HOPE – Never Give Up!

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who used to say, “Hope is the girl next door.” In other words, he did not believe in hope. He was a Holocaust survivor. He grew up as a child wandering the streets of Poland alone feeling very helpless. I guess hope did not play a part in his survival. I learned many valuable lessons from this professor, but with this one, I heartily disagree.

I think that hope is what keeps many people going. And not as an empty, imaginary vision, but as a projected future that draws them forward. Even Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning” (© 1946) talked about survivors in the concentration camps drawing upon hope. He described people having something to live for after imprisonment. If they had a book to write or grandchildren to see or something bigger than themselves to live for, it helped them survive. It helped them get through the day. Whether or not they actually lived, it helped their spirit survive.

So I would like to talk about hope and hopelessness. I often hear from my clients, not just with misophonia but also other clients, that they feel helpless, and along with that, hopeless. When HIV and AIDS were hitting the headlines in the 1980s, and destroying so many lives and relationships, there was very little hope. If you knew someone with HIV during that period of time, you know that many gave up hope, that they maxed out their credit cards because they thought any minute now, they were going to die. Now, only 30 years later, HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence. The medications are so much better now that people can live long and productive lives after such a diagnosis.

There was a recent item on the forefront of tinnitus treatment, reporting on a new investigative device to be implanted in the brain of someone with that crazy-making disorder. It is under scientific investigation by NIH, the National Institutes of Health, which means it is considered highly scientifically viable as a treatment. My patients who struggle with tinnitus and its devastating effect on their lives have often expressed hopelessness and despair. But here, look, is a treatment, maybe even a cure.

There is always hope. Misophonia is a complex condition, with vexing and intriguing symptoms. People with misophonia that is running their lives and destroying their relationships feel hopeless. Please take note: it is never too late for hope. It is never too late for miracles. It is never too late for scientific devices that can be implanted in a brain to change the wiring.

Imagine giving up and – worst case scenario – killing yourself. Imagine your family reading in the news only a few days or weeks or months later of a solution that would have greatly improved the quality of your life, but you gave up too soon.

Never give up hope. Hope may be “the girl next door,” but if so, then she might also be just the person you were waiting all your life to meet.