Today I’m going to do a podcast on Reframing, Part 2. [Laughter] This is in response to an email I received from a listener whom I don’t know, and I’ll read her email, part of her email, to give us a context. I was also, apart from her email, thinking of doing it myself.

A listener wrote:

One of my favorite topics you’ve spoken on is our thought life and how we should exercise our will to have some control over it and frame things in a positive, Christ-like way. I struggle in trying to understand how exactly God wants me to tackle negative thoughts. Should I actively oppose them, or should I say something like, “Lord, have mercy,” that is, say something.

I have a thought that says, “I’m a failure” or “I’m not good to achieve X goal” which is very important to me, and let’s say these thoughts cause me to have some sadness. In response, should I tell myself something more loving such as: “I’m not a failure. God loves me, and there is much good that I can do,” or is this considered improper engaging, coupling with the thought, such that I should avoid such statements, and instead simply say, “Lord, have mercy”?

I struggle to understand unto what extent with what specificity I should attempt to counteract negative thoughts.

What a great email! What a fine prompt to me, to propel me into doing this podcast. I’ll begin by the end. This is the formula that I’m going to kind of define a negative thought, which can come from anywhere. A, B, C: A, welcome the thought, know the thought, try to be fully aware as much as I can of the negative, dark, sometimes scummy thought in my mind; B, surrender it to Christ: “Lord, have mercy,” or some such prayer; and C, actually reframe the thought. Now I’ll try to explain that some.

Reframing is a technique used in therapy—as you know, I’m a therapist, a clinical psychologist—used in therapy to help create a different way of looking at a situation, person, or relationship, by changing the meaning, by changing the meaning. It’s also referred to as cognitive reframing, cognitive restructuring. It’s a strategy therapists often use to help clients look at a situation from a slightly different perspective. I’m not going to go into this much, but it’s another way of talking about repentance, a much more clinical way, might I say, modern way.

The essential idea behind reframing is that a person’s point of view depends on the frame it is viewed in, the context in my mind. When the frame is shifted, the context is shifted, the meaning changes, and thinking and behavior often change along with it.

For example, if I just happen to be walking around and saying to myself, “Today’s a gloomy day,” I can be aware of it: That’s what I’m thinking, and it makes me sad. “Lord, have mercy.” Then I can reframe it. “Today is a bright day, because of the gifts I have—even though it’s foggy and rainy.”

Another example, and this happens to me a lot. “I’m not good enough.” I become aware of that thought, and that thought strikes me particularly as an invitation to do something a little bigger than I’m usually doing. What do I do with that? I become clearly aw— I welcome it. This is my thought. I don’t deny it. So that’s A. And then, B: “Lord, have mercy.” That is to say, a surrender: “Lord, you take care of it, because I can’t.” The code form for that is “Lord, have mercy.” Then, C, I can actually say something different. “I am good enough to do all that the Lord has me on the planet to do, because he will strengthen me.” That’s a very true and accurate statement.

Other examples—[Laughter] I’m talking out of my own moccasins. “I don’t have enough time,” or “I don’t have enough energy. I’m just too old, and there’s too much to do.” I’m not going to give examples of reframing. I think you can do those yourself.

This is not—not, not—what’s been termed as “the power of positive thinking,” or simply giving oneself affirmations. No, this is vastly different [from] that. This is much more therapeutic; it’s much more organic. This is based upon the thoughts that I have, and then change the perspective. The power of positive thinking is sort of like just putting icing on a cake. Just saying something out of nowhere that I just might say, “Life is good,” or some such thing—okay, but what we’re talking about as reframing is much, much deeper.

What we’re talking about is based on sometimes automatic thoughts. They just come. They come from where? Well, they can come from anywhere. They can come from my own past, my own neural pathways. They can come from Satan; Satan is real. They can come from the environment. They can come from watching something on the TV or something that someone else might say to me. But they’re my thoughts. They’re inside my cranium; they’re between my ears.

Automatic thoughts simply pop up or flash from nowhere, and often we can think that the worst is going to happen and we’d better prepare for it. Always trying to put the blame, looking for blame, on oneself or someone else for something bad that might happen. There are many, many, many thoughts like this that can come up, and, frankly, the brain is pretty good at filtering out what it deems to be unimportant information and focusing on what seems to be more salient. Then, and more often than not, it can filter out the positive and allow in the negative. For example, if I get a job evaluation and then I leave and I’m sitting here having a cup of coffee, what comes back to me if I’m not really careful is that one negative criticism amidst 59 other, more constructive, successful comments.

It’s not uncommon for people to have mostly negative thoughts much of the day. Now, I’m a therapist. I do cognitive behavioral therapy, which is based very much on the way the Fathers thought about thoughts. I base my work on a book by Elder Thaddeus, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives, and a quote by St. Paul, who says, “Take every thought captive.” What does that mean? We take it captive by A, B, C: Welcoming it, surrendering it, and then, through the power of Christ, actually reframing it.

Now I’m going to do something a bit tricky. [Laughter] I’m going to try to show reframing, a different perspective, with two different songs from my wife’s burial. The first is welcoming the thought, death as a sad event. This song is simply dark: death is awful. That’s what the song says. So I’m going to play that. Then I’m going to play another song, sung at my wife’s burial, that simply reframed, took a different perspective, of death. Here’s the first song.

[Choral music] With tears and sorrow I contemplate death. I see our beauty, created in God’s image, laid in the grave without form or glory. O great mystery! O fearful end awaiting us! How we have been handed over to corruption?

That song is negative. Now here’s the second song, seeing that my loved one who is dead is now with the saints.

[Choral music] With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the souls of thy servants, where there is neither sickness or sorrow.

There’s a very, very different perspective on seeing what this is all about. So, frankly, I understand the concept of reframing, to imagine looking through a frame of a camera lens. We see through the lens, but it could be changed to view whatever we’re looking at, closer or farther away, by slightly changing the focus or moving myself away from or closer to the object.

I’ll give one last example. I was talking to someone whom I counsel, and said some things that were not untrue but overstated on my part, and heard as hurtful. In fact, she actually said that she thought I was being a bit harsh, and perhaps I was. When I finished that conversation, I felt really dark, really done, saying to myself all kinds of sentences. “Al, you can’t do this right. You’re really hurting people. You ought to just hang up the saddle and stop this stuff.” On and on and on, dark, dark, dark.

Then I began to A, B, C. A: “Those are my bunch of thoughts.” B: “Lord, have mercy. I surrender them all to you.” And C, I simply reframed it to: “I really am a loving man, and said what I thought would help. I said it a bit too hard, and that’s okay. I’ll apologize and do better next time.” [Laughter] So that’s about as good as I can do with this topic except to say it’s made a big difference in my life, doing the first one. After the first one, I began to change my own life a bit more. I do journal, on my computer. It’s password-protected, and I enter it pretty regularly, not a great deal, but unfiltered. I began to do that more by actually writing down the negative thought that’s there, and then actually writing out the positive thoughts. This very day, I got an app for my smartphone of a journal, and I’m doing that not only when I’m sitting at my computer, but when I’m walking and doing other things. So I’m doing reframing, part one and part two, myself.

Those of you who haven’t heard part one, I’d suggest you go back and listen to it. You don’t have to; this is a stand-alone podcast. And that’s in my archives.

I’m going to add an insert here, simply because another example has come to my mind. I was walking down the corridor where I live, and the thought—an automatic thought on the side of my head, just above my ear, so to speak, hardly aware of it, but aware enough—and the thought was: “I really can’t savor this present moment, because I have too much to do.” That was real, and that is where my mind goes to sometimes, often, in fact, and I was able to actually welcome it: “This is my thought”; surrender it: “Lord, have mercy,” in other words: “You take care of it”; and then to reframe it: “I really can savor this little walk in this hallway, because I have plenty of time to do what I have to do.”

That was all the difference in the world. Then my step became more sprightly. I became a little more bouncy, simply by reframing my thought. So I thought I’d pass that along. I’ll finish with that. For Ancient Faith Radio, this is Dr. Albert Rossi, asking me and you, you and me, to support Ancient Faith Radio with our prayer and with our finances.