JOURNAL
Unique outcomes and exceptions: How to notice when problems aren't in charge
When depression whispers that you're always sad, anxiety insists you're perpetually overwhelmed, or shame declares you're fundamentally flawed, these problem-saturated stories can feel absolutely true. But here's what those stories don't want you to notice: there are always moments when they're not in charge.
These moments—when you handled a stressful situation with unexpected calm, when you reached out to a friend despite feeling isolated, when you chose courage over fear—are called unique outcomes in narrative therapy. They're the exceptions to your problem's rule, the contradictions to its story, the evidence that you're far more complex and capable than any single narrative would have you believe.
Unique outcomes in narrative therapy are aspects of the person's story that contradict or don't align with the negative or problematic story the person is telling. They operate as exceptions to the rule (the problem-saturated story) that can be changed to a new rule (a new narrative).
Think of unique outcomes as the quiet rebels in your life story. While the dominant narrative shouts about your limitations, these moments whisper about your possibilities. A unique outcome is an event or experience that does not fit into the dominant, negative story the client has been telling about their life. It's a moment when the person succeeded, showed resilience, or found strength despite their struggles.
For someone who believes they're "always anxious," a unique outcome might be the time they gave a presentation at work without their usual panic, or the day they handled a crisis with unexpected calm. These are exceptions, or moments of a more independent perspective, which help loosen their adherence to the more dominant story.
Persons more often than not tend not to notice or give meaning to those aspects of lived experience that do not "fit" the specifications of the dominant narrative. When we're caught in problem-saturated stories, our attention becomes selective. We notice evidence that confirms our painful narratives while overlooking experiences that contradict them.
This isn't about positive thinking or denial—it's about recognizing that our problems often convince us to dismiss our own competence. The depressed mind might explain away moments of joy as "just distractions" or "not real." The anxious mind might minimize successful coping as "getting lucky" or "it wasn't that bad anyway."
These explanations serve the problem's agenda: to maintain its dominance in your story. But they don't serve you.
Identifying unique outcomes requires becoming a detective in your own life, searching for evidence that your problems haven't always been in control. Here are some ways to develop this skill:
Sometimes, the unique outcomes may seem small or insignificant at first. However, therapists help clients see the value in these moments, no matter how minor they may appear. That morning you got out of bed despite depression's weight. The time you spoke up in a meeting despite anxiety's warnings. The moment you chose self-compassion over self-criticism.
These aren't accidents—they're acts of resistance against the problem's influence.
Can you describe the last time you managed to get free of the problem for a couple of minutes? What was the first thing you noticed in those few minutes? Questions like these help uncover experiences that might otherwise remain invisible.
Try asking yourself: When was the last time you surprised yourself with your response to a difficult situation? What would someone who cares about you say they've noticed about your strength? When have you acted in ways that contradict what your problem says about you?
Sometimes unique outcomes reveal themselves not as dramatic victories, but as the absence of expected problems. The day social anxiety didn't prevent you from making small talk. The week when perfectionism didn't paralyze your creativity. The moment when your inner critic went quiet and you simply enjoyed being yourself.
Once you grasp the format and the conceptual frame for developing questions, past, present or future unique account questions, unique redescription questions that are connected to the experience and affect of the persons will be easy to develop.
When you identify a unique outcome, the work isn't done—it's just beginning. When a person offers a 'unique outcome' experience that seems to deny or contradict or modify her dominant problem-saturated story, the therapist invites her through questioning to expand upon the nature and circumstances of these unique outcomes, and to explore how these do not fit with the dominant story.
This expansion involves several important questions:
Historical connections: Tell me about times when you have managed to achieve a similar few minutes in the past? Unique outcomes are rarely isolated incidents—they often connect to a history of resilience and capability you may have forgotten.
Meaning-making: What does this moment tell you about yourself that you might not have realized? If this exception to your problem's rule is true, what else might be true about who you are?
Future possibilities: Thinking about this now, what do you expect to do next? If you've done it once, under what circumstances might you do it again?
Witnessing: Who in your life would be least surprised to learn about this moment of strength? Sometimes others see our capabilities more clearly than we do.
It's crucial to understand that noticing unique outcomes isn't about forcing optimism or dismissing real struggles. Avoid being too strongly positive about, or voicing your own conclusions about the value of unique outcomes or exceptions. This stance can become an effort to influence the person too actively according to your own point of view.
Your hurt feelings are still valid. Your struggles are still real. But you're also more than your problems claim you to be. Unique outcomes don't erase difficult experiences—they restore complexity to your story. They remind you that you contain multitudes, including strengths that persist even in your darkest moments.
These unique outcomes contrast a problem, reflect a person's true nature, and allow someone to rewrite their story. Building upon stories from another perspective can help to overcome problems and build the confidence the person needs to heal from them.
The beautiful thing about unique outcomes is that you don't have to create them from nothing—they already exist in your life. Your job is simply to notice them, honor them, and allow them to inform a richer understanding of who you are.
The process of clients re-authoring their lives involves noticing the "quiet," unnoticed stories that are able to support clients' budding identities as they separate themselves from their problems. These quiet stories have been there all along, waiting to be recognized and woven into a more complete narrative about your life.
When you begin to notice unique outcomes regularly, something shifts. The problem's story, once so totalizing and convincing, starts to lose its grip. You begin to see that moments when things go differently than the usual problematic stories we tell ourselves, helping clients explore and develop different, more positive stories.
This isn't about replacing one rigid story with another. It's about recognizing that you're the author of a complex, evolving narrative that includes both struggle and strength, pain and resilience, problems and possibilities.
Your hurt feelings deserve recognition and care. And so does your capacity to move through difficulty with grace, to find light in dark moments, and to surprise yourself with your own strength. Both can be true—because you're human, and humans are beautifully, contradictorily complex.
The next time your problem tries to convince you that its story is the only story, remember: there are always exceptions. Your job is simply to notice them, and in noticing, to remember that no problem has the final word on who you are.