Hopelessness is felt by many people that are gifted and very sensitive of spiritual things. Many excellent character people go through times in their lives where they realistically experience feelings of hopelessness and complete despair. These times are rarely short lived, and some are long term in duration involving several years. Feelings of complete hopelessness result usually from more than one factor creating the overwhelming situation. Moreover, rarely is there a single cause that is responsible for one feeling hopeless long term. The biggest single cause of one feeling hopeless is from one experiencing an event or condition, and on first look, no remedy is found.
People who experience hopelessness are many times melancholy and deep in character by nature, which at first can be a drawback. The deep feelings of a person can prevent them from seeing a solution. This is because sensitive, caring persons cannot always clearly see all options available to them. Also, very sensitive people can become overwhelmed with the depth of what they feel, especially in matters of emotional things from their past like things they regret having done or missed. Guilt from past mistakes can be overwhelming because the past is unreachable, and we feel helpless to correct it. Correction is not necessary, as your guilt is proof you have permanently changed and are not the same person ever again.
Perfectionist and emotionally deep people do not have the widest scope of vision, seeing their whole life landscape at the same time. They only experience their present emotional state and cannot, without help, connect the hopelessness with what all is causing it, and the corrective action to fix it. That is the nature of gifted, caring persons. Uncaring people experience hopelessness far less because nothing bothers them.
Because we do not know why specifically you are experiencing feelings of hopeless, we can only talk in generalities. Hopefully you can apply something here to your exact situation. Most times there are several contributing factors involved, and they have a hierarchy of importance. An example might be we are out of work. A contributing factor is we do not get along with people. One hopeless situation made by being newly out of work and compounded by an inability to socialize productively. So, the first step is to look again at your situation and separate the factors that contributed to it, and then we correct them separately and in an order. Pay close attention to any role your choices may have made in its creation. Blaming yourself is not the objective, finding the cause and correcting it is. Then we must address each factor or cause individually. In our example above, first is to secure new employment, also looking closely at why we cannot get along and socialize productively with others. We can do both separately and at the same time.
Separate factors have separate sources of energy. Your hopeless situation such as being out of work can be a symptom of something deeper. God may be giving you a setting to grow you spiritually. This can be true of any setting or event that you could be facing causing feelings of hopelessness and despair. This is not an evangelistic website converting you to a religion, it is a self-help website whose purpose is to help you find yourself spiritually, no religion involved, no sales involved. Factors may collectively cause the situation but must be corrected individually. Finding work for example is a different matter than correcting one’s inability to socialize deeply. Both caused the same current setting but only one is responsible. Correcting one cause may also benefit other areas of your life not yet involved, such as not getting along with people easily.
Look for self esteem causes, almost always a contributor. When we go through life, we are intended to go through it with a sense of ourselves as being important and responsible for our life’s results. If there is any misconception that we are not preeminent and have full authority in our life’s outcome, then we will make destructive choices not in our own best interest.
Full authority also means full responsibility that involves outcomes related to our world, now and in the future. The duty of responsibility includes seeing and avoiding possible bad consequences of things we do or things we allow to take place. Ignoring our gut feeling that something bad may happen or someone or something is not best for us is the first mistake. We have full authority so we must take full responsibility. Ignoring danger because we want to be peaceful is not acceptable nor is it the objective.
Peace with life conditions for your utmost freedom, prosperity, and emotional needs met is the objective. Having an abusive husband or boyfriend for a girl is not the abuser’s fault, it is the victim’s fault, for example. The argument that the emotionally and financially dependent victim has no choices other than to tolerate their abuser’s painful treatment is incorrect, and it brings up the last point regarding looking for remedy.
Look for relationship and intimacy factors, along with low self esteem causing them, they are connected. We are human beings, and we are not designed emotionally to go through life isolated and alone. The saying of ‘lone wolves are easy prey,’ is especially true for us. We are designed to go through life in the emotional company of others around us. In almost every case of feelings of hopelessness and despair, one of the biggest contributors is unused emotional support from others. We are designed to need and use emotional support from other people in relationships we collect, for such needs. Just as we save money in preparation for future financial need, such as old age and retirement, so too must we naturally build relationships with others for future emotional need in times of trauma and loss. Low self esteem issues will cause us to withdraw and stay safe from emotional pain from others. However, when life’s storms hit us, we will not have the emotional resources to lean on from others, and our ship will sink easily.
If we see closeness with others as more a source of pain than nurturing then both self esteem and misunderstanding of our identity as an individual are involved. If you do not know who you are, you cannot find others like yourself, and this is often the case in feelings of hopelessness. The result of either of those causes will make feelings of hopelessness happen more often. We need to go far upstream to find the source. The tools we all need to make a full life always involve needing and relying on other people.
God, Life, The Loving Mother Universe, or whatever other name you feel comfortable calling the great source, created you not just a person, but a person with a life path and resources strewn along your life path for you to find. Moreover, your life path has a plan and a purpose. The feelings of hopelessness, if responded to correctly, are to lead you to a resource yet undiscovered which are to make you complete. Look at your overwhelming situation again carefully, look for others to help you with their insight that are outside of your situation, and an emancipating choice will come to you.
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life is our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.