ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors argue that accepting hopelessness is an important aspect of facilitating authentic hope, and, indeed, that one of the important personal and societal challenges we face today is precisely to be able to accept as well as to empathise with people’s feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, and despair as part of the process of changing from fixity to fluidity. Drawing on the framework of Rogerian theory, with illustrations from clinical practice and the authors’ own lives, as well as from the social/political world, they examine firstly, the extent to which hopelessness—and helplessness—are aspects of congruence (in terms of awareness and communication) as well as incongruence (in terms of Rogerian personality theory); secondly, how acceptance of both is part of a therapeutic process—in this sense, this chapter stands as something of a meditation on acceptance; and, thirdly, how this perspective can help address what has been referred to as ‘ecological anxiety disorder’. Drawing on poetry, myths, and spiritual traditions, as well as psychological sources, this chapter explores both hopelessness and hope in terms of their origins, and discusses them in terms of philosophical and psychological ideas about essence, existence, and experience.
