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This is excellent. Is a focus on hope, the hopefulness the patient holds for the problem partner, the focus of therapy typically? I ask the question because I am trying to understand the fundamentals of the problem on the one hand (the brain chemistry and wishful thinking that negatives will decrease and positives will increase or materialize spontaneously) and on the other, the way to address the problem.

I used the analogy of glasses half full and half empty on a table; the person's good and bad qualities were those glasses, and we always hope that the good qualities will runneth over and the bad will dry up as time goes by. But of course the opposite almost always happens, not because people who are bad just trend worse, but because the good glasses were more often than not products of our imagination in the first place.

Let's talk about this stuff some more. I think we have a lot to offer each other. My good glasses have extra water, as do yours.

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