New Year’s day 2026 and I’m reflecting on a conversation I had recently with someone close to me about kindness. Interestingly, I had already been thinking about this a few days earlier. They shared how difficult they find it to see any kindness in the world, and how, in their experience, most people they meet seem to be bad. “The world is full of them,” they said.
I won’t deny that there are bad people out there. The world does contain its fair share of cruelty and selfishness. But I still believe there's far more kindness around us than we might think. And in order to notice it, we have to make a conscious choice to start seeing it. We need to believe it’s out there, or even better, choose to believe it’s out there.
Why Choosing to See Kindness Matters
This isn’t some fluffy mantra about positive vibes. As I’ve written before, there’s power in thinking negatively too. But if we want to see kindness in our world, we need to start looking for it. Choosing to see the good doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to the bad. It means the bad won’t drown us in despair. It builds resilience, a buffer that helps us stay upright when life tries to knock us down.
How Trauma Affects Our Ability to See Kindness
This shift doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not a New Year’s resolution you scribble in a notebook and forget by February. If you’ve lived through chronic abuse, neglect, or trauma, your brain is wired to be constantly alert, scanning for danger, betrayal, and pain. In those conditions, seeing kindness isn’t just difficult. It can feel impossible.
If you’re still in an abusive situation, the idea of kindness might feel like a cruel joke. You might recognise kindness in others’ lives, but struggle to believe it could ever be yours. Patterns of harm like being let down, hurt and ignored can convince you that kindness is for other people only.
You Are Not Alone in Feeling This Way
This isn’t just one person’s story. Countless counsellors hear versions of this every week. It’s in the literature we study, the books we read, and the training we receive to become better therapists. These beliefs, the ones that tell you you are undeserving of love, safety, and kindness are sadly common.
In psychotherapy, we often call these beliefs “scripts.” They’re deeply ingrained ideas we’ve absorbed, usually without realising it, about who we are and what we deserve. As Carl Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Big part of the work we do in therapy is about making the unconscious conscious. That doesn’t always mean pinpointing the exact moment something painful happened. Sometimes the origins of our scripts are buried deep for a reason. The events may be too traumatic to recall safely, and sometimes it’s best to let them remain hidden until you’re ready, or forever if that’s what feels safest.
Safe Healing Happens at Your Pace
When your mind feels safe, memories might come. Or they might not. And that’s okay. Healing doesn’t require full recall. No one, not even your therapist, has the right to push you into places you’re not ready to explore. Your safety, your pace, and your consent come first.
Even if you can’t remember the source of your pain, the effects are still there. Trauma leaves an imprint. It affects your physical health, your emotional wellbeing, and your relationships. Including your ability to perceive kindness. You might not remember what happened, but your nervous system does. It expects danger because it’s been trained to expect danger.
How Therapy Helps You Start Seeing Kindness Again
That’s where working with a good counsellor can help. You don’t have to identify the exact cause of your pain to begin healing. Sometimes just recognising that you’ve internalised the belief that the world is hostile place is enough. Noticing that script is the first step in loosening its grip.
And if you’re no longer in an abusive situation, continuing to live in survival mode it’s not healthy for you or your loved ones. Survival mode might have kept you alive in the past, but now it might be stopping you from truly living.
Practical Steps to Notice Kindness Every Day
You don’t have to live like that. There is kindness around you. Choosing to start looking for it won’t change your life overnight. But each day, it will get a little easier. A little clearer. A little more real.
Practising kindness can start small. Offer a smile to someone you pass. Ask a genuine question and really listen. Hold space for another person without rushing to fix them. These small acts, over time, shift how your brain sees the world. And as you notice kindness in others, you begin to recognise it in yourself.
I know this from personal experience. Believing in the existence of kindness even when I couldn’t always feel it was one of the reasons I became a therapist. It’s one of things that keeps me going.
There is something deeply humbling about walking alongside someone as they heal. Watching them start to believe they are worthy of love and kindness is powerful. Seeing them notice, sometimes for the first time in years, that there is kindness in the world, and that they deserve to receive it, is a privilege.
Why Kindness Is Worth Believing In?
Kindness is not something we stumble across. It’s something we practise and cultivate. You can begin by offering it to others in small ways. And gradually, it becomes easier to offer the same kindness to yourself.
If you grew up where kindness was rare or conditional, this might feel foreign. Maybe even false. But that’s okay. You’re learning a new language, one built on connection, empathy, and trust. Like any new language, it takes time. But it can be learned. And once learned, it opens doors.
Therapy doesn’t promise quick fixes. But it can provide a space where you begin to believe in kindness again, where your unconscious can be gently brought into the light and where a new beginning becomes possible.
George Papachristodoulou