How we understand and how we reshape our life experiences can be oriented around a contamination story or a redemption story. Each type of story represents a different way of interpreting life events, and these interpretations significantly impact our identity, resilience, and well-being.
In contamination stories, we interpret life events in a way that shifts from positive to negative. Good experiences are overshadowed by later hardships or failures, creating a narrative where the positive aspects of our life are "contaminated" by difficulties.
Contamination stories can leave us feeling trapped or defeated, as if the hardships we’ve experienced taint or invalidate the positive moments. This can lower resilience and hinder growth, as it becomes challenging for us to see value or potential for change.
Redemption stories focus on transforming negative experiences into something meaningful or positive, where adversity leads to growth or understanding. These stories turn challenging events into a source of personal strength, insight, or purpose.
Redemption stories encourage us to view ourselves as resilient and capable of finding value or meaning even in adversity. This mindset supports personal agency, self-worth, and a more optimistic outlook on future possibilities.
Reframing problematic stories that contaminate our sense of identity can help us reshape our perspectives and find new, empowering meanings in our life experiences. Here’s how you could apply this reframing process:
1 | Identifying the Dominant Story: Identify a problematic story you carry with you. An example might be something like: “Throughout school I was a confident, carefree person, and then when I started working, I became plagued by anxiety”. The turning point of change (the phrase ‘and then’) indicates a sense of before and after
2 | Exploring and Validating Emotions: Recognise the effect this has had on your life and sense of who you are. For example, as a result of this shift do you now see yourself as ‘sick’, ‘different, or ‘broken’ and acknowledge how tough this might have been for you.
3 | Finding “Sparkling Moments”: Think back to times where you have stood up to adversity or been positively transformed by an unexpected difficult phase in your life. For example, there may be times where, in spite of a sense of crippling anxiety, you still attended an event, or spoke up at a meeting, or went into the office. This ability to still deal with life and separate ourselves from anxiety tells us something about our resilience and tenacity.
4 | Re-authoring the Story with a Focus on Agency and Growth: Using this sense of resistance toward anxiety (or any difficulty) can help us reframe the problem (contamination) story into a story of hope. Appreciating what we are learning about ourselves, how we can be patient with our quirks and unique experiences, and we can learn so much from every event, may allow us to see the difficult event through a new lens.
We are, irrespective of our views about an event, shaped into a particular person by that event. We can choose to be shaped in a broken way or a transformed way. This re-authoring emphasises our ability to overcome and grow, allowing us to see adversity as a source of strength rather than solely as a source of pain.
5 | Constructing a New Narrative: We can shape a new story for ourselves that has the themes of resilience, learning, growth, empowerment and positive transformation. This new narrative doesn’t deny the reality of past difficulties but reframes them as important chapters in a broader story of resilience and growth, offering hope and self-empowerment moving forward.
6 | Encouraging Future Redemption Thinking: Now we can apply redemption thinking to future challenges. This involves fostering a mindset that looks for meaning, growth, or purpose in the face of adversity, enabling us to constructively frame new experiences. We can choose to see each experience as an opportunity for learning and self-discovery.
A great activity we can complete to re-claim an appreciation for our abilities and remarkable attributes is a Reframing Problem Stories into Narratives of Hope. Use the free template provided for you to explore some of your virtues that make you wonderful
If you’d like to explore your life stories in more detail, why not reach out to Made Better Human. We offer a comprehensive program, Made Better Stories which guides you through an approach you can take to unfold new meaning and perspective on your life stories. Or you might like to work with one of our narrative therapists / coaches who can offer one-on-one coaching that will support you as you work through your stories and the re-authoring process. Contact us here.