Framing - It's importance in psychotherapy and life.

Taken from Richard Nisbett’s book, Mindware, highlighting the importance of framing:

Consider the Trappist monks in two (apocryphal) stories. 

Monk 1 asked his abbot whether it would be all right to smoke while he prayed. Scandalized, the abbot said, “Of course not; that borders on sacrilege.”

Monk 2 asked his abbot whether it would be all right to pray while he smoked. “Of course,” said the abbot, “God wants to hear from us at any time.

Editor's note:

I learned about framing from Dr. Susan McDaniel back in the 1980s when she was training a group of us at Park Ridge Mental Health Center in Brockport, NY in strategic family therapy. The frame can make all the difference in achieving positive outcomes in psychotherapy.

Most of us are familiar with the idea of framing even though we might not call it that. Most of us are familiar with the question "is the glass half full or half empty?"

Framing also is called "point of view", "thought system," "perspective," "bias," "lens," "filter," and a number of other things. Framing is what contributes to our interpretation of the facts not the fact itself. Most of cognitive processing consists of interpretation which is the creation of our own reality and therefore an illusion. One of the fundamental ideas about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT, is to help the person change their frame so they can interpret their experiences in most positive and less depressing ways.