we plan for a long hike we think about things we would need: good walking shoes, tail mix for nutrition, good rest before and after the hike, good company, etc.  When we go out into new challenges we also need to take a measure look to see what helps us. Angela Davis talking about Radical Self Care which she needs to do to take care of herself and not just do the work all the time. 

Connect with Community

A large theme here in this blog is to connect with others.  Good relationships are built on people we see over and over again.  This is how community is built.  How can you practice building community in regards to talking and/or acting on things you need to do.  I saw many beautiful communities torn apart during the pandemic and many more built or rebuilt during the pandemic as well.  Groups that could no longer meet in person switch to Zoom.  So many of my clients started learning Dungeons and Dragons to connect with friends.  How do you want to build a community that addresses challenging things?  We as a society need more space to have challenging conversations and be able to talk to others we may disagree with.  But often we need spaces that understand us to help build our language and stances.  

It is dangerous for us to be stuck in our own heads.  Our ability to connect and practice hope is what often keeps us going.  How do you want to practice hope?