Cognitive reframing, a core technique from cognitive-behavioral therapy, is based on the observation that emotional distress often comes less from an event itself and more from the automatic interpretation attached to it. 'My presentation went badly' might automatically trigger 'I'm bad at my job and everyone noticed' — a global, permanent, character-level interpretation — when a more accurate reframe might be 'I stumbled on one section; the rest landed fine, and one presentation doesn't define my competence.'
The technique isn't about forcing positivity or denying that something went wrong — a dishonest reframe doesn't work and often makes things worse. It's about checking whether the automatic interpretation is actually the most accurate one available, since anxious and depressive thinking patterns systematically default to the harshest, most global, most permanent interpretation of ambiguous events.
Frankl describes an elderly doctor who came to him unable to get over his wife's death two years earlier — utterly bereft, unable to see any way forward. Rather than offering comfort, Frankl asked him a single question: what would have happened if he had died first, and his wife had had to survive him? The man said she would have suffered terribly. Frankl replied: "such suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering — but now you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her." The man said nothing, shook Frankl's hand, and left calmly.