In this video I'm going to teach you a technique
that therapists use in almost every session but you probably didn't know about, and when you
learn how to do it yourself you can change how you think and feel. But to begin with I'm going to
do something kind of weird, so just give me 30 seconds. And in case you didn't know, I use
a lot of acceptance and commitment therapy. And one of the things that comes with
acceptance and commitment therapy is doing experiential therapy, meaning therapy through
experiences. So we don't just talk about, we don't just, you know, think about our
problems, but we try to create experiences that lead to a change in our perspective. So
that's what we're gonna do right now. Okay, so 30 seconds. I just need you to answer this
question: how is the desk the mother of the chair? Go ahead and pause this video for 30 seconds
and write down your answer in the comments section. I'm really curious to hear your different
answers. How is the desk the mother of the chair? Okay so maybe you think the desk looks
older so that's why. Or because the chair is padded - that's an upgraded generation,
so it must be newer. Maybe desks were created before chairs in the history of humanity, so
that's why the desk is the mother of the chair. I've asked this question of dozens of clients, and
I always get different answers, and they're all great answers - and they're all wrong. The desk is
not the mother of the chair. But when I asked you that question your mind immediately began filling
in that answer. Your mind is a story creator. It automatically creates connections between
things, trying to figure out how the world works. And when it doesn't know why something
happens, it makes its best guess. But when it makes these guesses it doesn't feel
like a guess; it feels like the truth. And we do this over and over. These assumptions,
these these stories create our reality. Your unconscious interpretation of situations
creates how you consistently feel and act. So stick around because today
we're talking about reframing. Now once I was working with a client who was in
her late 30s. She came to me with depression, but the biggest difficulty in her
life was that she wasn't married yet. She lived in a culture where marriage and family
were praised as the highest purposes of life, and she longed to have a family of her own.
The longer she went without getting married, the more she wondered why. How come
I can't find someone to love me? She started to think maybe it's because I'm a bad
person. Maybe it's because I'm not good enough to get married. Maybe there's something defective or
broken about me. Maybe I'm too unattractive. Then one day she said something that, like, haunted me
even more than her self-deprecating stories. She said maybe the reason I haven't gotten married is
because God doesn't want me to ruin any children. Now up to that point we had been focused on other
issues, but at that moment I knew we had to work on this one. I knew I had to intervene, so
I started to question that story. I mean, I know this could sound bad and I didn't mean
it this way, but I just asked her, like, to look around and tell me if the only people who get
married were perfect, attractive, saintly people. She thought about it for a minute, and she could
give me quite a few examples of unattractive, mean, or unskilled people who had gotten married.
Some of them had gotten married multiple times. Now obviously it's possible to get married
even with some really terrible characteristics. Now obviously this this story, the the reason
she had created that she wasn't married because she's defective, this story was false. She
was actually very kind, smart, hard-working, healthy, attractive, just really good human
being, so I asked her to question her narrative. You know, what other ways could
she think about the situation. What if it's not about your goodness as a
person, but there's just a skill you're missing. Maybe you don't know how to date. Maybe you
don't know how to dress. Maybe you don't know how to be vulnerable. Yet these are skills that
can be learned. From a religious perspective, maybe it's not in God's plan yet. Maybe there's
something else for you to learn through this process. From another perspective, maybe it's a
problem of numbers. There are more eligible women than men in her community. Maybe it's because guys
are intimidated by you. Maybe it's because guys don't know how to date anymore. Maybe it's because
our culture downplays the value of marriage. I mean, what if this isn't about you at all?
As my client questioned her stories, some space opened up for her to do something different.
So instead of believing the first story that came to her mind, which was, you know, I'm just
defective, she changed her story to what skills can I learn? Se started exploring her negative
self-talk and replacing it with self-compassion. She started dating differently. She started
allowing herself to be a little more vulnerable. And within a year she'd met a good man, and
within two years she was married to him. Now in this situation the way she was interpreting
her challenge was creating a roadblock for her. How we consistently see problems, how we
interpret life, that creates our reality. One of the ways that we can change our life
is by opening up some space for new stories. I like to use the six-pack exercise to do this.
I have no idea why it's called the six-pack exercise. The trainer who taught me this, he was
not into beer and he was not into ab workouts, so your guess is as good as mine. But this exercise
is all about creating space around our thinking so that we can hopefully choose which set of
stories to believe, which set of stories we want to act on. And when we do this we can change how
we feel and we can solve problems in our lives. Let's use an example of someone who's really
frustrated with their roommate, right, so she keeps leaving her dishes out. It's selfish,
it's dirty, and it's embarrassing when I have guests over, right. This person feels like I I
get so stressed out and angry about this. Okay, so that's the example we're gonna use. Um, take a
look at your interpretations. These are what I'm calling stories, right. The easiest interpretation
is she is so selfish. I'm being mistreated. Or I'm the clean one, the good roommate, and she's
the bad one. Um, all of these thoughts leave you feeling angry. Great, how helpful is that, right?
Do these stories give you the power to act? Are they truthful? Does it give you
any room to resolve your emotions? The way that I'm thinking about this problem,
the story I'm telling myself, you know, she's being awful. I'm innocent. She's ruining my
life. This makes me angry, and it gives me no room to act. Now just for fun I want you to think of
six other ways to interpret the actions of this, um, this roommate who's not doing her dishes,
right. Take a look at your assumptions about why she's doing what she's doing. And just to
clarify before we do this, right, these stories, these new ideas, this six-pack of ideas,
they don't have to be helpful, correct, or accurate. You just make something up,
right. Here's a few examples of stories: she's doing this out of spite. She's doing it
just to bug me; she knows that I don't like it. Here's another one: maybe I'm just a terrible
human being who deserves to be treated badly. Okay, now obviously, right, this is
obviously an unhelpful interpretation, but what we're doing right now, we're
not judging; we're just exploring alternatives. Okay, maybe she just comes from a
different background and doesn't know how to wash dishes, or culturally she's used to her mom
doing it and she's not aware that it's up to her. Maybe she's completely overwhelmed. She's
struggling with depression or she can't cope with life in school in a job and a boyfriend,
right. Maybe she has no idea that it even bugs me. Maybe I can learn something from this like how
to communicate my expectations or how to serve someone. It literally takes me five seconds
to put her cereal bowl in the sink. Okay, so there's my six stories, my six pack. Okay, and
just to show you that there are so many more ways to interpret a situation, I'm just gonna throw out
four more, right. Maybe her dish system is just different than mine. Maybe she likes to do them at
night or first thing in the morning. Maybe she's a space alien from another planet where there was a
magical ray that cleaned the dishes automatically. Maybe I'm actually the one being way too uptight
about cleanliness, you know, maybe I'm being rude by demanding that the dishes get done immediately,
I'm the one letting rigidity get in the way of nice feelings in the apartment. Maybe she has ADD
or a brain injury and has a hard time following through on tasks right now. Some of these might
seem a little out there, a little bit unrealistic, right, like the space alien one. That's okay. Just
because we think something doesn't mean it's true, but how we consistently think leads to how we
feel. So my thought she's so selfish leads to me feeling angry. Thinking I deserve to
be mistreated left me feeling depressed. Thinking maybe she's completely overwhelmed helped
me feel compassion for her. And thinking what if she doesn't know what bugs me gave me a little
hope that things could improve if I talk to her. You can choose how you consistently feel by
choosing which stories, which interpretation of situations you consistently believe. When we can
only see things one way, we are rigid, inflexible, and we often feel powerless to act. When we
open ourselves up to different ways of seeing, we can choose which thoughts line up
with the values that we want to act on. So here's the technique that therapists use all
the time. It's called reframing. Reframing is when a therapist says something like let's look
at this from another perspective. And now from my previous story you know how to do this yourself.
So check out the workbook activity. It's called the six-pack exercise. Think of the last time
you got really bugged at someone. Close your eyes and for a minute just put yourself back in that
situation. What were you feeling and what were you thinking about that person? And then use your own
example to create at least six different ways of seeing the problem. If you catch yourself getting
really stuck on right or wrong or true or false you may be creating unnecessary rigidity. I am not
saying that all stories are equal; I'm saying that the process of considering alternatives, it's
this process that frees us to choose healing. So allow yourself to explore different ways of
seeing things, and then after you've opened up to seeing these different alternatives, then you
can choose a story that's most helpful for you. Here are three questions you could ask yourself
that may be helpful in deciding which story you want to act on. Question number one: is my story
truthful? And you gotta check your stories for self-deception, self-justification, and cognitive
distortions. We're gonna be talking about all of these in upcoming sections, and then after we've,
you know, checked our stories for untruths we can then choose between a variety of stories based on
our values. And that leads to question number two: is my story kind? Now kindness is one of my
values, right, so I want to choose a story that lines up with the kind of person I want to be. So
do you value giving people the benefit of doubt? Do you value looking for the best in people or
assuming that they have some good reason behind their actions, no matter how frustrating their
actions may be? Choose a narrative that's both truthful and helps you live your values. You want
to choose a story that works for you, not against you. And I would say in general kindness leaves
you feeling happier and more peaceful than anger, right, but there are definitely some times for
setting boundaries and protecting yourself. Okay question number three: does my story give
me the power to act? So focusing on whether the situation is good or bad or, you know, whether
your roommate's a jerk or you're a jerk, right, that all leaves us powerless. Asking instead,
you know, where's my locus of control, how can I change or influence this situation? When when we
have a story that gives us a little bit of power in our situation, this is going to give us more
ability to choose ,you know, what we're going to do and how we're going to feel. Gandhi said, "You
must be the change you wish to see in the world." Am I getting so bugged about the situation that
I'm acting the same or worse than the person I'm bugged at? So I mean, for example, you think about
a parent yelling at their child "Don't yell," right, or someone being so mad at another person
for refusing to forgive them. Check yourself for the value that you'd like to see, and then ask
am I living that? Those three questions can help us get a little bit of clarity on which story we
want to choose and act on. But what if we feel too stuck even to do the six-pack exercise or to ask
ourselves the three questions about our stories? Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our stories
that we can't see the situation any other way. Sometimes we get stuck in seeing the other person
as awful, horrible, terrible, even when you're no saint yourself. And sometimes the reality is
that the other person really is being awful. But regardless of the other's actions, we need
to find a way to personal peace. When we get so sunk into our own perspective and we can't
get out we need to step back, slow it down, and reach out to our resources. So here's a couple
of things you can try when you feel stuck in how you're seeing a situation. Take a break from the
situation. This gives you a chance to come back to it later when your head's clear. Do some activity
that helps you feel calm, loving, and open. Maybe it's playing the guitar or watching
a funny show or going for a walk or getting out in nature or praying about it. Write about the
problem. See if you can get some clarity that way. And another thing that can be helpful but comes
with a caution is getting another person's perspective, right. It can be helpful to hear
what someone else has to say about a situation, but you've got to look out for depending on
others for justification or rationalization of your story. So I'm going to encourage
you if you're going to use this one find someone who doesn't always agree with you,
and then listen to them for perspective. When you slow things down and you try to get other
perspectives, you open yourself up to having more choice in your life. One of the most powerful ways
to take a situation that makes you feel helpless and turn it into a situation that empowers you
is to use a growth mindset. And what this means is that with each challenge I face, instead of
using "Oh, this is awesome, this is good" or using "This is a bad, uh, situation," right,
instead of using that kind of mindset, I ask myself what can I learn from this? Or how can
this experience help me become a better person? When we consider problems from this perspective,
we can almost always find some way to grow in strength. Sometimes I even pretend that everyone
else is a robot just sent here to test me, to test how I'm going to react to a certain
situation and whether I'm going to do it with integrity. The bottom line is we make an
interpretation of every circumstance in our life, and our interpretations, our stories create our
reality. They color our view and they determine how we feel and how we act. But if we can learn to
notice our stories, we can choose which ones we're going to give our energy to, and that can free you
to change how you feel and solve more problems. Basically, learning the skill of reframing
is a key to living a happier life. This video is one skill from my 30-skill
course: How to Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the most essential
skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion processing
is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most people have never been
taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on YouTube for the world to
access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my Patreon
and my sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course in
one place ad free with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional
short readings and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course
is in the description below.
