A different future can begin with a question.
Hope is a skill. Here is how we practise it, together.
The future begins with the ability to imagine that something different is possible. MyWhatIf starts there.
Why begin with a question?
Because a question is small enough to answer and large enough to matter, and because choosing it is already an act of agency.
The entry point has a lineage. In solution-focused practice, the miracle question invites a person to describe an alternate reality in which the problem is resolved. It opens a counterfactual: a view of the future that the present is not allowed to veto.
MyWhatIf changes one thing about it. The question is not put to the person; it is chosen by them. Nothing here begins by telling someone what is wrong with them, what to talk about, or which future to want.
The first move belongs to the person.
We call our participants Heroes. They are not here to be fixed. They are here to take an active role in what comes next.
What if I could be a good father again?
What if I never met that suicide bomber?
What if there is still something ahead of me worth building?
How it works, in five stages
Five stages that repeat each week. Each round is shaped by what the person made of the one before.
MyWhatIf builds an understanding of what matters to you, which we call the Human Code. It draws on experiences, language, values, beliefs, identity, relationships, protective patterns and context, in your words rather than a category. It adapts over time, so each week starts from more than the last.
Once a week, you ask one new What If that means something to you. It can be about your past or your future. You can get as many answers as you like. The Hero chooses the question, every time.
This stage is a structured, guided reflection. It is not a free-form chatbot conversation.
The answer is a story: a personalized narrative simulation grounded in your life, concrete enough to step into in your imagination. It is one possible future. You may accept it, reject it or reshape it.
You reflect, respond and rate the experience. That reflection and feedback update what follows, including the next question you choose to ask.
You ask: What if I could be a good father again?
→ MyWhatIf reflects on that with you, then explores the possible future through a personalized narrative.
You don’t have to relive what happened to change what happens next.
A Hero is never required to retell the trauma. The question is theirs, and so is how much of the past they bring to it.
A structured hope intervention,
with the Hero in charge of each step.
Why narrative?
We don’t experience our lives as data. We experience them through meaning. Memory, identity, relationships, beliefs, values and expectations form the narratives we use to understand who we are and what might happen next.
Trauma can make the past feel like a prediction. What happened before begins to define what feels possible next. MyWhatIf uses personalized narrative to create room for another possibility to be explored, not prescribed. The narrative is not the outcome. It is the medium.
A generic story is easy to put down.
Not two people carry a story the same way.
Every person’s narrative structure is different. Memory, meaning, belief, value, relationship, culture and imagination shape what feels personally possible. We call that structure the Human Code, and MyWhatIf works from that structure so the experience can feel recognizably about this person's life rather than an average one.
The goal isn’t a better story.
It’s a future that feels more possible.
Hope.
What are we trying to strengthen?
MyWhatIf works to strengthen Hope — goals, pathways and agency — while also working with Purpose and Meaning: why a future matters enough to pursue.
A future worth wanting, and ways to get there.
Part of hope: I believe I can act to move toward it.
Why that future matters enough to pursue. A separate construct from hope.
MyWhatIf is designed to strengthen these capacities, and measures them alongside trauma-related symptoms as part of our research program.
Recovery does not have to stay between a Hero and a screen.
MyWhatIf begins with deeply personal reflection. Recovery can also require human connection.
MyWhatIf remains a structured, individualized intervention. Around it, when useful to the person, recovery can also be supported by trusted people, peers, clinicians, caregivers and communities. Peer support is not a required step, and no Hero is automatically routed into a community.
Technology should know where to stop and people should begin.
One concrete example: our peer and community pathways run with STAR Network Foundation, a peer-support and suicide-prevention collaborator whose lived-experience communities bring human connection to the recovery ecosystem. Peer support is not clinical care and is not emergency care.
The Hope Switch, Human Code and HERS, and the technology behind the intervention.
Current research, clinical studies, and the institutions we work with.
What we measure now, and what we are working to demonstrate.
Learn about opportunities to experience MyWhatIf through our studies and partner programs.