HOPELESSNESS
The following excerpt is from the self help
psychology book, Be Your Own Therapist.
The third core element in trauma knots that usually must be
faced is hopelessness. The strategy that one has been employing
to avoid the trauma is clearly seen to be hopeless. The struggle
to please Mom and Dad is seen as hopeless. The struggle to
please others today will never produce the love that one needed
when the struggle was adopted so long ago. Once this
hopelessness is felt, then the urge to go one's own way is often
easily followed.
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Success Tip: You will be more likely to succeed if you give yourself concrete praise every time you perform a behavior you are trying to acquire. |
One crucial psychological problem confronting disadvantaged
African-Americans seems to me to be that of hopelessness. "This
is a bigoted society that stacks all the cards against me. There
is no way I can get ahead." Such difficulties with hopelessness
are often compounded by the following belief in entitlement: "In
whatever ways I feel bad, the government/ society should fix."
The fact that the chances of an African-American with a B+ or
better average getting to college are better than the chances of
whites being admitted needs to be broadcast widely by the media.
Many African-American parents feel much hopelessness. Just
knowing this fact (Bennett 1992, 196) about college availability
would change a significant amount of hopelessness and would lead
parents to be far more demanding of their children in terms of
grades. Parents know a B+ average is easily possible for most
high-school students, whatever their skin color. Feeling
hopeless about society can also obscure a crucial need to feel
hopeless concerning one's own parents.
Most everyone would do well to face their own childhood
hopelessness concerning their own parents. This hopelessness
stage is characterized by tears and grief. It is a difficult
stage that we all tend to avoid, because it usually requires
that we have faced all the unhappy, unsettling, denied feelings
within the trauma knot under consideration. Happily, it is a
stage of resolution.
Next Excerpt 
| Hatred and anger can be exorcised and left behind, if felt and expressed as suggested in this book. Avoiding them forever, leads to forever stress.
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More Excerpts This Chapter
Therapy 4-H Club: PEOPLE ARE NOT FLOCKING TO JOIN THIS CLUB
BLAMING IS VALUABLE - BLAMING IS USELESS
HATRED
HURT
HOPELESSNESS
HEALING
THE FUTURE
This Chapter's Quiz
Book Table of Contents
Sexual Education Psychology
HOPELESSNESS © 1995-2004