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Reframing other people's behaviour My former junior high school principal told me how he handled discipline problems. One story was about a boy sent to the office because he had thrown a snowball through a window (which, unfortunately for him, was closed at the time). The student knew he was in trouble not only for the damage, but also for breaking a school rule. The principal sat him down and began by asking, "So tell me Bobby, what was going through your mind when you threw that snowball?" Totally disarmed, the boy explained himself while the principal listened with patience and respect. Then the principal said: "Thanks for helping me understand what happened. Is there anything else? Is everything okay at home?" And again, Bobby filled in some relevant background information. The principal then said, "It's helpful for me to know what contributed to this incident. Now, as you know, a school is a form of community and communities have rules. And when rules are broken there have to be consequences. What do you think would be a fair consequence in this situation?" He told me that students would often come up with harsher punishments than anything he had in mind. The result of the conversation was that the student felt listened to, heard, understood and fairly treated. And the principal learned more about what made his students tick and behave as they did. What a much more enlightened way of dealing with children than to simply bring them into a room and bawl them out. It's stories like these that made this man so admired by his colleagues and respected by his students. There's an important lesson here about how we can use reframing to reduce the stress of interacting with other people. We usually react not to what somebody does, but to our interpretation of why they did it. For example, you walk into work on Monday morning and say "Hi" to Joe - but he doesn't return your greeting. You feel a little hurt or insulted. Your upset results not from Joe's lack of response, but from what you think it means. You may say to yourself, "He seems to be angry at me, or he doesn't like me or he thinks I'm not very important." In essence, you're assuming that his lack of reply reflects a negative feeling about you. It would be helpful at that moment to consider other possible reasons for Joe's behaviour. Maybe he didn't hear you; or he was preoccupied with other thoughts, or some personal problems were weighing on his mind, or perhaps he was just in a hurry. Given that your interpretation of his behaviour is based on mind reading, guessing and conjecture, there's no way for you to know with any certainty why Joe didn't acknowledge your greeting. So much of our interaction with others is based on this kind of judgement and self-talk. In discussions with patients, I often challenge their interpretations and ask them what other possible explanations they can think of for someone's behaviour. For example, a man applied for a job and went for an interview. The meeting went well and he was told he'd be called back by the end of the week. He hadn't heard anything for ten days. His mind was filled with negative messages: they didn't care about his feelings, he was hanging in limbo, he didn't get the job, the company was unreliable. I asked him what other factors might explain why he hadn't been called. He came up with several possibilities: perhaps the selection process hadn't been as clear-cut as they expected; maybe new applicants had surfaced; a corporate emergency might have come up; the decision-maker could be sick, etc. Early the following week he got a call to come in for another interview. The person apologized for the delay - a family crisis had taken him away from work for several days. The applicant felt relieved. But during the stressful waiting period, it helped him to look at other reasons why he wasn't phoned, instead of assuming the worst. We often jump to conclusions about why things happen - or don't happen
- and get ourselves unnecessarily upset. The fact is that people's behaviour
is mostly about them, not you. It's an important perspective to keep
in mind. It will not only reduce your stress, but will help you to be
a more open-minded, understanding person as well. All material copyrighted, David B. Posen M.D. |