The Power of Reframing Your Thoughts and Perspective: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach that helps clients identify and change negative or unhelpful thinking patterns, belief systems, and behaviors or responses.
It is widely used to treat a variety of mental health conditions, including anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating disorders, and substance use disorders.
This is honestly a very common therapeutic approach that is powerful in its ability to help you channel the power of your mind in a positive and meaningful way.
I think this quote beautifully speaks to the power of this approach, “One should become the master of one's mind rather than let one's mind master him” — Nichiren Daishonin, a Japanese Buddhist prophet.
In my experience and professional opinion, when CBT is applied in therapy, it’s best coupled with other modalities that help you as the client find an authentic path towards reframing and shifting your perspective that can acknowledge the nuance of thinking more positively and affirmatively.
Our thinking can trick us into an apocalyptic sense of reality or a heavenly sense of reality.
However, there are many shades of grey, many ways of thinking in between, that can be explored and utilized as you pursue a mindset and mental space that works for you.
The Reframing Technique in CBT
Reframing is an important technique from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that teaches you how to shift your perspective.
CBT is a therapeutic approach that centers around helping you truly dissect the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in your life, and how this dynamic shapes your experiences and reality.
It offers a valuable technique called reframing that harnesses the power of your thoughts and how that fuels desirable or undesirable feelings and actions as a result.
The approach points to the power of thinking and interventions that help you adopt more aligned thinking patterns relevant to your goals and what it means to “feel better” to you.
For example, feeling better to me might mean less anxiety while feeling better to you might mean not worrying about your work performance.
Being able to tune into your version of our benchmark of success and ultimate goals as the client is paramount.
It helps the reframing process of shifting your mindset and perspective around different situations to be most impactful and relevant for you.
Therefore, make sure to consider what your ultimate desire or goal is, and then from there analyze if your thoughts are in alignment or reinforcing towards that goal or not.
For example, if your goal is to be calmer and more at peace within yourself, then, you get in a fight with a loved one.
You might initially think, “What a jerk! They deserve it and I’m going to show them” which reinforces saying mean things and feeling angry.
However, you might choose to think, “I’m very upset right now and I choose to give myself and this person space to breathe before stoking this fire between us anymore.”
This can lead to an opportunity to practice a behavior rooted in self-regulation meaning to restore some internal ease before responding to stressful situations.
This self-regulation could be deep breathing, going for a walk, or something similar. Then you might feel still upset and more neutral, pensive, thoughtful, etc. at the same time.
A huge difference in the ripple effect of how you choose to see, perceive, and interpret any situation in your life, and it all begins with your thoughts.
How much do we consciously think?
Our thoughts are a key piece of the puzzle and only 3-5% of our thoughts are actually conscious.
Therefore, so much of what casts a domino effect on our everyday reality, decision-making, emotional states, and overall behavioral patterns or habits is sourced from the depths of our subconscious and unconscious mind.
This can be a humbling fact to remind you that there is so much to uncover about yourself and your thinking mind.
Also, it’s a discipline and consistent practice to fuel the power of thought in your favored direction to support you through times of light and dark in your life.
I encourage you to use the tool of reframing as an opportunity to take ownership and practice self-responsibility to help you feel and react in an intentional and aligned way with your goals and who you want to be.
Powerful simple truths can sound like: “Life is happening for you, not to you”. “You are a victor, not a victim.” “Things are always working out for me.” ;
These truths hold power and potency and can take time to feel the embodiment (body and mind) shift from practicing to reframing your thoughts.
So, if you’re constantly trying to reframe and think positively without much luck, please know this is NORMAL!
It’s a process to shift these deeply engrained ways of thinking that have served their purpose up to this point in your life; arguably quite well.
Applying Reframing: Going from Knowledge to Wisdom
It can take time to go from an intellectual understanding of what would be a more helpful thought, to then, also experience the thought shift on a deep emotional, somatic, and visceral level.
You can access this perspective change on a mental, emotional, and behavioral level as well as a spiritual and energetic one, too.
Sometimes, it can take some time to unravel a way of thinking and perceiving the world that has been your go-to or default mode of thinking for most, if not all, of your life.
Knowledge speaks to the power of accumulating information and wisdom takes it further as it means knowledge in experience and application.
I believe things can change in the blink of an eye if we so choose, and sometimes we need more space to access the wisdom of a thought to access an overall mindset transformation.
For example, I can tell myself after getting into a car accident, “I will be a victor, not a victim,” however, I can imagine that might be a bit diminishing to my initial emotional needs at the onset of going through something quite scary like that.
Of course, an individual can choose to truly think that way and feel the embodiment of these words, however, I also believe it’s okay to take time and space to get there if it’s diminishing or triggering to land on that perspective right away.
Regardless, it’s a powerful reframe with an abundance of potential for claiming your power and inner strength. My message is to meet yourself where you’re at and witness the change unfold in your divine time.
Mood management can strongly be impacted by the way you think. I will highlight two common mood disorders that can greatly benefit from this technique and skill development.
Anxiety Management
Reframing is a powerful technique for anxiety management.
Anxiety likes to send us into a tailspin where everything is doom and gloom and painted as the worst-case scenario. This can be applied to an external scenario or to how we see ourselves and our capability.
Fear is running the show. It’s profound to remember the wisdom of what’s actually happening in reality, pull from best practices or past success, highlight your strengths, and focus on present-moment awareness to help you be more thoughtful with your interpretation and perspective on a situation.
To get your mind moving in a more empowering and helpful direction consider questions like:
“What if everything went better than you could imagine?”
“What if everything worked out?”
“What evidence do you have to support that thought? What evidence do you have against that thought?”
“What personal strengths or past successes might tell you different about yourself/this situation?”
“What can you truly control and influence in your desired way?”
Depression Management
Reframing is a powerful technique for depression management.
Depression can lead to low self-esteem and a tainted overall self-concept.
Your thoughts may often be filled with negative self-perceptions telling you that you’re doing poorly, incompetent or incapable, failing, and overgeneralizing past mistakes or challenges as your reoccurring fate.
The internal narrative keeps you low and tries to pull you lower.
To help reframe the common voices of depression, consider self-compassion, personal strengths, affirmations, fostering gratitude and optimism.
To get your mind orienting toward a more self-affirming and empowering internal narrative consider questions like:
“What personal strengths and/or past successes might speak differently about you right now?”
“What personal strengths and/or past successes could you use to influence the outcome most positively?”
“What would you say to your best friend right now?”
“Where might you give yourself some grace and credit?”
3 Top Creative Ways to Apply Reframing To Help Meet You Where You’re At :)
The following are examples of some of my most common explanations and formulas for powerful reframes to help my clients apply the reframing technique throughout their life journey and to different situations that may affect them to varying degrees.
Holding Multiple Perspectives at Once - Yes, Two or More Things Can Be True At Once: “Yes… AND…”
One of my favorite reframes, especially starting, and honestly throughout life is remembering the wisdom of “yes…and...” where two or even multiple things can be true at the same time.
As humans, we often think in terms of polarities and extremes when anxious or stressed, so being able to honor that part of the process is holding space for different things to be true can be incredibly supportive and validating.
This means honoring the power of paradox - when two things may be seemingly opposite yet are two sides of the same coin.
We cannot know one without the other, so it makes total sense to honor that a solid new perspective incorporates the fullness of each.
For example, “I am upset this even happened and hopeful that I’ll be supported through it.” This leaves room for a choice to be made - what thought do you want to fuel?
It also starts to pave the path for neutrality to be accessed by leaning into the paradox and different or conflicting truths you’re able to see at that moment rather than landing on the one that fuels stronger negativity and narrow-mindedness in a limiting way.
Holding Space for the Micro (Smaller-Scale) and Macro (Bigger Picture — A Cosmic Perspective )
A really supportive reframe that I’ve been offering people is to focus on how you may not know the full picture of a situation and can access a place of humility and curiosity about what is and what you may not fully access around what is.
I often like to think to myself and offer this reframe to you when feeling very narrow-mindedly stuck on something in your life.
To some, it can be comforting to consider the macro scale of our existence.
Tell yourself something like, “You are on a giant spinning rock in the middle of space. One planet in our solar system, that’s one solar system of infinite in an ever-expanding universe.”
The use of this statement is to inspire awe and shake you free from the shackles of what can be a limiting, micro-level frame of mind.
It’s not to diminish or devalue what you’re going through but rather to gain perspective.
Fueling the Hopeful What IF Scenario as Much as You Fuel the Catastrophic WHAT IF Scenario
Put the same amount of energy you put towards the negative what-ifs and worst-case scenarios to being able to consider the highest potential of your deepest desires and if you were to fully choose love.
This means opening the door to possibility and choosing to see opportunities rather than solely doors slamming in your face.
In summary, reframing is inevitably a non-negotiable powerful life skill and technique that I impart and use with all my clients.
It’s best used in a way that meets you where you’re at on your change journey and inspires new, creative ways of looking at yourself, life, and others.
It can give you a new perspective or fresh eyes when you truly choose to explore what I call the grey area, or nuance associated with every ever-changing, present moment passing by to help pull us forward towards our deepest desires and fullest potential.