Quote from Rebecca Solnit
As a therapist, it is often my job to hold the hope for my clients until they are ready to hold it for themselves.
I think part of this comes from a false sense of what it means to hope, as though hope is all about sunshine and rainbows and a painless future.
But hope is not about believing that everything will be fine, it is about the idea that we have the ability to act and affect our future and our lives in a positive way.
When there is a history of trauma and dysfunction it makes sense that hope is hard to come by, given past patterns and reactions.
Once we start unpacking and better understanding those patterns and reactions, then we are more likely to be able to change those patterns.
When we reprocess past painful memories with EMDR therapy, we are able to change the templates of dysfunctional behavior. We reinforce more adaptive, positive beliefs about the self in these situations, which in turn instills hope for a healthier, happier future.
I am passionate about helping people let go of the pain of their past, live more fully in the present and develop hope for the future.