Creative Despair: The Light We Must See Beyond Unease

Creative hopelessness reminds us that sooner or later we will have to do this: stop, face our suffering and our resistances. Far from feeding the repertoire of avoidance strategies, this technique invites us to accept reality, assuming the hopelessness to walk with it, but this time creating a new path, a new, brighter purpose, in which there is hope.

This psychotherapeutic tool is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. For readers who are not familiar with this approach, we can 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 concrete keys. First, it combats automatic thoughts, those that cause us suffering and that often place us in destructive dynamics with which we feed the pain. Second, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is characterized by a direct, human and engaging approach to the patient, in which through a fluid and comfortable dialogue, free from judgment, changes are generated in addition to providing more adaptive behaviors.

Thus, when promoting these changes, it is common to use what is known as creative hopelessness, which can bring the patient closer to rediscovering their own values, achieving a state of calm and internal harmony from which new opportunities can be generated, and create the ideal state to be able to enjoy them.

What is creative hopelessness?

To better understand what creative hopelessness is, we ‘ll start with a short story as an introduction. The story begins with a peasant, a man who receives a proposal to do a strange task, with which he will obtain a great benefit. The task is to work in the field only with the help of a donkey and a shovel; however, there is one more small condition beyond that: he must be blindfolded.

The good man starts to work according to the directions, but what he doesn’t know yet is that the field is full of holes. Predictably, our protagonist falls into one of the holes. Not knowing what to do or how to get out of there, the peasant removes the blindfold and uses the only thing he has: the shovel. So, for almost a whole day, he starts digging and tunneling, gradually realizing that the only thing he is doing is sinking deeper and deeper.

After realizing this, he decides to accept his situation and opt for another strategy. Perhaps I should use the shovel in another way… This little example uniquely illustrates the true essence of creative hopelessness. Sometimes our own avoidance attitudes lead to greater despair, and we end up adding to the complexity of the original problem.

The Purposes of Creative Despair

When a person arrives at the psychologist’s office, he or she does not arrive alone. Along with him or her comes a baggage of distorted thoughts, defensive barriers, limiting attitudes, erroneous zones, an excess of the past, an underutilized present and an anguish of living that is perceived almost from the first moment.

Getting this patient to leave the appointment “a little better” than when he arrived is not easy, and this is not the main objective. It is necessary to chart a path and give hope to this person. However, how to achieve this? How to get the patient to come home with a little more light… in the face of so much darkness oppressing his mind? Strangely enough, creative hopelessness is a good start, a sometimes powerful tool. Let’s see why:.

• The first objective is to get the patient to accept the negative experiences that are within him that he cannot control. Instead of fighting them, fleeing or becoming obsessed with these facts, it is time to embrace hopelessness, walk with it and understand that this path no longer makes sense. “I accept him to let him go.”
• After assuming these painful or distressing facts, the psychologist starts to reorient the patient through dialogue towards other options, solutions where there is a positive reinforcement, a goal, a true hope.
• In the same way, the psychologist, in a sensitive way, will constantly make the person see that what was left behind, what hurts, is no longer useful and is useless. However , this hopelessness can serve as an impetus, as an engine to find new ways out. It’s like taking two steps backwards so you can get your bearings and jump higher.

We can conclude by highlighting that creative hopelessness can and should be applied beyond the psychotherapeutic scope. Somehow, we’ve all gone through these moments when we try to run away from something and, almost without knowing how, we end up fueling even more discomfort. It’s like someone driving through a city he doesn’t know and in a short time he starts going in circles.

Leaving this circle, seeing the light beyond one’s own discomfort, firstly implies understanding that continuing to use the same strategy over and over again is useless, as it only leads to the same results. We have to break the cycle, stop running away, assume that we are lost, that we are not making progress, and then look beyond. Raise your head and get out of our own trap to discover other paths, other healthier and more liberating paths.