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.