THIS week all I really want to do through this column is to give anyone reading this a message of hope.

I don’t have any magic words to make things better, I just want to tell you that whatever you are going through right now, don’t give up.

If there is one thing I have learned since being at my own very lowest point several years ago, it is that the thing we must absolutely cling on to at all costs is hope.

I had a recent session with some nurses in which we were talking about how they could best support patients who had attempted to take their own life. We came to the conclusion that the single most valuable thing they could give the person was an ‘injection of hope’.

A lot of people are struggling at the moment. They are worried about getting through the winter, they are worried about finances, the war in Europe and the general chaos in the country.

In addition there are all number of personal situations that we might find ourselves in.

You might be struggling to come to terms with a bereavement or embroiled in an unhealthy relationship. Whatever your situation, know first of all that you are not alone in feeling sad, tired or overwhelmed.

People are often very good at hiding their true feelings but many more people are struggling with things that we can tell from the outside.

I often suggest that when we ask someone how they are, if we really want to know the answer then it is worth asking a second time. You will often find that a person’s second answer is different to their first.

Whatever your own personal situation, and however hard it might feel right at this moment, do everything you can to remain hopeful about the path ahead.

Confide in people who genuinely care about you and with whom you can be totally authentic. Keep thinking about a more positive future and how you would like that to look and feel.

You may not achieve every detail of your preferred future – but the hope you will generate in thinking about it will give you much-needed energy to keep going until you get to a better place.

I recently found an old diary that I had written several years ago. In it was a list of all the things I was worried about at the time, some of which were really quite serious. Back then I was really struggling to see any way forward at all.

As I read through the list however, whilst I acknowledged how hard it had felt at the time of writing, I also realised that everything on that old list had eventually been resolved one way or another.

I wasn’t able to see the way forward on any of the issues when they were happening, but given time, each and every issue would come to be sorted out and no longer a reason to be worried or distressed.

None of us knows for sure what the future looks like and a lot of the time it can feel hard to imagine that things will ever feel better than they do at present.

However, by maintaining a sense of hope and refusing to give up you will find that there are better days ahead.

Please remember that you are not alone and as long as you keep hold of hope you can get through anything at all.