Coaching practices for Narrative Identity After a Setback
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Narrative Identity After a Setback, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’ve spotted a few moments where I was braver than my usual story says, but they feel like isolated flukes
- There’s a story I tell about my past
- There are a handful of moments where my whole life pivoted, and I’ve quietly decided what each one means
- I say "I’m someone who never quits," but my history is full of things I walked away from, and that gap between who I claim to be and what I’ve actually done sits in me as a low hum of unease I can’t quite name.
- I hit one failure and the whole goal suddenly feels impossibly far away
Practices that may help
- Re-Authoring the Alternative Story
Build a preferred story of identity by thickening the exceptions into a narrative with a plot.
Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You - Revise your life narrative when it limits you
Identify and reauthor the story you tell about your past that constrains what you believe is possible.
The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self - Identifying the turning points that shaped you
Single out the three to five moments where your trajectory genuinely changed — and examine what you made of them.
The Life Line Exercise - Test your story for coherence and credibility
Identify the parts of your self-narrative that are contradictory or no longer true.
Narrative Identity, Made Practical - Invoke the possible self during setbacks
When you fail or stall, return to the hoped-for self — not to the outcome goal — as your re-orienting anchor.
Possible Selves, Made Practical - Spot redemption and contamination sequences
Find the patterns in how your stories of setback and success tend to end.
Narrative Identity, Made Practical - Narrative Identity, Made Practical
Dan McAdams’ narrative identity theory holds that identity itself is a personal myth — an internalized, evolving story that integrates your past, present, and imagined future into a coherent sense of self. The structure and tone of that story (whether it moves toward redemption or contamination, agency or communion) predicts psychological well-being, and the story can be deliberately revised. Evidence is primarily observational but robustly consistent. - Therapeutic Letters
A therapist’s written letter to a client between sessions — documenting alternative-story gains before they fade.
Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You - Finding Unique Outcomes (Exceptions to the Problem Story)
Surface moments when the problem did NOT dominate — these are the seeds of an alternative story.
Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You - Landscape of Identity and Action Questions
Use two question types to map both what the person DID (action) and what that reveals about who they ARE (identity).
Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
Related concerns
- Narrative Therapy Rewriting The Stories That Define You After A Setback
Narrative therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, holds that people live by stories — about who they are, what they’re capable of, and what their experiences mean. By separating the person from the problem ("the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem") and finding "unique outcomes" that contradict a limiting story, therapy opens space to author a more empowering alternative. The evidence base is growing but smaller and less methodologically uniform than CBT.
- Narrative Therapy Rewriting The Stories That Define You On A Budget
Narrative therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, holds that people live by stories — about who they are, what they’re capable of, and what their experiences mean. By separating the person from the problem ("the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem") and finding "unique outcomes" that contradict a limiting story, therapy opens space to author a more empowering alternative. The evidence base is growing but smaller and less methodologically uniform than CBT.
- Narrative Therapy Rewriting The Stories That Define You When Starting Out
Narrative therapy, developed by Michael White and David Epston, holds that people live by stories — about who they are, what they’re capable of, and what their experiences mean. By separating the person from the problem ("the person is not the problem; the problem is the problem") and finding "unique outcomes" that contradict a limiting story, therapy opens space to author a more empowering alternative. The evidence base is growing but smaller and less methodologically uniform than CBT.
- Redemption Narrative
Find the patterns in how your stories of setback and success tend to end.
Spot redemption and contamination sequences
- Narrative Identity At Work
Dan McAdams’ narrative identity theory holds that identity itself is a personal myth — an internalized, evolving story that integrates your past, present, and imagined future into a coherent sense of self. The structure and tone of that story (whether it moves toward redemption or contamination, agency or communion) predicts psychological well-being, and the story can be deliberately revised. Evidence is primarily observational but robustly consistent.
- Narrative Identity During A Big Change
Identify the parts of your self-narrative that are contradictory or no longer true.
Test your story for coherence and credibility
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