When Hope is a “Negative” Emotion

Some time ago, I was working with a woman in USA who has a private business in which she is very engaged, creative and responsible, and potentially very successful. Still, things were going downhill, primarily because of her relationships with her employees – she was too permissive and lacked boundaries, which the employees readily (and sometimes very manipulatively) abused. We worked with her feelings of guilt, inappropriate responsibility, and fear of others’ reactions to her decisions. After all that was addressed, something else came up as an equally important, perhaps the key problem. It was hope. She kept hoping her employees will finally come around to appreciate and understand her, and start investing effort into their jobs. Of course, there was a similar unfulfilled hope she was carrying from her early family. Some of her particularly manipulative employees probably recognized and fed that hope. In her honor, this article.

为什么很难意识到希望是不健康的？

Most people who work on self-improvement want to resolve unpleasant emotions: fear, shame, guilt, anger… This is expected and natural. Yet, sometimes a “positive” emotion can actually be a “negative” one. How? If it urges us to ignore facts, experience and common sense, and to make unthoughtful, unbalanced choices.

Unrealistic hope is such an emotion and sometimes it can create more damage than unpleasant emotions (excluding perhaps violent rage). Unpleasant emotions such as fear and shame urge us to have more self-restraint, which can result in missing some opportunities. But we often fight them because they are unpleasant. On the other hand, hope can motivate us to make unwise, unrealistic decisions – and it’s very pleasant and seductive.

希望让世界运转。希望激励着人们冒着生命危险（或牺牲生命）追求进步，激励着每个人不顾激烈的抵抗，引领（或拖累）人类前进。但另一方面，在许多无声的、不那么明显的方式中，在许多不成文的生活中，不健康的希望是一种 双刃剑.

就像我们避免不愉快的情绪一样，我们也倾向于接受、追随和增加愉快的情绪。 我们的身体遵循一种相当简单的本能：不愉快=坏，愉快=好。 Hope is even more than pleasant; it can give us strength when we need it, meaning when things look bleak – hope is one of our primary motivators, even primary needs in life.

尽管如此，正如不愉快的情绪并不一定是错误的（例如，悲伤可能会让我们发现也许未被发现的爱的潜能，或对他人更多的同情），愉快的情绪也可能会让我们忽视客观现实或长期后果。

痴情 这是最明显的例子，而且往往与不切实际的希望交织在一起。我们中的大多数人都有机会体验过这种组合的力量和强度，它是如何使人们忽视理智、理想化世俗、为不可原谅的事情辩护的。希望加上迷恋，会让人多年来遭受明显的虐待。在其他一些关系中，希望也会让我们把时间拖得更长，而这是不合理的：通常是家庭关系，也包括一些商业关系（因为很多人都会自发地把童年的问题投射到商业环境中，就像上面的例子一样）。

营销和政治领域的操纵者 (营销）对希望的力量了如指掌。营销实际上可以很好地概括为 贩卖希望. If the hope for something important can be triggered in sufficiently attractive ways, it can make even smart people repeat similar mistakes, ignoring that maybe-Einstein’s quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”. In politics, hope put into wrong people can have very destructive consequences not only on national, but on global level.

如果我们因希望而犯错，就不太可能得到同情。犯罪甚至不幸的受害者往往会被一些人贴上愚蠢、不负责任等类似的标签，这些人喜欢 指责受害者 – while usually the only mistake of those victims was that they chose hope over caution and 红旗. It’s important to be kind and supportive to ourselves even when people try to put us down for such mistakes. But as social beings, we have a need for others’ feedback, and it might not be easy to disregard it. You can increase your resilience to mocking and labeling by building a good relationship with yourself, primarily through making 与自己的情感交朋友.

幼稚的希望和如何对待它

这种希望凌驾于理智之上的力量从何而来？当希望植根于童年的记忆中，或者我们可以称之为幼稚的希望时，这种情况就会发生。 不仅不愉快的情绪往往是幼稚的, “positive” emotions can be, too. (Read about how to recognize childish emotions in 本条.)

童年时期的希望促使人们做出不平衡的决定，而这种希望往往与某种自尊问题有着微妙的联系，并且 未满足的需求: we might hope that we’ll receive something we never had as children in a similar situation or with a similar person (such as approval or understanding), prove something we couldn’t as children, or repair some injustice or chaos we experienced as children. Again, this is most obvious in love relationship, but certainly not limited to them.

一旦你意识到这一切，你就可以像对待其他幼稚的情感一样对待幼稚的希望：带着同情和爱，同时也带着对客观现实的认识。你可以认识到隐藏在希望背后的需求，并 以更健康的方式满足这些需求.你可以发挥自己的创造力，想方设法创造出自己想要的东西，而不必为此付出惨痛的代价。

Finally, how can you know when hope might be healthy and adult, and when to listen to its advice? It’s usually when hope is not mixed with a sense of urgency and fear you will miss something. When you are easily able to consider objective circumstances and a wide range of possible decisions and outcomes, rather than feeling a need to ignore them. Similarly like healthy love, when it’s not rooted in need and sense of lack, but in joy and fulfillment.要做到这一点，你首先要专注于内心，与自己建立良好的关系，然后才是你对外界的要求。

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