Teaching the Power of Reframing

Have you ever looked at one of those optical illusions and suddenly realized you could see two completely different things?

Maybe you see a rabbit, and then someone points out the duck. Once you see it, you can't quite unsee it. It is not that the picture changed. Your perspective has.

This simple idea can become a powerful way to teach anxious kids about something therapists often call reframing.

Reframing doesn't mean pretending that something isn't scary. It doesn't mean telling ourselves that everything will be okay when we don't know if it will be. And it certainly doesn't mean ignoring our feelings.

Instead, reframing teaches us to recognize that the first way we interpret something may not be the only way to understand it.

For an anxious child, that can be incredibly freeing because anxiety can make one scary interpretation feel like the only one. 

Imagine a middle-schooler walks into school and notices that two friends are whispering and looking in her direction.

Her brain immediately tells her that they are talking about her. Her body responds to that interpretation. Her heart beats faster. Her stomach tightens. She feels embarrassed. Maybe she wants to go home. She may spend the rest of the day wondering what she did wrong.

But what if there were another possibility? Maybe they were talking about something completely different. Or, what if the middle schooler acknowledged she does not actually know what the friends are talking about. 

All of the sudden, the situation hasn't changed. The interpretation has.

And when the interpretation changes, anxious kids have more options than the scary one. This is one of the most important things we can teach anxious children: a thought can feel true without necessarily being true.

Reframing is such a good way to remind children of truths about God. Their anxiety might say, “I am alone.” We can remind them that God is with us. Their anxiety might say, “I can’t handle this.” We can remind them that God can give us strength for what is in front of us each day. 

If you think this tool would be helpful for your anxious child, find an optical illusion that can be seen in two ways and look at it together. Let your child notice how the same picture can have two different interpretations. Then connect it to everyday anxiety and start reframing some fears!