The Vulnerability of Hope

HOPE. Take note of how your body responds to that word. Does it feel warm and welcoming or did your back straighten out, alert to a threat?

Afraid to Get Your Hopes Up?

There are few things that make us more vulnerable than being hopeful. Maybe you’re nodding your head vehemently, or maybe you think I’m nuts to psychoanalyze something as innocuous as hope. If you fall into the latter category, I invite you to recall the last time something didn’t work out that you allowed yourself to hope for.

Maybe you hoped that a parent or even a pet would overcome an illness but didn’t and the highs of hope plummeted to the depths of grief. Maybe you hoped that a new relationship would offer the security you craved, but it didn’t. Hope quickly descended into resentment, rejection, and perhaps even shame.

Hope is a tricky thing. Without hope, we stay in the lower realms of emotions like cynicism, depression, and fear where nothing wonderful can ever happen. But at least here we can’t be disappointed. To our nervous system, which is always scanning for threat or safety, that means that here in this place of cynicism, we’re safe. However, when we move into hopefulness, the door opens to experience other pleasurable emotions like joy, gratitude, and security. It sounds like these feelings should signal safety to the brain, right? For some of us they do, but for others, these experiences can feel like harbingers of inevitable pain.

Accepting Disappointment

Disappointment. That’s really the operative word isn’t it? Disappointment doesn’t develop slowly, at a pace to which we can acclimatize. Disappointment is sudden and sometimes shocking. It’s like one of those rides at the theme park where we’re brought to the top and dropped into a free fall for a rush of endorphins. Only with disappointment, there aren’t any endorphins at the end of the free fall. Just the adrenaline of falling which eventually makes way to numbness, resentment, or isolation. It can feel like hope sets us up for this descent.

When disappointment or the shock of it is extreme enough, it can border on trauma. If we don’t take steps to release the disappointment-related adrenaline from our nervous system then it gets backed up and stored long term with the rest of our stress (read survival) hormones. When we’re living with stored stress hormones in our body, it’s very difficult to thrive. Hypervigilance, the need to constantly be on guard and prepared for threat, becomes the norm. If the idea of thriving doesn’t feel like a possibility then there’s no way hope will be possible to experience either. 

What’s the solution? There isn’t any one solution but there are ways we can build our tolerance for hope which at least give us a chance at experiencing the higher spectrum of emotion. First, as soon as we experience disappointment, we can process it instead of suppressing it. Stay away from people who advise you to look at the bright side of things because remember that disappointment is a manifestation of grief.

Surround yourself with a tribe who can hold the space for your disappointment without trying to change it immediately. Then, contact a healer/therapist/processor and book a session (depending on how adept we are at processing our emotions one session may be enough). Allow yourself to feel what disappointment feels like in your body. The visceral experience of emotions is essential to regaining emotional freedom and regulation. When we’re aware of what emotions are doing in our body they’re no longer in control of our reactions, we are.

Detaching from Outcomes

Second, we can future proof ourselves. This does NOT mean isolate or numb. It does, however, require us to detach. There’s a beautiful verse in the sacred Hindu text Bhagavad Gita that says:

‘Detachment is not that you own nothing. Detachment is that nothing owns you.’

When we detach ourselves from outcomes, it doesn’t mean that we don’t care or that we aren’t permitted to have preferences. When we detach ourselves from outcomes, it just means that we can’t be broken if something doesn’t work out in the way we’d like it to. When we’re detached, we’re free to be surprised by miracles and feel the pleasures of such with gratitude but we’re also free of the uncomfortable emotions that can accompany disappointment.

Our nervous systems can be conditioned to tolerate discomfort by doing the opposite of suppressing it - by processing and acknowledging

Feeling Hopeless or Cynical

The thing about hope is that a lack of hope - hopelessness - puts us way down the bottom of the energetic and emotional scale. Hopelessness is heavy, dense, and impenetrable. Of course, there’s a difference between hopelessness and not permissioning ourselves to be hopeful, but it’s a fine line.

It’s impossible to experience the lighter energies and emotions when we’re blocking hope. But if hopelessness keeps us at the bottom of the emotional scale where nothing good happens, hopefulness is in the upper realms where spectacular things can either happen or not happen. There’s no guarantee. Sometimes there’s not even a 50/50 shot. To use a cliche, there may only be a 10% chance that something could work out when we’re in the higher energy zone of hopefulness, but there’s a 90% chance that nothing will work out in magical, surprising ways if we’re hopeless.

We can make the vulnerability of hope safe again by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable through detachment. Remember that when we’re willingly vulnerable, we cannot be broken by external forces because we’re already broken open - in a good way, a sublime way. Nothing external can break us if we allow ourselves to be broken wide open all the time. When we detach from outcomes, we’re able to hope for the best without being shattered to pieces if the best doesn’t happen because we were already shattered to a million beautiful, diffuse, and perfectly imperfect pieces before disappointment tried to break us.

We often think that depriving ourselves of hope will protect us from the pain of disappointment, but the only thing that protects us from pain is detachment. Hope enables other deeply pleasurable emotions like joy, gratitude, and ease from which little miracles spring forth.

EFT ‘tapping’ for Detachment

By now you know that I’m an EFT therapist and I’ve not found a more effective technique for helping become detached from outcomes than EFT ‘tapping.’ To try it yourself, think of a goal or something you’re apprehensively hopeful about and try the following basic tapping sequence, filling in the ‘X’s’ with details relevant to you. If you’ve never tried tapping before, see a diagram showing the 9x tapping points below. Note: It’s unlikely, but if something distressing comes up while you’re tapping, remember to ground yourself by planting your feet firmly on the floor and bring your awareness to your senses by looking at something visually appealing, notice the sounds around you, and the sensation of sitting on your chair.

Set Up (side of the hand)

Even though I feel very attached to my goal that X will happen, I accept myself.

Even though I’m attached to X happening and really, really want it to happen the way I hope it will, I accept that this is how I’m feeling right now.

Even though I really want X to happen and I’m deeply attached to this outcome that I want, I completely accept myself anyway.

Eyebrow

This strong sense of attachment I feel.

Side of the eye

I really, really want X to happen soon.

Under the eye

I’ll be so much happier when X happens, everything will be okay then and I’ll be able to relax.

Under the nose

I don’t know what I’ll do if X doesn’t happen. I’ll be so miserable and it will be a nightmare. I won’t be able to cope if X doesn’t happen.

Chin

I’m very attached to X happening. It’s so important to me.

Collarbone

(See if you can feel this attachment anywhere in your body)

I feel this attachment in my X, it’s so important that things work out the way I want them to. Terrible things might happen if they don’t work out the way I want them to. I’ll feel X, Y, and Z.

Under the arm

I need X to happen. I can’t relax until it does.

Top of the head

I’m so attached to this outcome, I need X to happen soon otherwise I won’t be okay. Nothing will be okay.

Once you’ve gotten into the rhythm of this, keep going and either repeat these statements or try making your own, it’s intuitive so trust yourself!