SOLUTION BUILDING VIA FRAMING CHANGE

An interesting frame that locks many clients into seemingly unsolvable problems is the assumption of stability. This is the primitive idea that the world is solid, stable, unchanging and fixed. While it is primitive, there’s numerous factors that seduce a person to think that way. Language is probably the biggest culprit. It is the nature of words and language itself that when you name something— that’s what it is to you. Afterwards it is hard to see or think about it in any other way. The fact of languaging an experience gives us a pseudo-sense of control over it.

This is especially the problem with labels. Once you label a person in a particular way— he is an alcoholic, she is a bitch, he is schizophrenic, she is a ruthless business leader, and so on. The label blinds us from being able to see the person in any other way. And with repetition, it creates a severe limitation. This is where diagnostic labels can become not only dehumanizing, but also put the person in a frame of unchangeability. Now the person is really stuck!