I know such people and I think it's always about realistic improvements given what you come in with. If you come into a repair shop with a car crumpled into a ball, can't expect the car to be fixed to look better than new! The goal might be to make the car drivable, a huge achievement, if the person can make it.

Same with patients and clients. Some people have endured such horrors in their childhood that to me it's a fairy tale when I see them in person actually married, holding a job, having a group of friends and people who care about them and receive care from this person too, managing setbacks successfully, and keep going. I don't expect this person's life to be just as would be with someone growing up in a home with a loving family and secure attachment. And it isn't. But what he has accomplished, after psychological and physical abuse, living in a war zone, abject poverty, being abandoned and rejected by family, drug problems, false imprisonment, torture...to me that's miraculous. And he's not the only one.

What's his secret, this one married guy with children and a home to his name, now in his 60s? I think he came to accept what happened to him, having dealt with the resultant anger for a long time. He was able to step out of the victim position, something I still struggle with. He was helped by having a good social circle, which he himself tried to create around him, people who were hopeful and worked hard. He did not let the past limit him too much, though he accepted the limitations he had. Yes, sometimes he cried and felt upset about his life. It was so unfair. But where there was freedom, he opened his eyes to it and saw the potential and used it to motivate him.

Of course if you ask him, he won't say it like that. He will say he just looked at the day he had ahead of him. Try to make the best of it. Then he had hope, he had faith, he had something...that the next day could be different and perhaps better. He once told me, The sun rises, regardless. There are different ways of seeing this. Maybe you have to try to have an artist's eyes. You have to want to see beauty.