More hope for this New Year

“One could argue that hope is part of all New Year’s resolutions, because they all entail wanting a better future for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, and for the world. Really, the essence of any New Year’s resolution is to experience hope for something better.” Jamil Zaki

“Their values and principles – don’t rely on anyone but yourself – gave hope to no one but them, while we dreamed of ‘another world” Annie Ernaux (The Years)

“Hold on to possibilities for life in circumstances that discourage hope” David Denborough  (Retelling the Stories of Our Lives)

Hope through different lens

Over the holidays I read a book review by Jill Sutie of Jamil Zaki’s book Hope for Cynics, which analyzes how hope is a better response to life’s challenges than cynicism. Zaki is a professor of psychology and the director of the Social Neuroscience Lab at Stanford University. His research supports that hope is “a more activating, muscular emotion than cynicism or despair, and that hope is necessary for focusing our efforts and creating positive change.” It is also argued that hope can be deliberately cultivated through our overcoming biases and

Zaki distinguishes hope from optimism, whcih is the belief that things will turn out well, which can often be a mismatch with reality. Hope he argues is the belief that things could improve and that we don’t know what the future holds, and therefore, our responses and actions matter. Hope is not about ignoring problems, but a way of facing and tackling problems. Hope also allows for envisioning a better future and is a good frame of mind for facing adversity.

As for the benefits of being hopeful, according to research findings, people who are hopeful versus cynical do better in many ways. Their mental health is better, their relationships tend to be stronger, and they tend to strive  and achieve more. They’re also more likely to engage in civic action and social movements. In the article there’s also reference to “hopeful skepticism”. Zaki argues that we often think that the opposite of being cynical is being gullible and naïve, believing that everybody is good until we get taken advantage of, but he clarifies that that’s not the opposite of cynicism because in reality cynics and gullible people  have more in common than we think.They both start with a conclusion, either that people are terrible or that everyone is good and decent, and then try to support this conclusion by only paying attention to whatever evidence confirms their belief or bias. Skeptics, on the other hand, avoid generalizations and think more like scientists. They don’t make quick assumptions about others and events, but try to find evidence about when, with whom, and in what situations they can trust and feel hopeful. This attitude seems to be far more adaptive.

In relation to the News, Zaki believes we would all be better off seeking websites that include positive news with news about real events and social problems, but also about people in communities striving to address those problems in creative ways. We can stay informed without  consuming sensationalistic, negative depictions of what’s happening in the world, not just because that’s not good for our health, but also because it’s half the story. Fear has replaced rational debate or empirical evidence and is used by those who seek to persuade or exploit or the insecurities and fears of people.

Finally, Zaki suggests that the best way to maintain hope. is to think globally, but hope locally, in other words, to focus on the parts of our lives and the world where we feel we have some agency and where our actions could make a difference.

However, important as hope may be for our individual lives and our communities,  it doesn’t come easy for many people. Poverty, oppression, trauma, and other factors, can affect one’s beliefs about the future through loss of hope and limited expectations about life, anticipation that normal life events won’t occur or even fear that life will end abruptly or early.  In Janna Fischer’s book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, which I’m currently reading, there are several references to how hope has been undermined for many people, often early on in life and how it can be difficult to reclaim or sustain hope: “… he’s afraid it’s not safe to have hope” or “let’s be curious about how she lost her hope,” and elsewhere, she writes that a frequent deterrent to restoring a sense of hope and safety comes from parts of our self that are  skeptical, hypervigilant, scared or unable to trust. Therefore, it may be necessary to learn to cultivate hope or reclaim one’s capacity to hope because often early trauma, life struggles and events, result in our associating hope with fear or despair.

Ross Ellenhorn believes that a big aspect that gets missed is the interplay between hope and disappointment, and how repeated disappointments or losses create associations between hope and fear or what he calls “fear of hope.” He argues that often in therapeutic contexts the concept of hope is neglected, and this gap is substituted with a lot of diagnoses and focus on a person’s traits, and what’s wrong with them, rather than exploring their life circumstances, what’s happening around them, how they’re experiencing the world, their aspirations and resources, and so on. Fear comes from the experience of disappointment and helplessness, and if this happens often enough, over time, people develop a deep sense of hopelessness, and link hope with fear. Subsequnetly, suppressing hope or disconnecting from feelings of hope, in some sense shutting down their existence, provides temporary protection from disappointment and grief.

Ellenhorn conducted research and found that fear of hope is not just fear of success or failure, nor only anxiety or depression. Fear of hope may be related to the above, but it’s something more. He mentions that we might be missing something if we only see this issue as a trait, and not also as the state of someone dealing with profound experiences of disappointment. It’s not just “depression”; it’s situationally based. They also found that what often seems like hopelessness is actually fear of hope, and that fear of hope and hopelessness are not the same. In therapy or other similar contexts reclaiming hope is about helping someone rebuild a sense that they can make things happen in the world. They have to have some sense that they can actually master their lives.

This approach also focuses on the relationship between hope, disappointment, and what goes on in our early years. Ellenhorn believes that fear of hope might be linked to early attachment. People who fear hope seem to be more anxiously or / and more avoidantly attached; however, intensive longitudinal research studies would be required to show a later link to fear of hope.

As I end this piece today, my wish for this New Year is that more hope be available to people, and may there be more circumstances and contexts that will allow for the cultivation of hope.