Creative hopelessness: the light we must see beyond discomfort

Creative hopelessness reminds us that sooner or later we have to do it: stop, face suffering and our resistance. Far from feeding this repertoire of avoidance strategies, this technique invites us to accept reality, assuming hopelessness to move through it, but at the same time creating a new route plan, a new, brighter purpose where there is hope.

This psychotherapeutic tool is part of acceptance and commitment therapy. For readers who do not know this approach, we could say that it is part of the so-called third generation therapies.

It usually generates positive and transformative changes in people thanks to two very specific keys. First of all, they combat automatic thoughts, those that cause us suffering and often plunge us into destructive dynamics with which we feed the pain. In second place, Acceptance and Commitment therapy is characterized by that direct, human and involving closeness with the patient where through a fluid and comfortable dialoguefree of judgments, changes are generated and also promote more adaptive behaviors.

Thus, when promoting these changes, it is common to make use of what is known as creative despair, which can bring the patient closer to rediscovering their own values, achieving a state of calm and internal harmony where they can generate new opportunities and the ideal state to take advantage of them.

What is creative hopelessness?

To better understand what creative hopelessness is We will start with a short story as an introduction. The story begins with a peasant, a man who is asked to carry out a strange task from which he will obtain a good profit. The work consists of working a field with the only help of a donkey and a shovel; However, there is also a small condition: he must be blindfolded.

The good man begins his work following the indicated guidelines, but what he does not know is that the entire field is full of holes. As expected, our protagonist falls into one of them. Not knowing what to do and how to get out, the farmer removes the blindfold and makes use of the only thing he carries: his shovel. Thus, and for almost a day, He begins to dig and open tunnels, gradually becoming aware that the only thing he achieves is to sink much deeper.

After realizing this, he decides to accept his situation and opt for another strategy.. Maybe I should give that shovel another use… This small example illustrates with originality the very essence of creative hopelessness. Often, Our own avoidance behaviors not only drag us into greater despair, but we also intensify the complexity of the original problem.

The purposes of creative despair

When a person arrives at a psychologist’s office, they do not come alone. With him or her, comes a bag full of distorted thoughts, defensive barriers, limiting attitudes, erroneous areas, an excess of the past, a wasted present and a vital anguish that is perceived almost from the first moment.

Getting that patient to leave the consultation “a little better” than when they came is not easy, nor is it the main purpose. You have to make a route plan and give that person hope. However, how to achieve it? How to get the patient to return home with a little more light… in the face of so much darkness condensing his mind? As curious as he may seem to us, creative hopelessness is a good start, an instantly powerful tool. Let’s see why.

The first goal is to achieve that the patient accepts the negative experiences that are inside him and that he cannot control. Far from fighting with them, fleeing or obsessing over these events, it is time to embrace hopelessness, walk with it and assume that this path no longer makes sense. “I accept it to let it go.”After assuming these painful or distressing facts, the psychologist proceeds to redirect your patient through dialogue towards other options, outings where there is positive reinforcement, a purpose, a real hope. Likewise, the psychologist, through good touch, will constantly make the person see that what has been left behind, what hurts, is no longer useful and it no longer works. However, That hopelessness can act as an impulse, an engine to find new ways out. It’s like someone taking two steps back to be able to jump higher.

We can conclude by pointing out that creative hopelessness can and should be applied beyond the psychotherapeutic field. All of us, in some way, have gone through those times when we try to escape from something and almost without knowing how, we end up feeding the same discomfort. It’s like driving through a city you don’t know and soon, you end up going around the same roundabout over and over again.

Getting out of that roundabout, seeing light beyond one’s own discomfort, implies first understanding that it is useless to repeatedly use the same strategy, the one that leads us to the same results. We must break the cycle, stop escaping, assume that we are lost, that we are not moving forward, and then look beyond.. Lift our faces and get out of our own trap to discover other paths, other healthier and liberating routes.

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