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Defeating Desperation
By: Libby Kessman, LCSW
Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” The presence of desperation leaps out at us from news headlines: A seemingly happy, good mother has a horrific automobile accident in which she, her daughter and nieces, and three unrelated people are killed and her son and another person were seriously injured. In the ensuing investigation the discovery is made that she had ingested the equivalent of ten drinks and had smoked marijuana shortly before the accident. A man who has had no success with women in his 48 years of life blogs about his plans to kill women in a health club and carries it out, killing himself as well. An immigrant who failed to learn English well enough to succeed in America returns to the class where he studied, kills the teacher and some students, and then kills himself.
Granted, these are extreme examples, but how many people go about their lives feeling unfulfilled, empty, lonely, left out, and angry about their situations? Some may overeat to fill the gnawing emptiness they feel. Some may use substances to mask their real feelings, which they have not learned how to tolerate. Some may go about with a phony smile on their face, preventing others from knowing how they really feel and even deluding themselves that they are happy. Some bury themselves in work to avoid feeling the lacks in their life that they don’t know how to remedy.
Sometimes someone may know what he needs to do but has difficulty putting these actions into effect, while others are stymied by roadblocks they are experiencing in their lives. For example, a shy person may feel she would like to interact more with others but lacks the confidence to do so. Or a man doesn’t understand why his intimate relationships with women come to an unhappy end.
A psychotherapist can help unravel what is knotting up a person’s forward movement in life and enable him to grow and develop in heretofore unimagined ways. The therapy process is collaborative, supportive, and growth promoting. As a 12-step saying notes, “You have to do it yourself, but you don’t have to do it alone.”
A basic building block of our lives is relationships—with ourselves and with others. Research has shown that those who have good relationships have better health and are happier overall. If our relationships are rich and solid, then, paraphrasing Thoreau, we can advance confidently in the direction of the life we have imagined and “…will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
© Libby Kessman 2009.
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