Rising Strong and the Stories We Make Up

When something happens that triggers strong emotions, we often immediately create a story to make sense of what happened. These stories are often one-sided worst-case scenarios, and they seldom contain the full truth. We call this story the Stormy First Draft (SFD).

This resource helps to explain that an SFD is our brain’s way of making sense of something when we don’t have full information. We are a meaning-making species. In the absence of data, we make up stories because having complete information is a self-protective survival skill. But these stories often magnify our fears and anxieties. When we learn how to get curious and reality check the stories we make up, we can increase our resilience and reset faster after failures, setbacks, and disappointments.

This resource is part of a collection of courage-building concepts and tools that can be integrated into the classroom. You can explore more of these resources here.