That Little Old Ant...

Jeff Levy, LCSW
(originally posted on Branching Out: The Live Oak Blog, May 2014)

It’s almost always the case that one of the tasks of therapy is to foster or restore a sense of hope.  We often seek therapy because we have exhausted other avenues for healing, or the ways we have soothed ourselves in the past don’t work the way they used to.  Hope may be eclipsed by despair, loneliness, or loss.  It may be that we can’t see our way out of our current circumstances or current feelings.  The future may feel bleak.  We reach out for help.  We want relief.  We need hope.
 
I’ve had people share, sometimes even in a first session, that they feel hopeless.  I think this is probably at the heart of most of the work we do in therapy.  After all, if despite all odds, we can believe things can get better, we can more easily tackle many of the obstacles that come our way.  Maybe that is the very definition of hope.

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