Create your lifeline to the future

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation (the story turns out fine, though)

Everyone needs a lifeline to the future. If you can’t imagine a future beyond whatever is plaguing you today, survival itself becomes difficult.

I will never forget the day I thought, “We’ve really lost her this time.”

I was looking into the eyes of my oldest child, and I saw nothing there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such pure, undiluted detachment.

She had been talked off the ledge of a seven-story parking garage by the police and taken to the behavioral health center. This was not her first 5150, and it was not my first time trying to find the right words. It was, however, my first time really believing she was not going to make it to her 20th birthday.

“Someday you will find joy again,” I told her. “It may not be for a long time, but I am certain you will.”

She paused a moment, then replied, “I think I believe that. But it’s just not worth the effort.”

Thank goodness for the mandatory 72 hour hold on a 5150. Those three days, plus the efforts of the compassionate staff, brought my 19-year-old back to the point where she could keep going. At least for a while.

(Spoiler alert: She is now 28 and doing well as an independent adult. She even founded and runs an LGBTQ+ inclusive car club with sick branding and tremendous engagement.)

Your future story is your lifeline to the future

My kid was suffering from depression in part because of gender dysphoria. Another critical factor was that her own personal future story had recently been taken from her.

The details are not mine to share, so suffice to say that the dream she’d had for her life and career was destroyed suddenly by factors entirely outside our control, unrelated to her gender identity.

The one thing that had been her lifeline to the future was gone, and she had nothing to replace it with.

We all need that lifeline to the future when things get really hard.

Last week, the day before Thanksgiving, I spoke with one of my newer clients about all the enormous, complicated, burdensome problems she was working hard to overcome. She was deep into survival mode, just getting through each day the best she could.

It became clear to me as we talked that she had become almost incapable of thinking about a time when these problems would all be behind her. The problems loomed so large that she couldn’t envision any kind of future story.

This was true even though they were all problems with end dates. These problems, as difficult as they were, would resolve one way or another (unlike, say, a chronic health condition, which might be lifelong).

When I gently raised this observation, she visibly relaxed and slowed down.

Write a letter to yourself

She recalled that in a leadership development class several years ago, they had her write a letter to her future self. She wrote that letter and sealed it. One year later, the class instructor mailed the letter to her. 

She still had that letter… unopened and unread.

Its existence stressed her out. She couldn’t remember what she’d written exactly, but she knew the letter was full of hopeful ambition. It had become a reminder of all the promises to herself that had gone unfulfilled, a reminder of all the things that had derailed her plans over those years.

As a result, it had become a source of shame and discouragement instead of inspiration and motivation. A tangible proof of her failure to achieve all she’d hoped for. Not a lifeline to the future… an indictment of the past.

I did not ask her to write a new letter to her future self.

Instead, I asked how it might feel if she wrote a letter from her future self, a future self that would exist after all these current problems were behind her.

Both of these exercises, of course, are contrived thought experiments. The future is inherently unpredictable, so both take a willful exercise of imagination… and that is exactly the kind of thing that is difficult in moments like these.

It’s often about tricking yourself

But these two thought exercises are different, in a subtle yet important way. Try this metaphor: Current self is stuck at the bottom of a deep well. Future self stands at the top, having escaped the well. Each of them holds a rope.

In the first scenario, writing a letter to her future self, she must throw her rope up to get help. Her perspective is one of being trapped, stuck, and looking at a hard and discouraging climb. This letter is likely to be all about grit, perseverance, determination, and effort. It is about “I will achieve this thing.” She’d be trying to create courage where it is already lacking.

In the second scenario, writing a letter from her future self, Future Self lowers a rope down to her. The perspective in this letter is one of feeling free of the well and able to move on. This letter is likely to be about relief, praise, congratulations, and hope. It is about “I am beyond those problems.” She’d be trying to envision hope when it is currently lacking.

Another subtle difference between these two is that in the first scenario, Future Self doesn’t technically exist yet. In the second scenario, however, Future Self must exist in order to write her letter. Even though it’s still an imagined future self, she becomes more real by being the letter’s author. If the goal is to be able to envision your future story, to create a lifeline to your future, then the second scenario is better (as contrived and fictitious and imagination-based as they both are).

I know, I know. This is not much more than a subtle trick to play on yourself.

But that’s what a lot of life is: finding the right ways to shift your perspective just enough to shake loose the fear, the self-sabotage, the stuckness long enough to be able to keep moving forward.

Did it work? Did it create her lifeline to the future?

You may be wondering if the letter from her future self worked for my client. I’m curious to see whether she even writes it. But that’s not the point.

The point was to create a lifeline to the future, to help her be able to envision that time after all these problems will be behind her.

When I offered the idea, I watched as her perspective shifted just enough to shake loose the fear, the self-sabotage, and the stuckness she was feeling, long enough for her to regain a sense of agency so she could keep moving forward. I witnessed her energy and posture change, heard her voice gain confidence. There was a new spark of hope in the middle of all the despair.

So, yes… it worked.

As did the mandatory 72 hours my kid spent in the behavioral health center. That was enough for her to regain some sense of her own future, and keep surviving a little longer.

And that was enough.

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