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Before retiring, my wife was a health professional (Pharmacist). Some time ago, she got a flyer in the mail about a 6-hour program for Health Professionals with the following goals:

 

"Positive states help optimize health and wellbeing. Learn how hope, joy, calm, and laughter reduce the adrenal response to stress, reduce apprehension and generalized anxiety, improve mood, reduce pain, and promote restorative sleep.

 

Participants completing this new six-hour program should be able to:

1. Describe how hope can reduce stress, pain, anxiety, and sadness by normalizing cortisol, the adrenal hormone associated with stress.

2. Explain how joy can be enhanced by practicing what happy people do differently.

3. Identify how to attain calming states through mental habits and mindfulness.

4. Demonstrate how humor and laughter can improve health and enhance hope."

 

Imagine what would happen if everyone in America took this course. Well, yes, half of the people would sleep through it, but what about the other half? I did not take the course, but it started a thought process (a dangerous thing, in my wife's opinion) about Positive States. First of all, I am not a trained psychologist, although I did take one Abnormal Psychology class in college (it was not, much to my disappointment, about how psychology majors are abnormal). I AM old, which gives me (1) a lot of life experience and (2) the mistaken impression that other people give a rat's ass what I think. Nevertheless, I decided to put my thoughts down on paper to prove to my wife that I occasionally reason.

Can hope reduce stress, pain, anxiety, and sadness? I suppose it depends on how you define hope. I hope an airplane engine doesn't come off and crash into my house. I hope a hurricane doesn't blow my house away, although, in Idaho, I don't lose too much sleep over that one. Maybe a better approach is to define hopelessness. People who have no hope can't imagine anything positive in their future. But the seminar doesn't advertise that it will help people develop hope, only how hope can make us feel better by increasing all those chemically things. However, I want to dive deeper into hope (or hopelessness). Hope allows us to look forward to tomorrow and comes from (1) feeling you are in control of your life and (2) that positive things can and will happen in your future. Hopelessness is a feeling you have no control over your life and good things will not happen. How do you change hopelessness into hope? (I know, you drop the lessness off the end).

My old friend, Albert, once said, "Time is like a river." With his permission, I would like to borrow that simile and modify it to "life is like a river." It is a reasonably simple analogy to life, which might make it easier to understand and remember.

 

Imagine standing on a high bluff, watching a river far below. The river has people in rowboats. Watching the boats go by, you notice certain things about how people manage their boats. At this point, I go off on an endless diatribe describing how different people react as they go down the river. But I would like to veer off course (a nautical term – I was in the Navy) and talk about one peculiar phenomenon I call "the whirlpool effect." You might want to put on your life vest because we are going back to the river and we could get wet.

 

What is the Whirlpool Effect?

The whirlpool effect is when people get caught in a situation in life that they can't see how to escape. It is like going down the river of life and suddenly being caught in a whirlpool. You lose hope because you can't seem to get out of it, no matter how hard you paddle. You feel like you are being pulled closer to disaster, and there is nothing you can do. People lose hope for many reasons, such as chronic illness, loss of a loved one (including pets), drug addiction, mental health issues, natural disasters, and social isolation and caring for a spouse or child with a disease or disability, to name a few.

 

So here we are, in our little rowboat, going round and round after being caught in a whirlpool. How do we get out before being swept into the abyss?

 

 

The first and vital thing you MUST do is accept that YOU are the only one who can save you. People from the shore or other boats can shout encouragement, but few carry rescue ropes and even fewer can pull you to safety. I learned this in a previous life after a close friend attempted suicide. I tried to help, but ultimately, it was up to him to save himself. That realization, in itself, finally gave him hope.

 

YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON THAT CAN SAVE YOU FROM HOPELESSNESS

 

For example, most recovering drug addicts or alcoholics will tell you that they had to hit rock bottom before they were able to start on the road to recovery.

 

What about something like chronic illness? You realize that you may not recover and need to build hope around what you can do. The key, in my opinion, is still in bold letters above. It may seem harsh, but you are the only person who cares about you enough to give you hope. You must look for it inside.

 

You need hope. You are the one that has to help yourself. How do you start? Up next, what steps do you take to regain hope (and not be sucked into the abyss)? It might surprise you, but the steps are similar if you are literally caught in a whirlpool in a rowboat.