Photo: thomas-bethge - Getty Images. Illustration by Barry Houlehen
Reframing illustration
According to his life coach, Ken was suffering from “anxiety,” but he didn’t entirely buy that.
“To me, what he calls anxiety is simply energy. I’m just revved up for the changes I’m making in my life. Am I a bit hyper? Sure, but not in a bad way,” he told me.
Ken was engaging in a perception-altering process called “reframing.” This particular sleight-of-mind changes the meaning of an experience and, therefore, how one reacts to it. Reframing involves shifting the context of a situation or concern by modifying how one perceives it, just as putting a different frame around a photograph or painting alters its appearance. How we view and interpret our experiences largely drives both our feelings and behaviors toward them. It constitutes the mental mechanism behind self-fulfilling prophecies (“what you see is what you get”) and the so-called placebo effect (“belief creates reality”).
Now, within reasonable limits, many happenings in our lives are value neutral, at least at first, rather than inherently bad or good. What transforms them into either a negative or positive is the emotional context in which we place them and how we interpret their impact on our lives. For example, Ken could have adopted his coach’s view that he was suffering from anxiety, that this was a symptom of dysfunction and, therefore, needed to be treated and alleviated.
Controlling the Cascade
Had he done so, it would have instigated within him a cascade of certain feelings and accompanying behaviors. For example, Ken might have viewed himself as suffering a psychological problem, which, in turn, could cause him to become anxious about being anxious (making it a bigger problem). This, in turn, might catalyze a series of behavioral changes—going to therapy, taking medication, avoiding stress-evoking situations, etc. However, Ken decided to frame what he felt inside as energy, as a positive force operating in his life. Doing so meant he didn’t fret about it, attempt to “fix” himself or consider it a limiting factor.
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I recall a client who complained she often felt frustrated in her work and wanted to purge this emotion, to feel more content instead. When I asked her to closely consider what would happen if she eliminated her frustration, she gradually realized this would make her less creative and productive in her career, attributes she clearly wanted to retain. Consequently, her perspective on the experience of frustration changed. She was able to see it as a motivator rather than a nuisance, meaning she no longer got frustrated about being frustrated, affording her greater peace of mind; precisely what she hoped to achieve by ridding herself of this condition.
Can reframing be misused? Sure. Calling a drinking problem a form of “stress management” or labeling a serious mental illness as an “eccentricity” are both ludicrous and dangerous. Doing so confuses reframing with self-serving and damaging rationalizations. However, there are many experiences and so-called issues that can be validly seen from a different and more helpful frame of mind. A clear example of this involves how one’s view of stress determines its impacts, negative or positive.
A large, long-term study showed that experiencing high levels of stress increased the risk of premature death by over 43 percent. However, this was only true among those people who viewed stress as harmful to their health. Individuals who experienced high stress levels but, in contrast, did not view it as deleterious to their well-being had the lowest risk of premature death in the study, even less than those reporting little stress. This positive mental frame (“stress is not bad for me”) made all the difference.
So, if you have a problem or concern that you label or see in a negative fashion, you may want to challenge your longstanding assumptions about it. Is it possible this whatever-it-is could be legitimately viewed as something else altogether, or that it may have unrecognized positive benefits, current or potential, that make it less onerous or even helpful?
Like a picture on the wall that doesn’t look quite right, one’s seemingly negative circumstance or condition may not need to be discarded after all. Instead, it might just require a new mental frame.
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