“Hope can exist only in a state of uncertainty. That certainty means total certainty. That security means to be without hope. The prison of depression is built with the bricks of total certainty.

Certainty. Security. No hope. To hope means to run the risk of disappointment.  Avoid disappointment. Stay depressed.
To be insecure means not to be in control. Stay in control.  Be  depressed. To be uncertain means  to be unsure of the future. Predict the future with certainty. Stay depressed.

Hope  can only exist when there is uncertainty.   Absolute certainty means complete hopelessness. If you want to live we must have freedom, love and hope. So life must be an uncertain business. That is what makes it worthwhile.”

Source: The way out of your prison. Dr. Dorothy Rowe, 1983, 1996 (2nd edition). Fount. London.

Hope is to seek things and have the expectation that what we desire will  come true .  In the matter of depression Dr. Rowe warns us that when we predict that we will always be the way we are is to predict a life of certainty but one that is without hope. In the way we construct our world we would begin to live with some uncertainty and with this uncertainty  we  are  going to little bit by  little bit accept  some pain, hurt and disappointment in our life. This is not bad but is not always pleasant. When we are depressed it is not so important always  to know how we got to be depressed but what is is important is how we see our depression. Do we believe, like Dorothy Rowe, that we will always see our self as bad worthless, unacceptable to our self and to others when we are depressed? If this is the way that we want to look at ourselves then we are sure to believe that we will never change. We hold these beliefs about ourselves as immutable truths – absolute and ever binding. This is this thing about depression – we believe it will always be this way – namely, this hollow feeling and the deadly emptiness that we carry around in our bodies, day after day, year after year.

… To live with uncertainty is to live with some hope that our tomorrow will be different than our today. We hope for things not yet seen. We hope for things to be different. This is the identity of the person who is working the 12 steps of Depressed Anonymous…”

Source:  How to find hope and let it blossom.  Depressed Anonymous Publications. 1995. Pages one – two.