On Thursday July 23rd, our friend Corey shared with us his presentation on “ Hope”

Corey spoke to us about hope in our lives and on how it should be an important part of our recovery.

Corey shared that back in 2016 he started experiencing lots of anxiety and depression.  He stated that hope is super important, but he continues to have a love/hate relationship with it. 

He also shared that there can be two different types of hope.  There is passive hope, where you are looking at things more passively.  Such as wishful thinking, or having a positive outlook. 

There is also active hope, which is where we become more active and participate more in bringing about what we’re hoping for.  Hope can be something you work towards achieving.  Active Hope can be something we do rather than have.   Such as maybe gardening or exercising.

Corey went around the room asking for volunteers to share what it is they were hoping for.  I shared that I was hoping to retire from my job of many years.  And after a few of us shared what our hopes were, he went around the room a second time and asked those same people to share what steps they had taken to achieve their goal.  I shared that the very same day of this meeting, I had finally given my retirement notice at work.  There had been a lot of planning for me up until that point, but nonetheless I gave my notice that day.

Corey closed his presentation by sharing that both resilience and Hope are very important in your mental health recovery.