Looking at Despair

[Diana]

so quite often the solution to suppressed Despair is a sense of future Hope; or somehow it will be better in the future.  

That is not a real answer though.  It never solves the root problem of the suppressed experience of that Emotion.

No, the answer, as I have found it in the last day, is to allow oneself to fully experience the depth of that disruptive emotion.  It is not pleasant.  It is highly destablising.  It is highly threatening to one's conception of the self.  But I am very much more experienced in terms of being able to navigate it. 

This is very wise Plenum. A phantom future is like a Band-Aid on despair. The despair remains, though frosted over with hope for a while. There is no magic bullet as you say, the despair must be validated and experienced without suppression, or it is suppressed and will surface again. Anger is the same. The only healthy way to deal with these things is to actually deal with them with an open heart. That said, there is nothing easy about it. I continue to work on some of my really old stuff from childhood.