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Your dictionary definition of:

despair  


[OE. despeiren, dispeiren, OF. desperer, fr. L. desperare; de- + sperare to hope; akin to spes hope, and perh. to spatium space, E. space, speed; cf. OF. espeir hope, F. espoir. Cf. Prosper, Desperate.]

To be hopeless; to have no hope; to give up all hope or expectation; -- often with of. "We despaired even of life." 2 Cor. i. 8. "Never despair of God's blessings here." Wake.

Synonyms -- See Despond.

 

Despair (De*spair"), v. t.

1. To give up as beyond hope or expectation; to despair of. [Obs.] "I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted." Milton.
 

despair (De*spair"), n.
[Cf. OF. despoir, fr. desperer.]

1.
Loss of hope; utter hopelessness; complete despondency.

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despair? abortion? a connection?

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Despair & Forgiveness

For many post-aborted women, the forgiveness of God is a precept which they can mouth, but it's difficult for them to digest. How can they be forgiven? The horror of their sin is so great. Many know that they must believe in God's forgiveness & they do so in an act of faith. But how can they feel forgiven, when every instinct in their nature says they can't be forgiven, even should not be forgiven?

Hopelessness & Despair

Hopelessness, despair, meaninglessness & void are words used to describe the feelings that can emerge as you face the changes in your life that result from your loss.

It may be that everything is different, or that all you held dear & true about love or life has disintegrated. You may experience fear & lack of confidence about the future.

This is the central pain of grief. As sadness empties out of you, then hopelessness & despair arise. You may feel there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Other images that people have used to describe their hopelessness are:

  • a forest after a forest fire
  • a barren desert
  • the dark night of the soul 
  • an abyss

You may not be able to find the courage to put your feelings into words when you can't believe in a future or you have ambivalence about it.

Your grief may not be the way you thought it would be. Perhaps you never thought you would feel this way. If you see no point in going on & its hard to find a purpose, you wonder how you can go on living in these circumstances.

Depression, suicidal thoughts, or a longing to have life be over may plague you now. Hopelessness & despair can come at moments along the way or be a significant portion of your grief journey.

These feelings are related to depression & you & others might call it that. In grief, your mood is variable & you have a range of emotions, i.e., you have moments when you can laugh.

In clinical depression, your mood is consistently low & you're emotionally flat. Your fear may be that it'll always be this way, but this is an inbetween time - a still place or a transition - in which you integrate what has been with what is now. The stillness or emptiness allows you to move into what is to come.

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What helps:

  • Share your ambivalence.

  • If you're uncertain about how to go on, seek help from your doctor, counsellor or spiritual advisor

  • Let others know & help.

  • If you can, spend time w/the generations of your family

  • Identify people who have been thru this & survived.

  • These may be people in your own social network or characters in books & movies.

  • Value this time. This is a time of transition & change.

  • Allow yourself to reflect on where you've been & where you might be heading.

  • Imagine that a seed has been planted in the ground; in the dark, it's preparing to grow.

  • Nurture yourself.

  • Pray or meditate regularly.

  • Spend quiet time in nature & allow the beauty of the world to touch you.

  • Notice the continuation of lifes cycles. You may find it helps to keep a journal or to record your progress in some way.

  • Remember to value your small accomplishments.

The other side of hopelessness

Recognition of the natural cycles of life can bring you an acceptance of yourself & your process. Being in touch with the beauty of the world can bring peace.

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What forms does despair take?

Despair is:

  • An uncontrollable emotional response to loss, which involves reacting to the pain & anguish involved.

  • Sobbing & crying, physical responses to the hurt & suffering of the loss.

  • Physically tightening the chest & involuntary muscular contractions that occur at the time one "lets go" & feels the total emotion of a loss.

  • Often seen as deep depression in which one withdraws completely into oneself & pulls away from others, suffering privately the pain & anguish of the loss.

  • Wailing, ranting & invective aimed at God, self, or others in response to the wave of emotional grief experienced in a loss. The sense of being "ungrounded," "unsettled," "lost," "disenfranchised," or "forgotten" as a result of a loss.

  • A feeling of overwhelming insecurity & fear after realizing the magnitude of the loss involved.

  • The unwillingness of the human spirit to accept the loss & the crying out for justice, redemption, forgiveness & compassion for the loss event.

  • Questioning the "fairness" of treatment resulting from the loss & flailing out against it.

  • The emotional response most commonly misunderstood as the only response to grief.

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What irrational beliefs inhibit the resolution of despair?

  • If I cry, I'll show my weakness.

  • If I become emotional, I'll reveal my lack of control to others.

  • Life should always be fair.

  • You must be strong in the face of adversity.

  • I must be strong to carry everyone in my family during this crisis.

  • If I ignore this problem long enough, it'll go away.

  • I must be going crazy or else I wouldn't be responding this way.

  • It's not ladylike (or manly) to cry in public.

  • I'm the only one going thru this problem; no one else could understand.

  • If I let others see my anguish & pain, they'll lose respect for me.

  • If I have a problem accepting my loss & let others know, they'll ostracize me.

  • It's not normal to be feeling this way.

  • There are certain social expectations we have to meet in facing a loss like this.

  • If I go thru this anguish once, I'll never have to grieve over this loss again.

  • I can't believe I still find myself crying uncontrollably after so much time has passed

  • No one should ever have to hurt like this.

  • I should be able to resume normal activities as soon as possible.

  • It's abnormal to act this way; if others see me act this way they'll think I'm abnormal.

  • I'd never admit to anyone how I really feel because it's my personal business & I shouldn't burden anyone else w/my problems.

  • If I allow myself to feel & act this way, I'm going to feel guilty later on for such feelings & actions.

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What are the results of blocked or unresolved despair?

People with blocked despair:

  • have difficulty tuning in to real human emotion.
  • become guarded about letting others know their feelings
  • often withdraw from others & keep to themselves
  • can become "autistic-like" in their response to life's ups & downs
  • keep up a "happy face" or "mask of strength" for others but are scared inside
  • are often never able to seek or accept help in dealing w/their loss

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People with unresolved despair:

  • become crusaders of a "cause" trying to change the way things are in the hard, cruel world
  • find it difficult to associate with others who have or are currently suffering a similar loss
  • are in a constant state of letting others know about their loss & how much anguish & pain has resulted from the loss
  • seek out an audience to whom they can ventilate their despair
  • mask their lack of coping with their loss in a veneer of strength & gusto
  • are never able to cope or adjust to the changes in life resulting from their loss
  • become convinced that no one can help them & so they become "lone rangers" & begin to challenge the system to change things

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How does one recognize an inappropriate response to despair?

We know we're having an inappropriate response to despair when we:

  • Can't think of anything but our loss
  • Feel guilt for our loss & find no end to the contempt we feel for ourself & others
  • Find it difficult to carry on the normal course of our life
  • Find it difficult to face life as a result of our loss
  • Feel lost & unable to find the answers to resolving our despair
  • Can't speak to anyone about what we're feeling
  • Find that our only topic of conversation is our loss
  • Have lost all hope or trust in finding a way out of our problem
  • Have withdrawn from all of our old friends & social network
  • Can no longer enjoy life, find meaning in life, or find a reason for carrying on

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The ultimate inappropriate responses to despair include:

  • Divorce: a couple dealing with despair at different levels often can't reconcile their differing viewpoints, leading to dissolution of their marriage.
  • Mental illness: unresolved despair can lead to a mental breakdown or break from reality. Psychotic-like behavior is one possible result of uncontrolled despair.
  • Physical illness: the physical response to unresolved despair can lead to acute or chronic illness.
  • Acts of violence: in a wild rage of despair a person can commit an act such as murder, physical, or sexual abuse to relieve the pain & anguish of the loss.

"We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed."

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

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Steps to resolve blocked despair

Step 1.        Take an honest inventory of your behavioral response to the target loss; identify your inappropriate or unhealthy responses to despair. If you find you have unresolved despair, go to Step 2.

 

Step 2.        Identify the irrational beliefs blocking the resolution of your despair.

 

Step 3.        Systematically refute each irrational belief keeping you from resolving your despair.

 

Step 4.        Seek help from someone to assist you in dealing with your irrational beliefs openly & honestly. Such helpers can include:

Step 5.In working with a helper, share the cause of your despair. Be free to reveal your inner pain & turmoil. Don't hold back the emotional tide. Trust the helper to respect your emotional response. Ask the helper to provide a "rational" thinking & emotional approach to the loss.

Step 6.            With the assistance of the helper, imagine or picture the loss & allow yourself to feel the pain & hurt of your experience. Use this simulation to bring out your feelings of despair. Bring the simulation to closure by substituting a rational response to the loss, such as: 

Step 7.            If, in working with your helper, you're unable to resolve your despair, return to Step one.  Use a professionally trained helper, e.g., a mental health counselor, in addressing this unresolved despair. Shop around, if necessary, for someone with whom you can relate.  

The Weapon Of Despair

By fanning the flames of despair, Satan can lead us into the greatest of sins, because desperate people do desperate things.

At the moment a person gives in to despair, one has suffered a loss of faith & trust in God. In the case of abortion, the desperate woman has lost faith in the promise that God has a plan for her life, much less a plan for her child's life.

Desperate people try to take control. They try to save whatever they can by doing whatever needs to be done, which may include betraying their own values.

For example, when the Nazis undertook the extermination of millions of Jews, the sheer magnitude of their task required them to develop ways of soliciting the cooperation of the victims. There were too few soldiers to contain millions of rebellious Jews.

So it was necessary to manipulate their victims so that they would choose to cooperate for at least one day at a time. The Nazis did this by exposing the Jews to limited threats; the victims were always left with the bit of hope that by submitting to the present indignity, there was something else which could be saved. According to sociologist Zygmunt Bauman:

At all stages of the Holocaust, the victims were confronted with a choice (as least subjectively - even when objectively the choice didn't exist any more, having been preempted by the secret decision of physical destruction).

They couldn't choose between good & bad situations, but they could at least choose between greater & lesser evil... In other words they had something to save. To make their victims' behavior predictable & hence manipulable & controllable, the Nazis had to induce them to act in the 'rational mode.'

To achieve that effect, they had to make the victims believe that there was indeed something to save & that there were clear rules as to how one should go about saving it.1

These choices were presented in a way that discouraged reflecting on the decisions from a moral perspective. Instead, the victims were pressured to make rational decisions based on the rational need to "save whatever we can."

Using this demonic strategy, the Nazis encouraged the empowerment of ghetto Jewish leaders who would see to the needs of the people, coordinate distribution of medicine & materials, maintain morale, etc. These same leaders were then manipulated into cooperating with the Nazi extermination program.

They were confronted with the agonizing choice of cooperating with the Nazis or witnessing the slaughter of their people. At first the cooperation was in "small" things, maintaining a ghetto police force, providing lists of names, selection of ghetto residents to be sent to "resettlement" projects, providing transportation to pick-up points & the like.

In some cases, when the Nazis wanted to punish the entire community for some infraction, Jewish leaders were even forced to select & arrest the desired number of victims who were to be publicly executed by the Nazis.

And always, no matter what the request, the leaders were told that by cooperating they were saving the lives of the majority who remained. Leaders who didn't cooperate were eliminated. Leaders who did cooperate saved their own lives, the lives of their families & the lives of the dwindling majority of Jews under their leadership, at least for a time & were left to agonize over their complicity.

The similarity between Nazi manipulations of the Jews & the abortionists' manipulation of women faced with crisis pregnancies is striking. Just as the victim - Jews were forced to choose between losing everything, or just a little, so abortion counselors encourage the victim-woman to view "this pregnancy" as a threat to everything she has, her relationships, her family, her career, her entire future.

She is assured that by sacrificing this one thing (a tiny unborn child), she can save the rest. During this process, the victim-woman is urged to view the abortion decision not as a moral choice, but as a rational choice of "saving what you can."

But in fact, just as those who reluctantly cooperated with the Nazis discovered, the bargain is a false one. The demands on ghetto leaders to sacrifice more & more victims never stopped. And so it is with the post-aborted woman. After her child is destroyed, she faces:

  • self-condemnation
  • lower self-esteem
  • difficulty with relationships
  • substance abuse
  • career problems
  • a cycle of repeat abortions & more

Often she experiences an intense desire for replacement pregnancies to atone for her lost child & she becomes a single parent, the very problem she sought to avoid in the first place - but now she also has to deal with the emotional scars of an abortion.

Mary Sarton wrote,

"Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers."

(The Book of Virtues)

Despair vs. Hope

Part One: The Devil's Bargain

David C. Reardon, Ph.D.

The idea that "abortion is an act of despair" is one of the key points I've always tried to stress in my writing & speaking engagements.

 

Despair isn't only the driving force behind most abortion choices, it's also the greatest obstacle to post-abortion recovery. Until more pro-lifers understand this, they'll be handicapped in their efforts to help women in crisis.

 

In describing the despair which leads women to abort, Frederica Mathewes-Green of Feminists for Life of America, gives us this compelling word-picture:

 

"No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg."

 

This quote is so powerfully accurate that it has even been reprinted by Planned Parenthood.

 

Why? Because pro-abortionists have long wanted to diffuse the notion that women abort for selfish or casual reasons. They want the public to sympathize with the desperation of women seeking abortions because they want to convert sympathy for women into support for abortion.

 

Actually, the fact that most women agonize over the decision to abort is one of the few areas for finding "common ground" in the abortion debate. Most, if not all, counselors & researchers on both sides of the political issue would agree that most abortion decisions involve elements of fear & despair.

 

But simply because women agonize over their abortion decisions doesn't make the decision morally acceptable, not even to the women themselves.

 

In fact, post-abortion research suggests that the more a woman agonizes over making an abortion decision, the more she's likely to agonize over the abortion afterwards.

 

Maternal desires, moral doubts & feelings of being exploited don't disappear after an abortion. They continue. They grow. They become sources of constant reflection, or stifling avoidance. They can even become the source of crippling self-condemnation.

Escape Thru Self-destruction

Returning to Mathewes-Green's analogy of an animal gnawing its leg off to escape a trap, we see that abortion is actually an act of self-destruction.

When pro-abortionists view a woman in this desperate situation, their solution is to offer the woman a clean, legal way of cutting off the offending leg, after all, they believe there are too many unfit "legs" in the world already.

But what abortion counselors fail to tell women who are choosing abortion is that the loss of their "leg" will leave them crippled. Just as many amputees, they'll experience the feeling of a "phantom leg." This missing part will leave them less whole & less capable.

And at times this missing piece will cause an indescribable ache & a flood of uncontrollable tears. In escaping the trap, they'll have lost a part of themselves.

Contrast this approach to that of crisis pregnancy centers where pro-lifers are committed to finding a way to open the jaws of the trap to save both the woman & her "leg." Pro-lifers insist that there's always room for hope.

There's always a way to avoid a destructive amputation, a way which in the long run will be appreciated by both her & her "leg."

What we see in these 2 perspectives is the difference between despair & hope. Despair inevitably leads us to accept abortion. Hope always leads us to embrace life.

Hope is a virtue. It's centered on God, the source of all hope. Despair is a sin against hope. It's one of Satan's greatest weapons..

The Devil versus Christ

It's significant how differently Christ & the Devil appear before & after any sin, in this case, abortion. Before the abortion, Christ stands, with his arms outstretched to block the way, saying, "Do not do this thing. The sacrifice you make now will be rewarded a hundredfold. I offer you life, so that you may live life abundantly. Place your hope in me & I will not abandon you."

The Devil, on the other hand, insists, "You must get rid of it. Look at all you will lose... You have no choice. You have already gotten yourself into this problem. Now you must get yourself out. Do this one thing & then you'll be back in the driver's seat of life. Things will be the way they used to be."

Christ asks us to trust in a plan which we do yet fully understand; Satan urges us to act now to save what we already have. Christ asks us to make a moral decision rooted in hope; Satan asks us to make a "rational" decision based on present needs, desires & fears.

But after the abortion, how do they appear? Afterwards, Christ continues to offer hope: "Come to me. I want to share your tears. I want to comfort you. Know that all is forgiven. See, your child is in my arms waiting for you to join us when your day is completed."

Satan on the other hand continues to fan the flames of despair. He who pretended to be on her side now stands as her fiercest accuser. "Look at what you have done! You have murdered your own child! Can there be anything worse than that? There's no hope for you now. You are nothing. You're beyond redemption!

You may as well seek what little comfort you can in the embrace of an affair, in the bottom of a booze bottle, or in the silence of suicide. And if you get pregnant again, you've already had an abortion once, so you might as well do it again - it may even help you to get tougher & more immune to this pain. It makes no difference now. You've proven you can murder. Nothing can be worse.

And, oh, how you must hate those people who led you to this. Your boyfriend, your parents, your doctor. There's no one you can trust. There is no one who can love YOU -- a murderer. You are alone. Your best hope is to bury your past. Hide it from others. Hide it from yourself. But remember it'll always be yours alone to bear."

Before the abortion, Christ condemns it & Satan makes excuses for it. After the abortion, Satan is the one condemning it while Christ wants to forgive it.

This is the Devil's bargain. He encourages women to submit to abortion in order to avoid losing what they already have. But once they have chosen it, he tries to keep them trapped in despair so as to strip away everything else. Indeed, Satan pumps as much despair into her life as he can generate.

And not into her life alone, but into the lives of the child's father, grandparents, siblings, & everyone else he can touch with the poison of abortion. His purpose is threefold: to generate misery, to encourage more sin & to create doubt in the unfathomable mercy of God.

Published on Thursday, August 7, 2003 by the New York Times

Despair of the Jobless

by Bob Herbert

The folks who put the voodoo back in economics keep telling us that prosperity is just around the corner. For the unemployed, that would mean more jobs. Are there more jobs just around the corner?

This alleged economic upturn isn't just a jobless recovery, it's a job loss recovery. The hemorrhaging of jobs in the aftermath of the recent "mild" recession is like nothing the U.S. has seen in more than half a century. Millions continue to look desperately for work & millions more have given up in despair.

The stories have been rolling in for some time about the stresses & misfortunes that are inevitably associated w/long-term joblessness:

There are few things more miserable than to need a job & be unable to find one.

How bad is it? The Economic Policy Institute in Washington reported last week that "since the business cycle expansion began in November 2001, payrolls have contracted by 1 million (1.2 million in the private sector), making this the weakest recovery in terms of employment since the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] began tracking monthly data in 1939."

John A. Challenger, who runs the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said it's taking an average of 20 weeks for job seekers to find employment & many are unable to match their previous salary.

"Employers have all the cards," he said. "Not only are they sharpening their salary pencils, but the screening of candidates is probably the toughest it's ever been."

The official jobless rate, now 6.2%, doesn't come close to reflecting how grim the employment situation really is. The official rate refers only to those actively seeking work. It doesn't count the "discouraged" workers, who have looked for jobs within the last 12 months but have given up because of the lack of offers.

Then there are the involuntary part-timers, who would like full-time jobs but can't find them. And there are people who have had to settle for jobs that pay significantly less than jobs they once held.

When you combine the unemployed & the underemployed, you are talking about a percentage of the work force that is in double digits. That's an awful lot of lost purchasing power for a society that needs broad-based wage growth among its consumers to remain economically viable.

Most Americans depend on their paychecks to get from one week to the next. If you cut off that paycheck, everything tends to go haywire.

Right now there's no plan, no strategy for turning this employment crisis around. There's not even a sense of urgency. At the end of July the Bush administration sent its secretaries of commerce, labor & treasury on a bus tour of Wisconsin & Minnesota to tell workers that better days are coming.

But they offered no real remedies & the president himself went on a month long vacation.

The simple truth is that the interests of the Bush administration's primary constituency, corporate America, don't coincide with the fundamental interests of workaday Americans. On the business side of this divide, increased profits are realized by showing the door to as many workers as possible & squeezing the remainder to the bursting point.

Productivity (based primarily on improvements in technology) is way up. Hiring, of course, is down. Part-time & temporary workers are in; full-time workers w/benefits are out.

And then there's the ominous trend of sending higher-skilled jobs overseas to low-wage places like India & China, an upscale reprise of the sweatshop phenomenon that erased so many U.S. manufacturing jobs over the past quarter century.

Working Americans need jobs just to survive. But the Bush administration equates the national interest with corporate interests & in that equation workers can only lose.

There are ways to spark the creation of good jobs on a large scale in the U.S. (I'll explore some of them in a future column.) But that would require vision, a long-term financial investment & most important, a commitment at the federal level to the idea that it is truly in the nation's interest to keep as many Americans as possible gainfully employed.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

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despair vs. hope

 

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despair

 

despair & hopelessness

 

 

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