Life is heavy. It’s hard. And it feels like every time you lift your foot to move you are being sucked back down. You look inside of yourself and think, “what’s the use? Things will never change.” You tell yourself how tired you are, how beaten down, and the thought of trying to overcome this hopelessness feels beyond your grasp. So why try? Really, what is the point?
You then look around yourself and run through the list of the work it takes to keep your relationships thriving and well-tended. Attempting to show up and do what is necessary to have those great relationships feels less important to you than they used to feel. There is a disconnect coming from inside of you and manifesting all around you now, but you know, you know that you feel better when you grow your relationships because you, as a human, are meant for meaningful connections and feeling hopeless in a relationship destroys connection.
How you show up in your relationship affects your meaningful connections.
It is natural for you to act based on your emotion and it is no different when that emotion is hopelessness. When you are feeling hopeless you act hopeless. What does that mean for your relationships and making meaningful connections?
That disconnect you feel, that shadow over your heart, and that negative energy swirling around you and in your perceptions cause you to act in partnership with those feelings. You may find yourself withdrawing, holding back pieces of yourself, building walls that hurt your relationships, and keeping others at a physical and emotional distance. This can show up for you in a multitude of ways. Such as:
- Self-doubt
- Criticism of partner (your perceptions vs truth)
- Unrealistic expectations and disappointments
Self-doubt at first can lead you to just be questioning yourself, but as it lingers on and stays with you, this leads to fear showing up. Fear of past mistakes, fear of things that may yet go wrong, and that fear start to color your perceptions. This leads to the need to constantly question your relationship. Will she still be my friend next week? Next month? Next year? This opens the door for seeds of doubt to grow.
When your perceptions are mired in those fears and doubts you start to act on those perceptions and those views are usually not a correct representation of the truth in your relationship. Acting on false grounds is a sure way to damage or even end a relationship. You may start to devalue your partner or friend. You may start to focus on the negative aspects and start dismissing the positives.
In your state of feeling hopeless, acting in self-doubt and false perceptions there are unrealistic expectations that lead to disappointments. If you are withdrawn the lines of communication are not open and your partner/friend can not read your mind to know what you need. The circumstance of not communicating can lead your thoughts to be judgemental because you have already decided how you need to be supported, but the other person may not know what that looks like. When they act in a way that is not in alignment with how you view your needs you find yourself disappointed in your unmet, yet not shared, expectations.
You may experience thoughts such as, “He didn’t pick up his socks. He must not appreciate me” or “They know I am struggling, yet they left out all of their dirty dishes. They must not love me.”
And so far these symptoms of hopelessness are just viewed from your side of the relationship, but what about the other person?
What about their perceptions of you feeling hopeless in your relationship?
Those lines of communication are down. Nothing is being relayed between you and all the other half of this relationship has to go on is their own perceptions colored by their own thoughts, past experiences, and beliefs.
We are all driven by the beliefs that our subconscious uses to guide us and they are as individual as each of us are. This translates to actions that are based on those beliefs. Those actions are what create circumstances and the circumstance of your relationship can only be changed by both you and the other person being aware of your thought cycles and actively communicating through them.
Imagine the above scenario where you have decided that your partner doesn’t appreciate you because he did not pick up his socks. This leads to you making passive-aggressive comments about the socks and his actions and what that means about his feelings for you. That leads the result of contention in your relationship which reinforces your thought that he doesn’t appreciate you.
Your partner is going to go through their own thought cycle and it will be impacted by the feeling of hopelessness you are experiencing. This does not mean that having that feeling is wrong. Our emotions are gifts and tools to use to enrich this human experience, however, they do have influence over what happens in our lives.
How do their perceptions of what your feelings say about them play out in their own thought cycle?
Take that same scenario, but flip perceptions. Your partner leaves his/her socks on the floor. They are then feel attacked in passive-aggressive ways. This leads to them thinking that they haven’t done anything to warrant such behavior towards them, which leads to them feeling frustrated or angry. They then take action in alignment with those feelings. They storm out or yell. Maybe they ignore your words.
This leads to a result that either creates a belief or reaffirms a belief in your partner.
In our example, this leads to the resulting contention which reinforces your partner’s belief that you must not want to be with them (because you are also withdrawn, not communicating, and living in self-doubt and hopelessness).
This repetitive cycle involving this one or more circumstances can lead to the self-fulfilling prophecy of your relationship failing that you worry about in your self-doubt.
But that does not mean that you have to feel hopeless or stuck in this cycle!
You can choose to open the lines of communication. It may seem hard, daunting, or even really scary. But that other person, they value you, love you, and want the best for you. Let them know where you are and how they can support you. Tell them how you feel and if you are wondering how here are a few tips to get communication going again.
How to communicate when you feel hopeless:
- Recognize and understand your emotion
- Surface emotions first such as feeling stuck
- Dig deeper than surface emotion such as hopelessness
- Understand that these emotions may make you feel more sensitive
- Understand that having these emotions is not wrong
- Once you understand your emotion share it
- Communicate in a way that is safe for both you and the other person (this may be a quiet uninterrupted place, try not to ambush the other person into this conversation…this does not evoke feelings of safety)
- Open and honest communication using statements such as “I feel”
- Express your needs in “I need” statements and not “You need to” statements
- Avoid placing blame
- Truly listen to yourself and to the other person
You deserve to overcome, to feel joy, to stand in the light. And if right now you can’t see that then just keep going. Don’t stop trying. Take small steps forward even if they feel hard or heavy. Do it for yourself. Do it for those who love you. They want the best for you and when you are feeling hopeless it impacts your relationships in so many difficult ways. And if you find that you can not do this, know that you are not alone.
You do not have to remain feeling hopeless in a relationship.
Reach out to those of us that will help you take those steps by lifting you up and walking with you. Reach out to your Father in Heaven and he will carry you. He will sustain you and he already deeply loves you. He is the light and he has already overcome. You can not fail with him on your side.
