Welcome to the Hope Depot: Where Trauma Transformation Happens
“Hope is like a reservoir of emotional strength.” John Piper
Without the hope that you can transform your trauma, you won’t get far in recovery. If the healing process is like a car, hope is the engine. Hope keeps us going even when we wade through a deep well of emotional pain. It guards against despair and despondency.
But what exactly is hope? Merriam-Webster defines it as the “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” Chan M. Hellman, Founding Director of the Hope Research Center & Professor at the University of Oklahoma, says that hope “is the belief that your future will be better than today and you have the power to make it so.”
My Christian faith tradition has much to say about hope. “Biblical hope is not just a desire for something good in the future, but rather, biblical hope is a confident expectation and desire for something good in the future,” John Piper, founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary, writes. He adds that “biblical hope not only desires something good for the future — it expects it to happen.”
While many passages in the Bible speak of hope, two in particular inform my understanding of what hope means to me as a Christian. One of the passages is in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and another is in the New Testament. For the NT passage, I highlighted the verse that speaks of hope. I added the surrounding verses because the context in a biblical study is king.
Psalm 42:5 Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Hebrew 10:22 Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
The essence of each passage is that trust in God is our hope. As a trauma survivor, trusting in God, my Higher Power, helps me believe that I can and will recover from the effects of what my uncle did to me when I was a child.
There is much talk of trauma survivors developing resilience, which the American Psychological Association defines as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
Hellman took part in a research study comparing the effects of resiliency versus hope on trauma survivors. What he and the other researchers found is that hope was “a stronger predictor of psychological flourishing than resilience.” The researchers concluded that “a hopeful mindset...significantly predicted flourishing, whereas resilience proved a nonsignificant predictor.”
What exactly does hope do for those of us who survived trauma? It gives us “the strength and motivation to heal from trauma,” according to Constance Scharff, Ph.D., author and the founder and director of The Human Resilience Project. Hope is linked with “reduced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Scharff also believes that hope can motivate survivors as they do the hard work of healing.
How to Cultivate Hope
Now that you know of the importance of hope in your recovery, you might be wondering how you can cultivate it. Hellman believes that goal setting is the cornerstone of hope. By setting goals and achieving them, you build hope. Start with goals that are easier to achieve. For example, aim to write daily in your journal what you’re feeling and any body sensations. Here are a few other easy goals:
Practice 3-5 minutes of deep breathing daily
Eat the recommended 25 grams of fiber a day. (I wrote here about the importance of nutrition in trauma recovery.)
Do a tapping meditation every night before bed.
Read something inspirational every day. (This goal will help you create hope within.)
Find a therapist and attend therapy regularly.
If you have clinical depression, make an appointment with a psychiatrist.
The beauty of setting goals is that as you achieve them you feel better about yourself. That is hope, and I recommend grabbing onto it with both hands and don’t let go.
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Thank you for this post. My Christian faith sustains me and helps me walk through past traumas and hurts. I feel God is always with me and sometimes carries me on my journey. He also directs me toward healing, bringing people and resources into my path to guide me through.