Session IX – Instilling Hope and Optimism

Goal: One Door Closes, One Door Opens exercise is introduced and the client is encouraged to
reflect on three doors that closed and what opportunities for growth it offered.

Tools: One Door Closes, One Door Opens, and Learning Optimism prompts

Rationale: Essentially, hope is the perception that one can reach the desired goals (Snyder, 1994).
Hopeful thinking comes down to cultivating the belief that one can find and use pathways to
desired goals (Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2002).

Optimism can be learned and can be cultivated by explaining setbacks in a way that steers clear of
catastrophizing and helplessness. Optimistic people see bad events as temporary setbacks and
explain good events in terms of permanent causes such as traits or abilities.

Optimists also tend to steer away from sweeping universal explanations for events in their lives and
don’t allow helplessness to cut across other aspects of their lives (Seligman, 1991).

Painful experiences can be re-narrated as it is the client who gets to say what it all means. Like a
writer, a sculptor or a painter the client can re-create his or her life story from a different
perspective, allow it to take a different shape and incorporate light into the dark parts of their
experience.

In-session Worksheets:

 One Door Closes, Another Door Opens

Think of times when you failed to get a job you wanted or when you were rejected by someone you
loved. When one door closes, another one almost always opens (Pine & Houston, 1993). Reflect
and write about three doors that closed and what opportunities for growth it offered. Use the
following questions to help with your reflections:

 What was the impact of doors that closed?

 Did this impact bring something positive to you? What was it?
 What led to a door closing, and what or who helped you to open another door?
 How did you grow from doors that opened?
 If there is room for more growth, what might this growth look like?

Learning Optimism

Think of something that happened recently that negatively impacted your life. Explore your beliefs
about the adversity to check for catastrophizing.

 What evidence do you have that your evaluation of the situation is correct?
 What were the contributing causes to the situation?
 What does this mean and what are the potential implications?
 How is the belief about the situation useful to you?
Discussion questions:

 When a door closes, how do you explain the causes of failure to yourself?
 Regarding your happiness and well-being, what were the negatives and positives of this
adversity?
 Was the impact of this setback all-encompassing or long-lasting?
 Was it easy or hard for you to see if a door opened, even just a crack?
 What does the closed door represent for you now?
 How did the One Door Closes, Another Door Opens practice enhanced your flexibility and
adaptability?
 Do you think that deliberate focus on the brighter side might encourage you to minimize or
overlook tough realizations that you need to face?
 Would you still like the door that closed to be opened, or do you not care about it now?

Homework: As a weekly exercise explain and write down your broad outlook on life in one or two
sentences and then monitor if daily stressors have an impact on your overall perspective. If so,
brainstorm ways to help your perspective remain constant.

Alternatively, to practice hope, ask the client to reflect on one or two people who helped to open
the doors or who held the opened doors for them to enter.

And to practice optimism, ask the client to help a friend with a problem by encouraging him or her
to look for the positive aspects of the situation.

Clinician notes: The benefits of optimism are not unbounded, but they do free us to achieve the
goals we set. Our sense of values or our judgment is not eroded by learning optimism, it is
enhanced by it.

Suggest to your clients that if rumination keeps showing up, they consider positive distraction and
volunteer the time they normally spend analyzing problems to endeavors that make an impact on
the world. Not only will they distract themselves in a positive way but may also gain a much-
needed perspective on their problems.