Are you at a place in your life where change seems impossible and you can’t imagine how you can address the problems you are facing?
It can be a very dark, lonely and hopeless feeling when you cannot see any way through or the road just seems too hard. Maybe you feel that any efforts you make will just fail (again) and you will be left feeling even more hurt, sad and angry.
When people are feeling trapped in this cycle that feels endless, I work with them to find unique outcomes in their lives.
Unique Outcomes is a concept used in Narrative Therapy where we look to find times in your life where you avoided being oppressed by the problem or where the problem did not have a major negative impact in your life.
When your life feels saturated in problems your resilience and survival skills are hidden, and your achievements and personal qualities are left out of the story of your life. The oppressive narratives that society, and in turn, we place upon our lives can shut us out of other stories we might rather be telling about ourselves and living out.
Very often when I ask questions to look for unique outcomes, there is an initial silence, even a kind of disbelief that things were ever different.
In that silence there is deep searching and then a truly beautiful thing occurs, a memory, a tiny flash appears of a time in the past when things were different.
At this point we start to explore the details of the unique outcome, which are called re-authoring conversations in Narrative Therapy. This exploration can awaken a new excitement of what is possible in your life. Memories of other moments and periods of time where the problem did not dominate your life are uncovered.
Could you make those exceptions, those unique outcomes a central aspect of a new story you live out?
One where you are the author and where your abilities, commitments, hopes and dreams, your knowledge, agency and competency become your new preferred story?
What might be an alternative story for you to begin living out?
I have found that when you can find even one unique outcome in your life where the problem was diminished or overcome, it can be a starting point to see that you can author a new narrative, and ultimately identity.
This unique outcome and new narrative can begin to unbind you from the stories that have oppressed you.
I don’t want this to seem like an instantaneous realization that suddenly changes your life-
I prefer to think of it as a seed that begins to grow as you nourish this new story and start to discover other moments and periods you were able to overcome the problem in your life.
Efforts you make start to give you hope and expectation. That tiny seed, this new story, germinates and pushes through the soil, first tentatively, awkwardly, vulnerably and slowly grows thicker and stronger.
You are no longer the person who feels your story is already written and cannot change;
You are no longer the person who cannot separate the problem from yourself.
You become a person who can discover and encourage positive resources in yourself and gain confidence in a new story that you are telling about yourself, and ultimately a new identity.
Chris Hellewell is a therapist working at Emotion Wise Counselling who uses Narrative Therapy as one his approaches to working therapeutically with clients in addition to DBT and EMDR. If you would like to re-author your story contact Chris today to set up an initial consultation together at info@emotionwise.ca
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