Suicide lies. It tells you that the way you feel now is the way you will feel forever. Hope itself can seem like a toxic lie, a set-up for disappointment. The present feels permanent, and the future feels foretold.
Don’t fall for the lies. “The future,” as they say, “is unwritten.” Things can change. Things do change. Sure, there is no guarantee that things will get better. There also is no guarantee that things will get worse.
To resist the lies, visualize different selves that may emerge in the years to come. The psychologists Amy Wenzel and Shari Jager-Hyman call this exercise “future time imaging.” Imagine yourself in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, and more. Imagine not only different times, but also different roles and situations that can happen in the years to come.
What work might you do?
Where might you live?
Will you have new work … goals … friends … talents … tattoos … travels?
The possibilities are limitless. Here are a few questions to get you started:
Imagine that you are able to get out of this suicidal crisis alive, even to feel a little better. What could your life look like a year from now?
In five years, what might your life be like? Where will you be living? What new things might you be doing?
In 10 years, who might you be? What new roles might you have taken on?
You may feel unable to look beyond the present. Or you may feel certain that what lies ahead is more of the same. If you have chronic illness or pain, for example, you might envision suffering in your future. In such cases, it can help to recall other times you have suffered, what you expected to happen then, and how you coped as time passed.
Even if the pain remains, your experience of suffering can change. This can happen many different ways. To name a few examples, you can practice mindfulness, engage in a spiritual practice, mobilize for larger causes, find (or make) meaning in your experiences, connect with others in similar situations, or do the things you yearn to do even while in pain.
The goal of this exercise is not to persuade you that everything will get better. Instead, the goal is to help you step outside the rigid tunnel vision that comes with suicidality.
You cannot know what the future holds.
Life can and will surprise you.
You do not have to fall for suicide’s lies.
Maybe, even, your future selves will be glad to be alive.
© Copyright 2017 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All Rights Reserved. Written for www.speakingofsuicide.com. All photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
I always envision myself living in a house that I’ve bought for myself instead of a falling apart, rented, tiny flat. It’s not overly fancy but it’s nice and tastefully decorated and mine. I live alone by choice but it’s big and welcoming enough to host friends. We sit around a dining room table to play games and eat instead of on a cheap sofa. I can have pets as I please. There’s a fireplace maybe. A large sofa. A laundry room. My friends will always be welcome there. It’s not even a very ambitious goal but it’s enough to keep me going.
I wish this approach worked for me. 30 years of feeing like this, it’s not going away.
Picturing my future self always makes it worse since I’ll never be the me I want to be.
I’m in my late 40s, fully diagnosed and fully treated, and despite an ongoing struggle with severe depression, chronic anxiety and a couple of personality disorders to boot, my meds numb my senses so I am not in any pain as such. However, the only meaning I can manage to squeeze out of this life is through suicidal ideation. Yessiree! My life only means something to me when I compare it to my death!
And despite having committed to treatment to the point of hyper-vigilance, I have to admit that somewhere along the way I lost the will to live. Therefore, I merely survive. I have no interest in people – hell, not even for sex, there is no place I want to visit and nothing I want to achieve. But I’m smart enough to know that all this comes at a cost and it is quite beyond me to imagine myself in 1 or 5 or 10 years’ time as anything other than the husk of a person that I have become.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining. That’s just the way it is.
This is my problem. Envisioning myself as old and alone is the source of my depression. I’m ok with my life now, but I’m not physically capable of sexual relationships and while I have friends, I know that I’ll be spending most of my time alone from here on. The thought of a life without someone to confide in or to turn to in difficult times is hard for me to accept. It’s my life and I want to figure out how to end it as predictably as possible. Suicide isn’t just a desperate response to pain. It can be a rational response to realistic understandings of lives experiences.
I resonate with your words. I feel the same way, always felt that way once I was able to be honest with myself. Done lots of therapy, various meds, have what appears to look like a good life, have been able to put the mask on, etc. I’m in my 60s and just couldn’t do it any longer and tried to take my life last year. After hospitalization and a trial of different meds, I continue to feel the emptiness and anxiety and disdain for myself. I feel guilt and shame to think about the pain I would cause my loved ones, but even that doesn’t want to stop me anymore.