Burying the Toxic Hope

Confronting the insanity of hoping THIS will finally be the time...

It’s amazing to see more people waking up around the world and starting to call out the lies. It sparks so much hope to witness big, diverse gatherings of people like the Defeat the Mandates rally in DC and the truckers caravan headed across Canada right now as they’re waved on by miles of supporters along the way. People are gathering and uniting against the tyranny because they’ve had enough.

I wish I could say I was optimistic that this is all going to end soon. Part of me really wants to believe that. But I am a realist when it comes to abusive situations.

More evidence and truths are coming out recently. That can feel exciting and hopeful for those of us who have been praying for this to happen. It’s a good thing when truth comes out.

But we still haven't hit rock bottom in society. I think we still have a ways to go.

Every addict, just like every victim of abuse, will need to hit rock bottom before they finally make the all-in commitment to quit the toxic habit and transform their life. Until that moment, they don’t realize how much is on the line.

Before rock bottom, there is a repetitive cycle that escalates in intensity every time until the person has had enough. I think the same is true for society. We will need to hit rock bottom before the real upturn. I think there’s going to be ups and downs along the way.

For now, we are still in the abuse cycle with no end in sight.

Abusers evoke false hopes, letting their targets believe that this will finally be the time that things change for the better.

As one of my readers commented recently, the breadcrumbing of truths adds to the Cognitive Dissonance. She said what's happening now is reminding her of when her abusive ex would occasionally admit to some of his transgressions, even showing a momentary shocking clarity about the nature of his actions and how he impacted her. Naturally, in those moments, she had hopes that a breakthrough was finally happening.

That trick is called a perceived act of kindness. It’s one of the four parameters of the Stockholm Syndrome. More on that topic in a future article.

The important word here is perceived. Perception determines the reality that a person is living in. We can see around the world now, much more clearly than before the pandemic, that people are living in divergent realities.

Hope is an optimistic state of mind, a desire for a certain thing to happen, a feeling of trust, an expectation of positive outcome.

It's good to have hope in life. Hopelessness can lead to depression, despair and giving up on life. Without hope, positive outcomes are unlikely because you'll always be expecting the worst. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, hope can also become toxic. Sometimes hope is dangerous to your sanity.

When abusers dose the target with these little truths, that gives the target a temporary relief from the stress. It also seems to create a dopamine release where the target is looking forward to future reward (ie: the fantasy of the relationship finally moving forward or the anticipation that things are finally getting better). This release of neurochemicals can cause a person to feel an endogenous high. That can induce feelings of optimism, hope, relief and the motivation to keep investing in a toxic situation.

The dosing of truth causes a toxic hope that keeps people stuck in the abuse cycle.

Abuse is a never-ending, escalating sweet-mean cycle that goes back and forth between love-bombing and devaluation. The love-bombing, AKA idealization phase, is the element of perceived act of kindness.

Toxic hope is part of what keeps people stuck in the Cognitive Dissonance, the Stockholm Syndrome and the trauma bond, unable to leave an abusive relationship or situation.

The perceived acts of kindness are dangerous, even though they appear to be good signs and they might even make you feel really good. This leads people to think that maybe it’s not so bad after all, maybe things are finally going to change, maybe we can relax our guard.

Inevitably the cycle of abuse flips again.

As soon as a target of abuse relaxes into the relief and hopefulness that the truth is being disclosed or admitted, therefore positive change must be inevitable… bam!… suddenly the same thing happens again, or, a whole other crisis is fabricated and the cycle starts all over again.

In toxic relationships, sometimes apologies are made with promises of change, words of regret vow that it won't happen again, they say they see how they’ve hurt you or what they did was wrong. But that’s just a breadcrumb of false hope.

The dosing of truth and glimpses of false hope keep people hooked and unable to walk away. This is a powerful manipulation tactic.

When the abuser senses you’re waking up and getting restless, that’s when they turn up the dosage of false hope so you perceive that they actually care about you, they want the best for you and they’re finally going to give you what you want and deserve.

The carrot is part of the fantasy that abusers and tyrants promise in order to keep people hooked. I recently wrote about that in an article called Compliance Is Not the Way Out of Abuse & Tyranny.

They make you think this will finally be the time it works out.

Just because the abuser appears not to be abusing you in this moment, that doesn’t mean they’re not going to keep doing it.

In an interpersonal relationship, the temporary reprieve from abuse or empty words of regret about abuse that took place, doesn’t equate to love.

Likewise, the little morsels of truth coming out and the temporary loosening of control in a society does not mean the tyranny is ending. It’s an appearance of giving, a display of perceived goodwill but that’s just a manipulation that causes confusion.

Confusion, by the way, is often one of the early red flags of a toxic relationship. There might be abuse or manipulation going on. At the very least, a sense of confusion indicates that someone is lying, either to the other person or to themselves, and there isn’t honest, direct communication to clear it up.

No matter how much abusers give you, that’s all part of the con for them to get something from you.

The whole point is to keep you in the abuse cycle so they can continue controlling you. As soon as you settle into their perceived act of kindness, because it feels good and it gives you a sense of renewed hope, the abuse cycle is going to flip on you once again.

It will hurt more every time, but the sad thing is that the more hope you invest in the relationship or situation, the harder it is to walk away.

I explained the topic of toxic hope related to interpersonal relationships in this video from 2017. You’ll probably be able to see the parallels to how this is showing up on a macro level in society now. I related it to Charlie Brown and Lucy, and that fuckin’ football.

Lucy promises Charlie that she’ll hold the ball for him to kick it. Yet she always pulls it away at the last moment. Charlie is on to her tactics because this happens every time he hopes she’s actually going to let him kick it.

In this episode, Lucy tricks Charlie again by telling him that it’s Thanksgiving and “the biggest, most important tradition of them all is the kickoff of the football.” She sweet-talks him into believing that it’s a big honor for him to get to do it. Charlie starts to walk away, then begins to rationalize that maybe Lucy won’t trick him since this time it’s a holiday.

We see the example of Charlie’s confusion caused by Lucy’s promises and flattery coupled with Charlie’s memories of how she always tricks him.

It’s so easy to fall like Charlie. We’ve all been there at some point, caught up in the toxic hope of some relationship or life situation.

The false hope is toxic because it contaminates your life. It makes you start to feel insane because you keep coming back for more of the same when a person (or system) isn’t changing.

Abusers don’t just give it up. They only give you the impression that it’s getting better in order to keep you stuck.

The more times you go through this cycle, the more they will wear you down until the point where you’re collapsed, shut down, frozen, dissociated, in states of hopelessness and despair, feeling like you can’t leave and you’re powerless to do anything to make it better. That is a dismal state to be in.

The abuse cycle is designed to go on indefinitely… and it will until the target opts out or doesn’t survive. For some people, death becomes the only exit from abuse.

No matter how many promises of change are made, how many times they apologize or even seem to allow you moments of reprieve when they can miraculously see the err of their ways, the same patterns just keep repeating. You get your hopes up, then they crush them yet again.

We have to learn to see through the perceived acts of kindness, the emotional manipulation and superficial promises, the seduction that’s keeping us in the cycle. We need to understand the danger of mis-perceiving little disclosures of truth and promises as real kindness, genuine remorse or signs of positive change.

Look at the patterns of action. What are they showing us without telling us?

Notice the staged acts of kindness and how those acts are being leveraged. The intermittent reinforcement creates the strongest bond and abusers seem to have an innate ability to know how to use this to their advantage.

The false hope can keep you imprisoned in a nightmare, unable to get out and move forward.

Giving up hope on a hopeless relationship or situation isn’t pessimistic, it’s as real as realism gets. Facing reality leads to sanity.

I’ve found it helpful to evaluate when to give up the toxic hope in a relationship or situation by looking for self-responsibility.

If a person is unable to own responsibility for their actions, if they’re unwilling to look at their faults, to admit them, to work on transforming them… then there’s no hope for change. That’s when the only path of sanity is to bury the hope.

Burying the hope involves mourning the idea of what we hoped the situation, person, or relationship would become.

Right now I think an aspect of this toxic hope that we are all struggling to bury is that our governments are going to admit they were wrong, then take measures to make up for it, or at least step aside in disgrace.

I think we might see some pawns taking the fall for the team, so to speak, but I don’t think we will see any kind of systemic change no matter how much truth comes out. I think they’re only going to keep dosing us with false hope and letting us think that things are finally going to get better. But they will keep doubling down and stacking on more layers of chaos and crisis to keep us distracted, confused, exhausted and trying to find solid ground all the way to the Great Reset.

Many people in America, including many of those who voted for this administration, can now see how hopeless the situation of government leadership is. It’s failing, the ship is sinking and the system will collapse because it’s past the point of no return. There is a similar story playing out around the world.

Giving up hope that a situation isn’t going to change doesn’t mean you’re not a hopeful person. You can still have hopes and dreams for the future that you want to create. You’re not a pessimist when you acknowledge that a person or system isn’t changing, that it’s not working and that you want to stop participating so you can use your valuable energy to create something new and better.

Life is too short and valuable to waste hope on hopeless situations where people aren’t changing. Save your hope for what you’re building and the people you’re building it with. Hopefully you also recognize the importance of choosing people in your life who are owning 100% self-responsibility for themselves, their choices and their actions, as you are.

I’ve never regretted burying the hope in any abusive relationship or situation in my personal life, including with some family members. I can also tell you that anytime I did hold onto hope beyond the expiration date, I regretted it every time because it only caused me more harm.

Anytime you’re dealing with a person who doesn’t own 100% responsibility for who they are and the actions they take, that is a relationship of inevitable harm.

I think we need to get honest and clear with ourselves so we can recognize when it’s time to bury the hope.

I admit, I’m still resolving this conflict within myself. I’m in the trenches with the rest of y’all.

Once we accept that there’s a real problem, that the system isn’t going to change and we need to bury that toxic hope, then we can have the energy and clarity to move forward by creating parallel systems in society and a world that we actually want to live in.

Fighting the abuse directly is mostly useless, and even dangerous. The path to health, sanity and peace after abuse starts by opting out as much as possible, speaking the truth and finding a community of allies who are drawn to the same reality.

When a person is leaving an abusive family or other social system, it's very important to find allies who share a similar sense of reality in order to start building a new future outside of the abusive system.

This is where our energy investment and hope will bring a much more abundant return on investment for the long-term.

I love to see people gathering all around the world, in person and online, so we can remember that we are not alone.

The abusers and tyrants want us to believe we are “small fringe groups” but we are not. We are many. And there are more of us waking up every day.

Let us also remember that we must maintain a state of wakefulness lest we get hoovered back into the cycle by ongoing attempts of emotional manipulation. Those tricks will continue to come by way of more fear provocations, guilt-tripping, threats or empty promises of security.

We cannot become complacent.

They will keep dosing us with perceived acts of kindness. It’s important to recognize those gestures for what they are, manipulations. These are not signs that things are changing for the good within the old system.

When we hold onto the hope that someone or some situation will change after they've shown us again and again the same harmful behaviors, that's when hope becomes dangerous to sanity.

This is where standards and boundaries are important.

In a relationship, when a person does something that goes against one of your standards, you can express your boundary kindly but assertively. See how they respond.

When you call out something that was unacceptable for you, does the person admit responsibility for their actions?

Do they recognize how their behavior was inconsiderate and hurt you?

Most importantly do they change their behavior afterward?

We can give people the benefit of the doubt when they do something wrong and own it. We are all human and make mistakes. But if it keeps happening, then we know the person is making a choice and not a mistake.

At that point it becomes toxic to hold onto the hope the person is going to change because their actions are telling you that they’re not. The only sane option becomes walking away and investing your hope in your dreams and goals for the future.

As we individually move through this process of burying the hope that the system is going to give up the control and change directions, that’s when we will see positive collective movement forward out of the chaos.

The amazing thing is that more people around the world are starting to realize that parallel systems are going to be necessary to create if we don’t want to fall with the old system and have nothing left after its inevitable collapse.

As we bury the toxic hope, we will start seeing these parallel systems emerging naturally from the shift in consciousness.