Reignifying Experiences, Essential For Transformation

All of us have ever felt the desire to change unpleasant experiences for others that are a little more pleasant. Unfortunately we are talking about something that sometimes we cannot bring to reality through behaviors, but it is in our hands to re-signify experiences.

Psychology has taught us how to do it through its cognitive, humanistic and comprehensive approach. Furthermore, psychoanalysis has also shown us paths for transformation.

Throughout this article we will show you what this means of resignifying experiences, what the contributions of psychology have been, paying special attention to the psychoanalytic current. In addition, we will explain why it is a transformative issue, how to re-signify and what are its benefits.

Resignifying experiences, what does it consist of?

When we talk about resignifying experiences, we mean giving them another meaning. This helps us to see what happened from another perspective. One that is less distressing and exhausting for us.

For example, if we live something that caused us great suffering and pain, we can transform it by thinking that it has served us as a great learning. Then, seeing it in this way, the suffering would decrease, which helps us to arm ourselves with the courage to move forward.

We associate each of our experiences with an emotion, and the meaning we give to the experience will be associated with it. So giving it another meaning is going to make us focus on another emotion; for example, we can go from sadness to joy; the idea is that the transformation turns out to be assertive.

Contributions from various disciplines

Psychology has, among other objectives, to study our behaviors, thoughts and emotions. From its various approaches, it has generated contributions in terms of resignifying experiences, let’s see:

• Cognitive psychology. In therapy there is a theory called cognitive restructuring, whereby the patient with initial help from the therapist identifies the aspects in his life that are maladaptive. Once done, they are replaced by ones that are more appropriate. In this way, as suggested by Bados López and García Grau in their article “The technique of cognitive restructuring”, the emotional load is reduced.
• Humanistic psychology. It has several branches that focus on the potentialities of the human being. One of them is logotherapy, whose basic principle is to give meaning to life. In other words, it proposes that we are all capable of finding a meaning that helps us overcome adversity.

• Psychoanalysis. It helps to redefine one’s life. This from going into the depths of our being, realizing the unconscious aspects, the resistances and the defense mechanisms that we have. It is a form of transformation, since we see everything from another perspective.
• Comprehensive psychology. It offers us a way to redefine experiences. From the expansion of consciousness, spirituality and an embracing approach; leads us to discover what lies beyond us.

Each of these branches approaches the depths of being to redefine experiences. That is, they all start from self-knowledge, because by being close to us and exploring ourselves we can find the path to transformation.

Now, we can’t always alone. There are situations that get out of hand; Either because they are very traumatic or because they give us a joy that overflows us. At these times it is important to ask for help.

How to resignify the experiences?

We make different proposals:

• Know yourself.
• Value yourself.
• Think about what is being toxic to you and how you could change it.
• Set limits.
• Make a priority list to figure out what excitement and experience makes you stagnate.
• Learn to manage your emotions.
• Give yourself time.
• Ask for help.

Although the exposition is simple, it is not an easy path. In addition, much of its complexity will come from a demand: that of walking on paths never traveled; thus, we will have to get lost and meet more than once.

Benefits of resignifying experiences

Resignifying experiences brings us great advantages. Let’s see some of them:

• Release tensions.
• Greater self-knowledge.
• Increase our self-esteem.
• Greater emotional management.
• Greater assertiveness in interaction with others.
• We take care of ourselves.
• We build resilience.

Resignifying experiences is essential for transformation. We can choose to be those who make a metamorphosis or those who remain in complaint and resignation and do not let their wings fly.