Helping our patients reframe their story when they are ready to do so

Reframing can be a useful strategy in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) if the person is ready to reframe their narrative. Their experiences will have to be validated first before a reframe is more well received.

It may be a good tool for our own self care too.

The danger in “reframing” is when folks are NOT ready, they may feel very invalidated through that process, although that may not be our intention at all.

I have made that mistake numerous times with patients. More than that I can remember, and I suspect that I will make some more of that in the future. We are human after all. So a slight word of caution when using this strategy.

My family and I often talk about the Vietnam Civil War. Was it terrible? Of course, yes. So we ran, five times.

And at the same time, we are constantly reminded that when one door closes, another door opens~A.Bell.

Without the bad, all the good we have right now will be non existent. We won’t be able to speak another language. We won’t have the appreciation that we have right now. We won’t have the life that we have right now.

So when something “bad” happens, I often like to remind myself, when one door closes, another one opens~A.Bell.

You may like to try that too in the right context....