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Why Hope is Dangerous
Can hope be a tool for self-deception in a toxic relationship?
Do you remember when you believed that your relationship with the narcissist had the potential to change? Did you justify, rationalize and minimize the abusive behavior because you had hoped?
Hope is a cognitive process, it is not the same as faith. Hope is a thought in your mind.
Without hope, there would be no life and no reason for living. Hope gives us the freedom to trust. Even when we’re dealing with a challenging situation in our life, something will change, allowing us to feel better. We need hope to make it out of tough times.
However, there are definitely two sides to hope. There is a light side and a dark side to hope, and there’s a fine line between the two.
If you are in a relationship with a narcissist and you have hope things will “heal” you have crossed over onto the dark side of hope. AKA, toxic hope.
Toxic hope keeps you manipulating the truth in your own mind.
It allows you to keep tolerating something that is hurting you because you hope that this time it will change. Instead, you are kept in a situation that takes and takes and takes, and yet you make no real headway.
