How to Put the Ideal Frame Around Others' Actions

We hear a lot about habits these days—in best-selling books, on podcasts and blogs, and elsewhere online. Here, I want to emphasize the less-than-ideally-skillful habits most of us bring to our personal relationships. One of the nastier habits is how we tend to put a negative frame or perspective around ourselves and others.

If you were so bold as to tack up strands of barbed wire around the frame of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” at the Louvre in Paris, not only would you land yourself in a Parisian jail, but you would also dramatically shift the look and feel of the painting. The frame we use for our and another person’s behavior does much to shape what we think, feel, and do in the relationship.

When Habits Hold Us Back

A patient I'll call "John" was an interrupter. It showed up even in the therapy room where I, as a therapist, tend not to be focused on trying to be right. Still, many times I would be trying to speak and then John would interrupt. “Sorry,” he said, aware from my non-verbals that he was cutting me off. “I’m an attorney so I cut right to it.”

His smile and definitive take on himself felt like I was being boxed in by his way of framing himself. The message seemed to be that I shouldn’t be frustrated with his interrupting because that’s “just what he does,” therefore any frustration on my part was my fault.

As a therapist, I tried to roll with it and not react defensively, and yet it was clear this was a habit. I started to notice that it tended to appear when I pointed conversation toward anything emotionally vulnerable for him, or where he might feel “less than” in some fashion.

If I were to be helpful to John in improving his relationships with his wife and teenage kids, he would develop more awareness of this as a less-than-ideal social habit. And that like all habits, whether we're talking about nail-biting, overeating, smoking, drinking too much, or even hogging the remote control, there is a cycle of cues (or triggers), leading to the habitual action which leads to a rewarding result.

The frame you use dramatically impacts the look and feel of the situation

Source: aaron007 from Getty Images

John had framed his communication style as being a good attorney, quick to address weak spots and inaccuracies in others’ statements. The issue was that this “meticulous lawyer” frame tended to pop up when John’s wife voiced any reluctance to having sex, or when his kids responded to his directions around the house with eye-rolls and attitude.

Speaking and acting from his lawyer frame might as well have included the barbed wire because his wife and kids were done with his painful poking. “You’re impossible to talk to!” his wife said. “It feels like you’re taking me to court because I’m not feeling like having sex tonight!”

The brain cements communication patterns as a habit because they either lead to a lessening of discomfort or an increase in pleasure. “Ooh, this is good,” John’s brain says when he interrupts and makes his various points. The other person either concedes the point or gets quiet (which John interprets as evidence of “winning” the argument).

Changing an Unproductive Habit

With compassionate yet direct input, John was willing to look at his pattern. He learned that the experiences unfolding in his emotions and thoughts after being triggered by his wife’s less-than-eager responses around sex, or his kids’ snark, had to do with the discomfort of vulnerability, of feeling raw and less than. John learned that discomfort needed to be experienced as he learned to stop interrupting. Instead of accepting the frame of “lawyer-speak,” he was willing to shift toward a more accurate frame of husband or father, more likely to connect him effectively with his wife and kids.

Successful, positive reframing lifts the problem out of the frame of pathology or problems and places it in another that allows for options; that does not imply things are permanently stuck. Reframing also needs to focus on where the other person is at the time and avoid going far afield from their prominent views and values. Good reframing is like emotional “judo,” taking the momentum of the moment and shifting it toward a new, wider empowered perspective.

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John accepted a reframe of his abrupt communication habits. Instead of a zealous attorney people should be impressed and intimidated by (even at home), he learned he was a deep-feeling and quick-thinking guy. He learned his vulnerable feelings reflected how much his wife and kids mattered to him.

John slowly built skill in staying with and owning how these moments were going to happen, and that he could observe the old, reactive “gotta-be-right-at-all-costs” frame showing up in his mind and body, and then avoid interrupting because of that recognition. He learned to notice the raw discomfort, wait a few beats, and not interrupt; the other person would notice the space he’d created.

I could directly point all these new, skillful alternatives out to him when he sidestepped his interrupting habit while we were in session. I told him it felt good, that it mattered to me, and it was helpful in our communication. I thanked him for allowing me space to offer my perspective. The real deal was cross-planting it, generalizing it, to use the technical term, to his relationships with his wife and kids.

John learned to allow space. He learned to hang out with a bit of silence. And he learned that others responded to this.

Accepting a new frame on his communication habits gave his loved ones the ability to insert their truth. Others were able to offer their ideas. They were more likely to feel felt and heard. John ended up with the reward of feeling more connected—a “more-than” feeling, not a “less-than” one.

Are we willing to own our bad communication habits by shifting the frame we’re using? Your habit in need of reframing might be interrupting—or it might be not speaking up, being passive, too much self-effacing humor, throwing out distractions, or changing the topic just when it was getting important. It could be just not showing up or being chronically disorganized and late to relationship moments.

Are you willing to get curious? Learning to wonder what the pain-managing aspects of relationship habits might be is important in many of your interactions with others. With practice, you can learn to bring curiosity to others’ off-putting, negative behavior, identify a reframed perspective, and watch as the next moments unfold more effectively between you.

Try This Practice: “Breathing Behind Behavior”

This practice takes you beyond reactions showing up in your mind and body during conversation. On the in-and-out current of your breathing, this skill has you looking for a way to reframe the other person’s actions, from “problem” to something more relatable, more accessible: their pain.

1. Take a slow deep inhale as you notice and allow your thoughts and feelings in reaction to the other person without following their “pull” to react and unskillfully and habitually self-protect, likely creating more angst and distance between you.
2. Exhale slowly as you allow curiosity to emerge to include more than your own truth.
3. Maintain curiosity as you slowly and deeply inhale what is emerging about what may be happening inside the other person.
4. Exhale slowly, acknowledging what your curiosity is seeing as the possible pain of threatened needs that may be behind the other’s self-protective unskillful behavior.