Post No.: 0717
Fluffystealthkitten says:
In Post No.: 0709, we learned that we cannot unilaterally govern external events but can ultimately choose how we feel and respond towards whatever happens in order to improve our well-being.
Although usually more difficult, we should try reframing, or changing the perspective of, even internal sources of events, like injuries or depression – by telling ourselves that we’ll get better and by searching for blessings in disguise, for example.
Reframing problems as opportunities, finding the positives, and reasoning worries away, works for many modern stresses. Mentally reframing problems into less perturbing ones can naturally work with both internal and external events. At rock bottom, the only way is up. **** happens but you win some and lose some. Reframing can even work if you’re being tortured by captors – you could reframe the situation as ‘they can hurt my body but not my mind’ or as a test of your ataraxia, or inner quietude or equanimity.
Should we just passively accept such situations however?! In some cases we need to improve the situation rather than our attitude or reaction towards it.
But this mental tranquillity practice doesn’t mean we shouldn’t or cannot fight for change. It’s primarily for situations where we have no escape or when negative thoughts keep ruminating in our heads – you could try your best to detach yourself from distressing thoughts or a pain by reframing the anxiety you’re experiencing as not you but as something else that’s only temporarily visiting you, or by thinking that a torturer can take control of your body but not your mind, for example. It doesn’t deny that the persecution exists but offers a source of strength to get through it. ‘Self-distancing’ is about taking a step back from being caught up within our emotions, and understanding that we are responsible for our emotions.
We can still right a wrong so it’s not about letting injustices slide if they could happen again. So it’s not to say that unfairness should be tolerated like ‘I’m facing mistreatment but I’ll just suck it up’. It’s not about blaming, say, sexual abuse survivors or the politically-oppressed for their own feelings of pain but trying to relieve some of their suffering and giving them some control so that the injustice can hurt them less. In dire situations, this might be the only comfort remaining. Understood correctly, this kind of self-distancing is a core survival skill for victims of oppression, and it might just keep us sane. Once we’ve survived an ordeal, we can then seek justice from a position of inner strength.
If we’re focused on remembering the bad details of an event then the memory of it will be bad, and vice-versa – for instance, if we recall the fun times of a holiday, despite the boring times waiting in long queues and that, then we’ll remember that holiday fondly. Our interpretations of and feelings towards past events can change too – for instance, at the time, I felt panicked and terrified after spilling milk on Furrywisepuppy’s work and so I went away feeling distraught; but after I owned up and discovered he wasn’t upset because the work was backed-up, I began to feel enormous relief and could now look back at that exact same event but with calm instead of distress. It’s no use crying over spilled milk either. (Milk ain’t for me anyway – meow.)
The way we can reinterpret or reframe past mistakes we cannot change can be achieved with all kinds of events if this can help to get us out of ruminating on former sorrows and into accepting them with equanimity and tranquillity. The events stay the same because history doesn’t change – yet the story we tell about those events can change, and successively our feelings towards them.
So look for ways to look back on troubling events by concentrating on the silver linings. Look at failures with good humour – look back with a laugh if you can! Our interpretations can change. We’re each a product of the stories we tell ourselves.
Reframing works because our judgements are made by making comparisons between whatever things that are brought to mind, and because of WYSIATI or ‘what you see is all there is’ – as in what’s being presently brought to mind is as if that’s all there is to know. This gives rise to ‘ignorance is bliss’, which, in this context, can be used to our advantage. We can exploit the trick of reframing to help our welfare. (Reframing tricks can be exploited by businesses to their advantage and our detriment too though e.g. the decoy effect, or labelling a dessert ‘85% fat-free’ instead of ‘15% fat’!)
Isn’t all this just practising denial? Is ignorance acceptable when avoiding difficult but important topics by pretending that everything’s okay? And if someone else is suffering then isn’t telling them, “Oh well, never mind, at least you…” being incredibly insensitive and dismissive of their anguish? Most people don’t take the comment, “You could smile more you know” very well either! This method of reframing and other techniques for improving happiness often backfire for those who don’t accept their good intentions or simply don’t feel like exercising them. They’ll feel like their feelings are being trivialised and no one cares how they authentically feel. Perhaps it’s about the timing and there’s a right and wrong way to deliver such words?
Well looking on the bright side of situations isn’t to deny a problem may exist. That problem must still be dealt with – but why not with some positivity or at least without the negativity? It however won’t be convincing unless we believe that we can choose to feel more positive. It only works when we understand we can. And stoicism teaches us that we can.
Culpability is a separate matter – this is about our reactions towards events. There’s no directive to beat yourself up. It’s also not about delusion (e.g. you did lose the game but it’s how you react to it). You might be entirely blameless and justified to react angrily or with sorrow at a situation – but you don’t have to react that way or for that long. We don’t want to be crotchety crumbums who constantly blame others, think we’re always right and it’s ‘everyone else who’s always wrong’ and ‘making us feel bad’. We don’t want to be constantly looking for sympathy, melodramatising or wallowing in self-pity as someone who’s allegedly eternally wronged. Others don’t want to hang around such people and so it can lead to a fish-ious cycle of crabbiness, others reacting to our crabbiness, which makes us crabbier, and so on. Merely sympathising with such moods may inadvertently reinforce them too. Once we stop blaming the world for our feelings, we can seize their reins.
So, say, you’re naturally going bald. This won’t make you a bad person… unless you start blaming the world for it and in turn take it out on others, or spend hours fretting about your appearance and neglecting your loved ones or other responsibilities. There are bald and confident individuals in this world so you could be like that too. (Janja, a Sphynx cat I know, is outgoing, energetic and she’s an unbeatable climber!) Others may try to mock you for your naked noggin but if you show that you’re not fussed then they’ll eventually find no fun in it. Many things like this have no one to blame either – they’re just luck.
It’s therefore not the events that happen but how we react towards, judge and feel about them; like how we can reframe ‘a glass half empty’ as ‘a glass half full’. Your sports team lost – but that’s not life or death unless you make it so. Someone else is angry – does this mean you must feel angry too?
Our narratives are our own subjective constructions, as evident when others can react to the exact same events in different ways. This includes the overarching narratives of our lives, like perhaps our ‘learned helplessness’, or the feeling of helplessness or uselessness after experiencing repeated failures, which have taught us to not bother trying something again, even if the situation is new and different. The self-fulfilling prophecy effect and confirmation bias can then maintain the storyline we’ve created, which in turn makes it seem ever more like the immutable truth. The belief that we’re useless (whether due to our past failures, for being told we’re useless, or for constantly facing prejudices such as for being left out of group activities for our skin colour) can lead us to give up, and therefore in turn fail.
But we can change these narratives to how we like – we can ‘act out of character’ as it were. We don’t have to concoct stories or interpretations that bring us down. We could perhaps practise ‘learned optimism’ instead – by celebrating small wins, not expecting perfection as the only sign of success, by understanding that we can always grow, that failure states aren’t permanent but are isolated situations, and that there’ll be better opportunities (without becoming delusional instead).
Some reactions are reflexes rather than are a result of our conscious judgements. These cannot be helped and are usually beneficial for survival, like flinching to what might’ve been a surprise attack. Being jump-scared shows you have survival instincts. These instincts may be too keen but that’s better than being too slow. We might experience a moment of panic after a near-miss accident. We’re not all psychopaths who can react nonchalantly to witnessing atrocities. These immediate instinctive reactions evolved for a purpose. But once we have the time to think – we can start to choose not to replay past events repeatedly in our minds to make us feel horrible for longer. (Prolonging the panicking wastes precious energy anyway, which could hamper our survival chances in some circumstances.) It’s the chronic revisits to painful memories and in turn associated feelings that we can prevent. The past happened but it’s probably not still happening (e.g. you’re not still being physically abused right now as you read this). The present pain is only from your own present ruminations.
Memories are acts of reconstruction, and how we reconstruct our memories each time depends on how we’ve grown since the event, our current self, and current mood. This means that how we feel when we look back at past events can change (e.g. you used to look back on an abusive relationship with trauma and regret but now you can look back upon it with forgiveness and see it as a blessing in disguise because you’re wiser and in a better place nowadays). It’s not easy to overcome traumas but it’s in our control – which should be good to know.
Reframing events and taking control of one’s thoughts and behaviours is a core principle of modern cognitive behavioural therapy. The triad of responses to events are often said to be our thoughts, feelings and behaviours; and CBT works hard to try to deconstruct them – to understand that our feelings are different to our thoughts and these are both different to the actions we might take. We mightn’t have much control over the immediate feelings that arise in us in response to an event but we can choose how we interpret and respond to those feelings. Reframing is a core tenet of the philosophy of stoicism too. It’s not easy to always uphold but it’s another tool or practice that can increase your happiness.
It’s not to say that one will be a failure for crying again about an event that happened long ago. One will be no more a failure than a professional snooker player who occasionally misses a pot. These are skills that can be learnt and honed but we don’t expect perfection from ourselves or anyone else. Just do your best. You may not constantly jump for joy but any frustrations, disappointments or jealousies will be lessened and shortened.
Meow!
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