Worried that a transition could make your life worse?

Here’s why we fall into the Framing Trap, and what you can do about it.

Three years ago, I had an existential crisis. I was sitting on the carpeted floor of my childhood bedroom facing a cardboard box of adolescent memorabilia. Amongst the crafts, certificates and birthday cards, I found a forgotten collection of poems that I’d written as a teenager. The wisdom and depth behind them awed my adult-self.

I’d recently started composing poetry again, but wasn’t feeling confident in my skills. I was recovering from a brain injury and struggling with writing and reading comprehension. As I started to compare my poetic abilities now to back then, I felt increasingly despondent.

I called my best friend in a panic and voiced my fears to him: “What if I peaked as a poet at 17 years old? What if I can never reproduce the quality of this writing again? What if this was as good as it got for me?”

As I fell down a creative but catastrophic rabbit-hole of projections, my friend interrupted: “I notice you’re asking: ‘What if I can’t.’ What would happen if you asked: ‘What if I can?’”

“I notice you’re asking: ‘What if I can’t.’ What would happen if you asked: ‘What if I can?’”

His encouragement to positively reframe the way I viewed the future was a simple suggestion, but it would completely change the way I felt about my life in transition. And indeed I went on to write new poems, many of which I feel deeply proud of (with the advantage of life experience that my teenage self did not have!)

What’s happening

When faced with anxiety-provoking events (such as major life transitions, especially those that are unplanned or unwanted), we apply different coping techniques to help avoid future harm. One of them is called Defensive Pessimism: by setting low expectations for future performance (regardless of how well we’ve done in the past) chances are that we meet or even surpass them.

There is often an in-built tendency to pay more attention to negative versus positive information during these stressful times, which influences self-assessment and decision-making. This Negativity Bias is more likely to happen with ambiguity, when there’s a survival threat implicit in the negative aspect to the information.

Imagining potential worst-case scenarios does have a certain benefit (lawyers, accountants and my mother would validate this!), but there are also problems with this approach:

It’s scary and doesn’t feel good to believe you can’t do or can’t have what you want in the future. It is simply more pleasant to trust in a more fulfilling version of events. That is, unless you get a kick out of complaining or receiving pity attention, in which case… well, that’s a separate topic.?

Do you really think you can predict the future? Almost everything we experience in life is outside of our control. That’s uncomfortable and humbling; humans don’t like ambiguity! But on the flip side, it means that the majority of possibilities and opportunities are also outside of our prophetic awareness – including many differently-wonderful ones, and differently-terrible ones. Dreaming of hypotheticals is a useful creative exercise for idea generation, but an inefficient principal tool for actual planning.

If you expect a negative outcome, you’re more likely to get it. By focusing on just a few potential future outcomes, we limit ourselves imaginatively – and thanks to the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, contribute to the likelihood that that envisaged outcome materialises. Conjuring up negative future scenarios is a suboptimal approach.

For example, if I worry I’ll never write poetry again, I am less likely to try; whereas if I believe that I can, I’ll invest more time and energy into writing. Either way, I confirm my prediction. The benefit of this approach is feeling more in control.

Expecting a negative outcome tends to validate it. Our thinking is subject to the Confirmation Bias, whereby we favour information that strengthens or supports our existing beliefs, and ignore inconsistencies and contradictions. Once affirmed, this bias is difficult to dislodge.

If I believe my writing is poor, I’ll focus on my weaker work, unsupportive comments, or rejections; whereas if I trust that my writing is good, I’ll concentrate on the affirming evidence. Rationally, we are all better off with a positive bias confirming fortune, luck and ability –?than the opposite, negative perspective!

Three tips to avoid these trips

Decisions are influenced by how information is presented, not just by facts. This is called the framing effect. We can trick ourselves into seeing an option as a gain (positive) by changing the way we highlight features of equivalent information.

Here are three tips for how to do that:???

1. Reframe positively. Train yourself to ask: what if I can? What if a positive situation materialises? Envision it. Think about any benefits or upsides to a commonly perceived negative event, including lessons learned. Document feelings of gratitude – even if they appear small or insignificant.

2. Examine the evidence for what you’re thinking. What facts support your negative frame of mind? Often worries are founded on thoughts, beliefs, fears or intuition rather than actual data; and maybe the factual evidence actually supports a more positive situation!

For example, if you lost your job and are worried that you won’t find another that’s as good, you could think about actual evidence such as whether you’ve found jobs in the past; the statistical likelihood that people find employment, and consideration of whether you could emotionally adjust, if necessary, to working in a less desirable role.?

3. Get another perspective. Sometimes it’s hard to see a situation differently when we’re convinced it will only work out one way. By asking other people how they see the situation evolving, you can get inspiration for alternative realistic options for the future.

Transform your thinking

Imagination is a powerful tool, and in moments of uncertainty, it can easily conjure up worst-case scenarios that would strip joy from our lives. The list of negative "what ifs" can be never-ending and overwhelming, leaving us paralysed in the face of change.

Recovering from an injury or health challenge, we might worry we will never regain our previous physical abilities. After losing a job or partner we loved, we might be concerned we’ll never find another that’s as good.

If you find yourself caught up in ‘what if I can’t’ thinking, it helps to be aware of some of the innate cognitive biases and heuristics affecting our decision-making. Know that we’re inaccurate predictors of our future emotional state; and that regardless of how challenging our future will be, we’re very likely to recover our emotional well-being and bounce back faster than we think.

We have agency over how much time we devote to (incorrectly) predicting an uncertain future, and also the way in which we frame it. Given those choices, we may as well adopt a positive frame while minimizing forecasting – so we can look forward to the future, rather than fear it.

Reflection

Become more aware of how you represent your life and future options to others. It’s normal that you adopt a more positive frame some days, compared to others. Notice the fluctuations.

Observe whether your job impacts on your framing tendencies; lawyers, for instance, may be more likely to apply a negative frame as a professional necessity. Try to alter your framing: how do you feel if you purposefully frame your current situation or future opportunities more positively?

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