The author has written a paper about her sense of hopelessness in working psychoanalytically with two female patients. She found that these feelings were reflected in supervision through the parallel process. She was greatly helped by Betty Joseph's paper, ‘Addiction to near death’, where she found many similarities between that author's patients and her own. Eventually, through consideration of other literature and reflecting on her own experiences, she reached the conclusion that until she could allow herself to be immersed in this sense of hopelessness, it was not possible to genuinely connect with her patients. Any hope to be found, had to be reached through an authentic interaction, which means that the sense of hopelessness had to be tolerated for long periods of time.