To reframe or not to reframe: that is the mindful question!

We often look to the similarities and differences between therapy and mindfulness. At times it can be puzzling, since it seems that the two are very similar; certainly, this claim that they are very much the same thing might come from highlighting approaches such as MBCT, mindfulness based cognitive therapy or CFT, Compassion Focussed Therapy. How is mindfulness any different from the hundreds of (very good) therapeutic approaches to wellbeing?

To illustrate the difference, we could look at a common therapeutic technique: reframing. Reframing is, to put it in a nutshell, where you take a difficult or negative experience, thought or belief and cast it into a more positive light; indeed, systemic therapists might use a similar technique of “positive connotation” whereby problematic issues are denoted in a more positive way.

An example might be:

Client: I get really angry at my brother who refuses to get a job

Therapist: wow, I can really hear the anger in your voice

Client: it’s strong, so strong

Therapist: you have said you are really close to your brother?

Client: yeah, which makes me feel bad about being angry

Therapist: you sound passionate

Client: passionate?

Therapist: well, your anger could be passion for his wellbeing

Client: oh, I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Passion. That makes a big difference. Yeah.

So “anger” has been reframed as “passion”-very useful. But wait: nothing much has really changed, or at least perhaps only this story of anger, this episode of anger, has altered. Every time the client experiences a story of anger he or she will have to take part in a cognitive reframing exercise in a bid to make what’s happening more positive. Episode after episode, story after story. Phew! That’s a lot of hard thinking going on!

Neurologically there is a problem, too, in that whatever the neural pathway we go down it becomes strengthened by precisely that activity: there is a short verse that sums this up:

Where attention goes

Energy flows

Something grows

As we bring attention to the negative thought (which we must do) we then turn away from it and construct new, positive thoughts. But in doing so we still feed the negativity by bringing the attention of turning away to it. Viola! It’s stronger: the brain is not really that bothered about negativity or positivity, it just wants attention, food and to stay alive; if this occurs negatively or positively it makes little difference.

Mindfulness offers us a different option: we can lean in to anger. If we develop the capacity to allow our minds to settle and accept what’s happening, while it’s happening, without judgment we can allow anger to be as it is…and it self-liberates, because left alone or met with somatic acceptance that’s what all our experiences do; they come, they make a show of themselves, then they go, it’s paying them attention and working to turn away or against them that causes more problems due to this repeated myelination that habituates neural pathways.

Note that this means that anger, not “anger at…” liberates; in mindfulness, we sit in acceptance and allow our experience to be as it is; there is the minimum of energy used to practice this letting go by training ourselves down to a somatic level to let the feelings of anger ripple through our physiology and leave, which is allowing the impermanence of the experience (in this case anger) to work its way through us, rather than attaching to a story of anger which in turn fuels the fire, so to speak.

A formula or structure for doing this might be an adaption of the RAIN practice popularised by Tara Brach and which is used to great effect in the Mindfulness Association’s training. In practice, we might

Recognise anger

Allow anger to be as it is

Investigate the felt experience of anger in all its varieties

Nonidentify with anger, let it liberate

The neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor in her book: My Stroke of Insight suggests that anger as a felt experience lasts only 90 seconds: make those 90 seconds count, lean into anger and bring on the RAIN!