Training the Reframe

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Inevitably and frequently in our lives, we all come across some bad or saddening experiences, circumstances that aren’t in our favour, or just some bad luck that has the potential to negatively affect our emotional state. Perhaps it’s unexpected traffic making us late for a concert causing you to feel frustrated and angry, or a sudden life change such as losing your job leaving you feeling sad and worthless. The way we view and process these events greatly influence the way we react to them, so if you think about it, particular ordinarily negative circumstances don’t have to come with the negative emotional or behavioural baggage.

 

Cognitive reframing

The world that we all perceive and make sense of is the way us, as individuals uniquely see it and is governed significantly by our self-talk. All day, every day we constantly chat to ourselves inside out head and it has an enormous influence over the way we think about and react to the events that happen in our lives.

 

Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of control over the events that happen in our lives, so one of the most powerful tools that we can learn is how to change our thinking, or how we view these situations, experiences, events, or even ideas. At the more extreme level, biases and irrational perspectives not based in fact that are unconsciously reinforced over time - cognitive distortions - have the potential to cause psychological damage if left unchecked.

 

Identifying, challenging and then changing thoughts or views such as these is called cognitive reframing. Luckily, because we do have complete control over our self-talk, we can put ourselves in a powerful position to be on control of our emotional state once we can learn how to reframe our thinking - it’s a valuable tool for everybody’s mental health toolbox.

 

The power of cognitive reframing has been shown to be profound and is a widely used technique by psychologists. It can often be used to assist people to see things from a different perspective, like disagreements between partners or members of a family, someone coping with a life-long illness, or an employee under pressure from their boss. It has even been shown to assist greatly with quitting smoking. Reframing our thoughts help us understand that there is more than one explanation or point of view to a situation therefore reducing our stress and improve our mental wellbeing through more functional thought habits.

 

 

Training the reframe

Learning a new skill, like many others is not an easy task. Here are some key things to remember when identifying, challenging and changing the very way we think about the world:

 

1. Be realistic. Typically, the assumption is that changing our thoughts indicates the need for more positive self-talk, instead of negative self-talk. However, positive self-talk not based in fact is as unhelpful as negative self-talk not based in fact. The key is for realistic and helpful thinking - self-talk that is balanced and is backed up by evidence.

 

2. It’s not a magic bullet. It’s not realistic to expect that cognitive reframing will eliminate all your negative emotions altogether. The aim of the practice is to ensure that the experienced emotions are manageable and proportionate to their trigger.

 

3. It takes time. Like any skill in life, such as learning a language or kicking a ball, it takes time and practice to master. Cognitive reframing involves changing the way neurons fire and then strengthening these new connections, which is literally rewiring our brain. Considering that our current patterns are established from a very early age, it will take lots of time, practice and repetition. Be patient.

 

What does reframing look like?

Here are a few examples of how cognitive reframing can be put into practice:

 

Situation #1 - A laborious or difficult work task has been assigned to you.

• Thought: “This is so much work. I will never get this all done”
• Emotion: Anxiety, stress.
• Reframed thought: “This is a lot of work as a whole, but I’ll chip away at it over time by breaking it into many smaller tasks”

 

Situation #2 - A colleague or friend walked past without acknowledging you or saying hello.

• Thought: “They must be upset with me for some reason”
• Emotion: Sadness, anxiety, stress.
• Reframed thought: “Maybe something has happened to them, they’re under stress, or they’re having a bad day. I should ask if they’re OK”.

Many situations can be reframed to be much more realistic and more functional which can lead to more awareness of our self-talk, less stress and healthier mental wellbeing, however this skill takes time to master. Give it a go yourself and keep practising.