Finding Hope When Nothing’s Working

Sliding into a depression is ugly. Enduring anxiety can feel an infernal torment. And a double-whammy is overwhelming. Being overwhelmed gives me, at least, the impression that nothing’s working; that everything in life is crashing and burning. Logically it’s not that way at all, but we can get to the point where it feels like this.

There’s always a lot of inner dialogue going on whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed. Although awareness is usually a Godsend, knowing that it’s the noise within my own head, however, doesn’t help me much. In fact, the more conscious I am of it, the more overwhelmed I can feel.

When we can’t get out of our own minds there are a few avenues we can slide down — panic, at one end of the spectrum, for one; despair, at the other end of the spectrum, for another.

Somehow, we need to find hope, because hope opens the door to joy and eventually peace. Hope also encourages us to apply faith. Hope infills panic with calm, and it augments despair with patience.

I’ve found that when my mind is obsessing about overwhelming matters I need healthy diversions of focus. The best of these is connection through sharing vulnerably with caring others. Provided we have these people in our lives, and we utilise them, these connections give us the ability to share honestly and receive the encouragement of reassurance. They balance our negative self-talk with encouraging truths we need to hear.

On a practical level, knowing we need healthy diversions of focus is one thing; achieving same is clearly another thing altogether. It can feel an impossibility to do. If nothing else, if you’re reading these words, please know you have someone (among the many who do) who understands how confounding it is.

It’s encouraging when we know there are others, too, who suffer for having no simple way of negotiating such confused messes.

But this is a real hope:

When we believe in the power of sharing honestly with caring others
we find those people help relieve our burdens.

In addition, when we trust someone
who cares for us with our struggles,
those struggles diminish
and our minds and hearts are helped.

And if we ever feel we’ve overburdened people with our problems, we can try to find a few equally caring people who we can spread the load with.