How Clinicians Hold Hope When Clients Can’t Yet See It

Author: Lokadia Sims, MA, CCC 

There are moments in treatment for clients where the light can feel far away, when thoughts of “I can’t do this anymore” start to take over. Recovery begins to feel overwhelming and out of their reach. Hopelessness can start to set in, and it can feel like a stillness that doesn’t feel peaceful but instead feels more like being suspended in the dark, unsure if you will ever find solid ground again. It can show up physically in the sensations someone experiences, with a hollow chest, an ache in the stomach or shoulders that sink under invisible weight. Hope can feel foreign- distant and unreachable. But this is where our work begins.

Holding hope isn’t about fixing, convincing, or forcing optimism. It is not us offering empty reassurances or rushing to fix the pain someone is experiencing.  It is about remaining steady and present when someone has lost connection to their own belief in change. It is sitting beside them in the challenging moments and refusing to look away.

As clinicians, when our clients are not able to feel hope, we show up and keep faith in our clients’ capacity for healing, not because of evidence in the moment, but because of what we have seen time and time again. We hold hope by showing up again and again, with calmness and care. We stay regulated when our clients are flooded with despair because we know that no matter how painful this moment feels, it is not the whole story.

We’ve seen clients find their way through the dark. We have seen eyes that looked empty start to fill with light. We’ve seen people come out of the shell of survival and into the fullness of who they are.  We know that even when clients feel hopeless that there is hope, and this is what we hold onto when hope feels heavy.

We ground ourselves in the evidence of hope we have seen and stay steady beside our clients until they find the light themselves. We are not dragging them towards the light, but we are with them until they can see it too.

When that light returns, it often shows up in small moments, quietly- In a laugh, a thought challenged rather than obeyed, a feeling expressed openly, or a meal faced with a little less fear.  These moments are the glimmers of possibility, the softening of self-hatred into curiosity. And slowly, clients start to begin to carry the hope themselves- maybe not all at once, but slowly they build trust in self and in the process of recovery.

Over time, clients begin to carry hope themselves. Not all at once, but piece by piece, as their own belief begins to take root.

If you are in a place where you can’t see hope right now, please know it is okay not to see it. It is okay to feel lost, overwhelmed, or uncertain. This moment is not forever.

Hope never disappears when you lose sight of it. Instead, it often waits, held safely by those who believe it is still there. When you are ready, it will still be waiting for you. Until then, know there is always someone holding hope for you, even if you don’t yet know who they are.