Giving up hope may be good for you?

That's the attention-grabbing headline, but I would phrase it differently.

Holding on to hope may not
make patients happier as they deal with chronic illness or diseases, according
to a new study by University of Michigan Health System researchers.

"Hope is an important part of happiness," said Peter A. Ubel, M.D., director
of the U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine and one of
the authors of the happily hopeless study, "but there's a dark side of hope.
Sometimes, if hope makes people put off getting on with their life, it can get
in the way of happiness."

The results showed that people do not adapt well to situations if they are
believed to be short-term. Ubel and his co-authors -- both from U-M and
Carnegie Mellon University -- studied patients who had new colostomies: their
colons were removed and they had to have bowel movements in a pouch that lies
outside their body.

At the time they received their colostomy, some patients were told that the
colostomy was reversible -- that they would undergo a second operation to
reconnect their bowels after several months.  Others were told that the
colostomy was permanent and that they would never have normal bowel function
again. The second group -- the one without hope -- reported being happier over
the next six months than those with reversible colostomies.

"We think they were happier because they got on with their lives. They
realized the cards they were dealt, and recognized that they had no choice but
to play with those cards," says Ubel, who is also a professor in the
Department of Internal Medicine.

"The other group was waiting for their colostomy to be reversed," he added.
"They contrasted their current life with the life they hoped to lead, and
didn't make the best of their current situation."

I wonder if it has more to do with being free to craft your own hope -- hope that you can survive and thrive in a difficult circumstance -- rather than being circumscribed by the hope ful story others manufacture for you.

Comments

[Willa]

I wonder if that kind of hope that stops you from moving forward is what they call now "denial". It seems important to acknowledge things as they exist. The group that thought they could get the colostomy reversed were just biding time -- not exactly the same thing as hope which is an active, constructive thing. It's more like a kind of nostalgia or longing for the past to return.