Hopelessness, it is perhaps one of the most painful emotions that I have ever felt. I have spent years dealing with the feeling. When thinking about how to solve the problem of how do I take care of my brother who suffers from a mental disability, it is not uncommon for the feeling to rise to the surface. Whenever I think about the task, it feels too big to handle. I feel like I am falling into a dark hole all alone. No way out and that is just the beginning of the spiral. I get quiet and spend a lot of time in my own head.
One of the truly terrifying things about the feeling of hopelessness is that it is very easy to get into a cycle that perpetuates the feeling. What happened to me was I would think of my brother and his future. I would think about all the problems that I would need to overcome. It terrified me. I become scared of how hopeless the situation was and run from it. I would wallow in my pity. I was paralyzed, unable to do anything. Then I would begin to distract myself from the problem at hand. It worked, well it sort of worked. I would be able to feel better doing other things like watching TV, hanging out with my friends. But whenever anything slightly hinted at my brother I would freak out. I would do this for days, weeks, months. The longer I ran from it the worse it got. The hopelessness feed off my fear and desperation. Every time I thought out my brother I didn’t think about solutions I just fantasized about the failure I was and how the looming problem was going to break me. This is how hopelessness grows and becomes stronger.
This was my mess, how the heck am I supposed to deal with this feeling? Well a good way to think about dealing with hopelessness is treating it like a fire. How do you protect yourself again a fire in the home? Detection and Extinguish.
Detection:
You can’t put out a fire unless you know there is a fire. Same thing goes for the feeling of hopelessness. In the beginning when you first experience this feeling you won’t know. Basically you hopelessness smoke alarm is totally crap. Solution is periodically checking in on yourself. That’s right up reminders to ask yourself, “hey how am I doing right now? Did I feel hopeless during the past little while?” I would recommend doing this 2 times a day. One in the middle of the day and one before you go to bed. As time goes one you will begin noticing it more and more. Eventually you will get to the point where you can say, “On jeez I am really feeling hopeless. Time to extinguish this fire”.
Extinguish:
Just like with fires there are many ways to put out the blaze of hopelessness. Regardless of what is your extinguishment strategy, it must deal with fuel of hopelessness. What exactly is the fuel? It is lack of control and fear. Let’s start with the easier of the two lack of control. Yes I know, how the hell is lack of control an easy fix!? So for me it is to take this huge mountain of a problem and to start breaking it up smaller pieces. If those pieces still make you feel hopeless then bust them up into even smaller pieces. Keep going until the pieces are so small you feel powerful enough to kick their butts. For me it was how to get my brother his independence? That is way too big. So I broke it up into small parts finances, food/shelter, social, and health. Less menacing but still to big. I kept busting them up till I got task such as google financial advisor who specialize in people with disabilities, and set up meeting with social worker on housing waitlist to put my brother on. These tasks are so small that now I have the power to kick their butts.
Now onto fear. Take it from someone who has spent so long running from his fears. It is far more work running from your fears and it is facing them. Learning to sit down and experience your fears from start to finish is incredibly tough but so rewarding. The first time is going to suck! I mean really really suck. But the second time less so, the tenth time even less. By the hundredth time you may even wonder why you even bothered giving it a moments notice. Sitting with your fear is different that fantasizing about your fear. Don’t imagine a future where things get worse. Focus on the here and now. You will feel the panic rise, that is okay, it will pass. Try writing you fears down, talking with friends. Do what you need to in order to get your fear from you head to the outside world. That is how I started taking back my mind from fear and hopelessness.