Blog 8
The Mindfulness Response and Building Hope
The Mindfulness Response involves building hope that things can improve and that there is a future. People with serious mental illness have had multiple difficulties in life and have experienced failure in many ways. Group therapy participants talked about how they could easily lose hope when they had no support. The world became darker, cloudy, and gray. Participants talked about being in a deep, dark place with “dark thoughts.” They realized that hope needed connections.
Building hope demands daily action. This is not a passive thing that simply happens, and it is more than an attitude. Hope comes from changing behaviors and acting the opposite of what negative thoughts or voices are saying. Hope is honest about hallucinations, paranoia, and beliefs that others can read your thoughts, or that you can read theirs. It is about telling your healthcare providers that you can’t be on a Zoom call because you are receiving messages from electronic devices. In this area of hope, supportive people are necessary to help build hope and regain stability (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2010).
The Mindfulness Response helped the participants build a bridge to find hope in their current daily routine and their future. The process of building hope takes action and courage and is difficult to complete when experiencing the severe symptoms that the participants had.
Participants talked about building hope and then feeling everything will be all right. They talked about asking for help, when needed and having hope that things would get better. Getting the hope is not easy for someone with a serious mental illness. Applying self-compassion to the process helps regain hope, both for now and for the future. Without self-compassion, it is difficult for those who have known hundreds of obstacles and had to cross life’s barriers to find hope.
The group discussed hope as it includes patience with every process in life, whether the life events are large or small. A large amount of patience is needed to help a participant build up skills and be reassured when they’re feeling down. With patience, hope can return to their lives. It is not a process that is completed in one day, and praying for hope is not enough. Hope requires action and activity. Although prayer can be helpful, it cannot solve all the problems that occur with severe and persistent mental illness.
The Mindfulness Response is an attitude that builds more self-understanding and self-knowledge; hope comes with this. A participant does not do this alone. In the supportive group therapy process, other supportive people who form a team help maintain hope. These supportive people might be friends, family, and healthcare providers. The National Institute of Mental Health recommends a team approach for recovery.
The Mindfulness Response encourages the group to openly discuss struggles with health and wellness. The sharing process in the group encouraged depressed participants to try different ways to manage their symptoms and communicate their difficulties to their supportive team.
The Mindfulness Response recognizes that hope is associated with action, willingness, desire, and motivation. Hope is expecting to receive something. Hope is an inner strength that inspires and encourages participants to maintain their positive involvement in life regardless of the limitations imposed upon them, (Rideout & Montemuro, 1986).
Hope refers to the sense that things can be improved through action. Being hopeful is regarded as more realistic because a person creates actions to achieve a goal.
To build hope, it takes courage.
Be honest about your feelings.
Be able to identify all feelings.
The group discussed plans and how symptoms interfered with those plans. There was little hope found in those who started the program, and they were desperate to find it. The group talked about hope and how a hopeful participant recognized that life may not work out as planned. A hopeful person is open to more than one possibility and continues to maintain positive expectations. A person is open to possibilities that have personal significance for their values and beliefs. (Miceli & Castelfranchi 2010).
Hope involves taking risks, which requires courage. A quality of mind or spirit that embraces hope also enables a person to face difficulty, persevere, and encounter danger. Endurance and bravery are the abilities to encounter pain and fear and yet continue to maintain courage.
Hope includes optimism. Optimism refers to the belief that a person has about the current situation. Optimism is a more temporary or momentary belief that everything will be okay because situations can change from one day to the next.
Optimism has much in common with hope. Both are concerned with a positive future viewpoint and assume that positive things will naturally occur in one’s life. However, optimism is a positive attitude or belief that a future event is probable and likely to occur. The optimist expects and believes that life will work out as expected (Scheier & Carver, 1993).
References
Miceli & Castelfranchi, (April 22, 2010) Hope: The Power of Wish and Possibility. Theory &
Psychology Sage Vol.20:2 https://doi.org/10.1177/095935430935439
Rideout, E., & Montemuro, M. (1986). Hope, morale, and adaptation in patients with chronic heart failure. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 11(4), 429–438. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.1986.tb01270.
Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1993). On the power of positive thinking: The benefits of being optimistic. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(1), 26–
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