The Secret Role of Hope in Psychotherapy

I am always amused when a TV pitchman offers to sell a secret “they won’t tell you about,” promising to make you a million dollars. Well, the “secret” I’m about to disclose is something rarely discussed, but not intentionally hidden: a form of hope. This type of optimism, however, is not what most imagine when they think of such words.

The standard well-acknowledged place of hope in therapy is for the therapist to communicate that the future can be better. His authority and experience are implied and therefore increase the chance of belief in him. They tell the patient, in effect, “I’ve seen others recover. People can overcome depression and anxiety. This is also possible for you.”

For some of his clients, however, his cradling of hope takes an additional form. Too many of us live in a psychological concrete canyon, like ones found in the narrow avenues bordered by tall buildings in major cities. We cannot witness what is behind these skyscrapers, nor a sunrise that is the gift of the horizon. Less metaphorically, we cannot recognize what role we might occupy in the world, beyond filling an unsatisfying, modest or disadvantaged place similar to those in our past. Dr. Seuss gave this encouragement:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…

Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.”

This is not meant to be fanciful. As one of the founders of the Zeolite Scholarship Fund at an inner-city public high school in Chicago, my friends and I met too many youngsters who, by age 16, couldn’t imagine themselves achieving a life past what was available in a dead-end community. For some, a hopeful future died aborning. Imagination died, as well.

A therapist faces this, too, in the blinkered vision — the crumpled expectation — of the person sitting opposite him. His patient might not be able to conceive of a different, more adventurous life of high level skill, romantic abandon, achievement, and abundance. He is, in a sense, like a child who hears early she can be President of the United States, but discovers this has never happened — not yet anyway —  in the USA’s 240-year history and therefore crosses off the goal. Yes, some individuals periscope beyond the concrete canyon, their parents’ bleak lives, and their country’s prejudice without a counselor’s help. Yet others need their therapist’s belief to develop an x-ray vision piercing invisible barriers, the walls so taken-for-granted one might not even be aware of them.

Hope of this kind is not simply founded in the counselor’s confidence you can overcome symptoms. Rather, it is aspirational — the hope beyond hope to a world of possibility your peers laugh at if you are one of the 16-year-olds I mentioned.  For those who never beamed at a respected person’s consistent belief in them before, the words come as a revelation.

Therapy is an enterprise driven by heartbreak in the direction of hope. “I’ll try anything,” you say to yourself, “even this.” Usually, however, the wish is to remove the negatives, not obtain a sense of fulfillment in life. Make no mistake. The two may not be mutually exclusive. Envisioning a future worth living is more than encouragement to wellness, but a step toward it.

What Robert Kennedy said on several occasions applies no less to changing the world than changing ourselves:

Some men see things as they are and say why.

I dream things that never were and say why not.

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 The top photo by Jessie Eastland is described as 72 Seconds Before Actual Sunrise, Southern California, USA. It comes from Wikimedia Commons.