Despair is a profound sense of hopelessness and loss of faith in one’s future. It often comes with persistent sadness and fatigue. Regardless of the reason, despair may suck the happiness out of your everyday life. As such, you may see the future as bleak or meaningless. Eventually, this may make you withdraw from things you previously enjoyed leading to a less fulfilling life. Understanding despair can help you find a path towards healing and better wellness.
What Causes Despair?
You may develop a hopeless life perspective for many reasons. It might arise from loss or change, like a divorce or a bereavement. Or perhaps you feel like you’ve made a mistake, and you feel shame or guilt about your own behavior. The accumulation of various stressors can leave you feeling demoralized and overwhelmed. Medical illness, substance abuse, or hormonal changes can make you feel hopeless.
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Understanding Despair and Psychological Health
Your brain may tell you everything is awful, dreadful, and horrible. It might even try to convince you that you cannot succeed or that there’s no way things will improve. But remember, just because you think this doesn’t mean it’s right. Your thoughts might be inaccurate, distorted, or downright wrong.
Despair feelings fuel despair thoughts. As such, you can easily find yourself in a negative cycle showing how things can’t improve. Eventually, this leads to mental conditions like anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.
When Does Despair Become Depression?
If you consistently experience despair for over two weeks, your doctor might diagnose you with major depressive disorder. This often comes with various symptoms, including:
- difficulty concentrating
- significant weight loss or gain
- disrupted sleep
- slowed movements or speech
In severe cases, despair can even cause suicidal thoughts or tendencies. In such cases, it’s critical to seek professional help, e.g., from a psychiatrist or a therapist, to help you overcome despair promptly.
At Story Wellness, we can help you work through and understand despair. Narrative therapy can be a powerful approach in addressing despair by helping individuals reshape their personal narratives. By exploring and reframing their experiences, beliefs, and emotions, narrative therapy techniques help individuals in finding new meanings, strengths, and possibilities. This therapeutic approach encourages clients to externalize their problems, viewing them as separate from their identity.
Through collaborative conversations, individuals can reconstruct their stories, promoting a sense of agency, resilience, and hope. This process allows for the exploration of alternative perspectives, identifying and amplifying existing strengths and resources, and ultimately fostering a renewed sense of purpose and meaning in life.
To talk more about despair, or talk about which treatment in Southern California is best, call Story Wellness at (866) 476-2823.
