Laura reasoned:  “Well I hope I can change. I’m very hopeful for the therapy” 

We are told to be hopeful. Hope is one of these words that it is difficult to argue with.
To be hopeful, optimistic, is seen as a positive trait in our us, our colleagues, friends and family.

There are words brought to therapy: like love, happy, productive, married, relationship, fulfilled, progress – that have a universal meaning that we all understand & assume – but emotionally they have many different meanings.

Laura continues around the same loop of dating unsuitable men who show little interest in her. Her hope is that this will change. Without her doing anything to change it. Here hope keeps her stuck. In the same place. On repeat.

To describe hope as a social taboo is more helpful. It is a way to protect us from despair, pain, & misery. Or so society would tell us. Even in parts of this profession.

But it is exactly the avoidance of despair, pain, & misery and the hope that they will move on away from us, that maintains us in despair, pain, & misery.

Laura’s painful discovery that her investment in uninterested men is the way she was taught to view herself from a little girl. The pressure put on her to be happily married with no positive role models of that experience is defended against. To not be married is the emotional response to protect her from her dysfunctional family.
With hope alone: this will remain hidden.

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