Reframing: Creating Manoeuvrability and Changing Patterns

In my practice, and in my supervision and teaching for helping professionals, medical professionals and educators, one of the most useful skills I have found comes from the school of Strategic Family Therapy - reframing. It’s simple, respectful, strengths-based, and can be incredibly powerful.  Reframing is one of my favourite ways of thinking and speaking with people because it “helps uncover the positive intention or characteristic behind even the most difficult behaviour” (Edwards, 2011).   

This idea aligns really well with my approach to Systemic Family Therapy: behaviour always has meaning, and the meaning we attribute to behaviour impacts how we respond and patterns we get caught up in.  So, when we change our perception of the meaning of the behaviour by uncovering a positive underlying intention such as self protection, we open a door to change behaviours, patterns and relationships, because we give ourselves permission to respond differently based on this new understanding.

In this blog, I’ll explain what Strategic Family Therapy is, how reframing works within this model, and how to apply it in a relational, strengths-based way that supports change without minimising anyone’s feelings or experiences.

What Is Strategic Family Therapy?

Strategic Family Therapy is a practical, problem-focused approach that aims to understand what’s happening in the “here and now” and create change through action, rather than through long discussions about insight. The therapist pays close attention to interactions, patterns, and sequences—and then offers targeted interventions to shift those patterns.

A few hallmarks of strategic work include:

• Targeting what is maintaining the problem, not just how it started.

• Making small, purposeful shifts that disrupt unhelpful interactional cycles.

• Using planned interventions—including tasks, directives, and reframes—to generate new behaviours and new meanings.

• Seeing symptoms as functional or meaningful within the system, rather than as signs of pathology within the “identified patient”, i.e., the person presented to you as being the problem or having the problem.

One of the most helpful strategic interventions is reframing.

What Is Reframing?

In Strategic Family Therapy, reframing means:

• Changing the way people think about and experience their situation.

• Placing a viewpoint into another frame that fits the facts equally well—or better—and shifts the meaning of the behaviour.

• Offering a new frame that increases the possibility of new solutions.

When we reframe, we give the client or family a different “story” about the problem—one that softens blame, widens the lens, and opens up fresh possibilities for connection and change.

A good reframe aims to:

1. Change the meaning given to the presenting problem.

2. Shift how the family members see the “identified patient”.

3. Reduce hopelessness, increase flexibility, and make new behaviours possible.

But the heart of a strategic reframe is relational. We aren’t just “putting a positive spin on things.” We are helping people see themselves and each other differently, almost as if they are putting on a new set of glasses to look through.

John Edwards: Positive Reframing as the Search for Positive Intention

John Edwards is a Family Therapy pioneer who talks about “positive reframing”:  “For every negative thought, feeling, or behaviour a person has, there is a positive intention or characteristic behind it.” (2011 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd4-v9IAfwM)

This intention may be:

• Self-protection

• Emotional expression

• A longing for connection

• A bid for autonomy

• A strategy (even if clumsy) for meeting a need

He offers the example of a young child who gets into a fight at school. While fighting itself isn’t acceptable or safe, the positive intention might be:

• Trying to express overwhelming emotions

• Defending themselves

• Attempting to teach another child a lesson or set a boundary

As John Edwards emphasises:

“It’s not the behaviour we focus on—it’s the intention behind it.”

Think of the search for positive intention as trying to find what’s under the iceberg – the behaviour is what you can see, but there is so much more underneath the waterline.

Reframing helps us name the intention so the client, family, and other services involved can work towards healthier, more effective ways of achieving the same need.

Some Reframing Examples

Reframing Trauma in Context

A teacher says: “John is just so defiant! He doesn’t listen in class, he’s always out of his seat moving around or just looking out the window! And he will just escalate and storm off when I set limits.”

A strategic, trauma-informed reframe could be: “It sounds like John can be difficult in class. I wonder how this difficult behaviour fits with his trauma history.”

Nothing is denied here. Nothing is minimised.  But the meaning shifts—from “defiance” to “trauma-shaped survival strategies.”  This change in frame can soften frustration, reduce blame, and open a conversation about safety, co-regulation, and connection.  It makes change possible because the implicit rules for responding to children impacted by trauma are different to the rules for responding to children who are “intentionally defiant and disruptive”.

Relational Positive Reframes

A reframe works best when it highlights strength, intent, or connection, honouring the person and their relationships.

E.g., A parent says: “My teenage daughter is driving me crazy – she never listens to me.”

A strategic relational reframe could be:  “It sounds like you have a strong-willed daughter. I wonder… who did she get her strong will from? And how might that determination help her in future relationships? What's the history of strong women in your family?”

This reframe:

• Recognises the challenge.

• Highlights a positive trait.

• Links it to family strength (“who did she get that from?”).

• Moves the conversation into future development and connection.

This is the relational power of a good reframe.

Reframing by Changing the Context

Strategic reframing often works by placing the behaviour in a different context—time, development, safety, culture, or relationships. The facts stay the same, but the meaning shifts.

E.g., Context of Time

After a heated family conflict, a teenager refuses to talk to their mother.

Instead of:  “They are being rude and shutting me out.”

Reframe: “They aren't ready to talk about this yet.”

This places the behaviour within time—a normal cooling-off period—rather than as a character flaw.

E.g., Context of Child Development / Family Life Cycle

A teenage boy no longer wants to spend much time with his mother, preferring his friendship group instead.

Reframe: “It sounds like he’s moving towards a developmental milestone in adolescence—growing independence. This can feel painful for parents, but it’s not a personal rejection; it’s a sign he’s doing what he's meant to do developmentally.  Let’s talk about how you can connect with him at this stage of development.”

Same behaviour; completely different meaning.

Considerations When Using Reframes

Reframes are powerful—but only when used responsibly and relationally.

Here are the key guidelines:

• Reframes work best within a strong therapeutic alliance.  Without trust, a reframe can feel dismissive or invalidating.

• Don’t overuse reframing. Too many reframes in a session dilutes the effect and risks making the client feel misunderstood.

• Only reframe what you genuinely believe.  If you don’t believe the reframe, wait until the client says something you can genuinely reframe.

• A reframe should never disconnect you from the client’s distress. A reframe without attunement can feel dismissive.

• Be careful, sensitive, and tentative.  Use soft language—“I wonder…”, “Could it be…?”, “Sometimes families find…”

• Use the client’s values and worldview.  A reframe must “fit” their belief system to be effective.

• Never minimise feelings.  Validate first: “I can hear how frustrated you feel…” then reframe.  You might even have to decide if a reframe is the right skill to use at this time.

• Never reframe destructive or harmful behaviour.  Safety always comes first and there is no positive underlying intent in destructive or harmful behaviour.

• Use reframing purposefully.  It’s an intervention to open a conversation—not a platitude.

• Reframing must honour the client/family’s strengths.  As John Edwards reminds us: “If families hadn’t done anything right, they wouldn’t still be together. There is always strength behind the problems.” Reframing helps families rediscover this strength—to see themselves not as failing but as human and capable.

How Reframing Creates Change

From a strategic perspective, reframing:

• Interrupts rigid patterns of meaning.

• Reduces blaming and defensiveness.

• Creates emotional space for new interactions.

• Allows family members to see each other through a more compassionate, flexible lens.

• Helps the system move toward more adaptive patterns.

  
  

When the meaning changes, the behaviour often changes too.

Reframing as a Conversation

The reframe is an opportunity to open up a conversation that can create manoeuvrability and change.

e.g., reframing a teen who is “lazy” and not getting up in the morning and going to school as a teen who is managing the effects of depression

e.g., reframing a young child’s aggressive behaviour as sensory overload

These reframes allow conversations including psychoeducation about depression, developmental expectations, neurodiversity, and ways to respond to and support the young person that will be more helpful based on this new frame.

e.g., reframing an adult’s pattern of withdrawal in a romantic relationship when conflict occurs as a family of origin pattern of managing conflict

This reframe allows conversations about each person’s “backpack of life” (find out more about the backpack of life here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0G6a8fpRgs&t=16s ) and a chance to review what’s in the backpack, how it has influenced them and what they’d like to do about it.

Final Thoughts

Reframing is not about putting a “positive spin” on things.  It’s about uncovering the intention, the strength, or the longing beneath the struggle—and clients and helping families see it too.  This means that reframing is fundamentally about respect, strengths, and hope.

It is one of those skills that, on the surface, can look deceptively simple but that can have an enormous impact because it opens up conversation. When we have a conversation that places a behaviour into a different frame—e.g., one that honours the impact of adversity and trauma, development, strengths, and relationships—we give our clients and families something incredibly valuable:  A new way of seeing themselves and each other.

And when people see themselves and each other differently, they interact differently, and change begins.

Leonie

Dr Leonie White

Clinical Family Therapist and Psychologist

Director Phoenix Family Therapy Academy

Helping people grow, connect and thrive in life’s unique journey.

Please note - this article is educational in nature and does not constitute therapy advice. 

Please seek help from a professional if you require support. 

References

•       Flaskas, C. (1992).  A reframe by any other name: on the process of reframing in strategic, Milan and analytic therapy.  Journal of Family Therapy, 14, 145 – 161.

•       Hayes, H. (1991).  A re-introduction to family therapy: Clarification of three schools.  ANZJFT, 12(1), 27 – 43.

•       Nichols, M. & Schwartz, R. (2008).  Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods.  Pearson Education Inc: New York.

•       Tab Ballis (2014, March 18). John T. Edwards “Positive Reframing” [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Sd4-v9IAfwM?si=dBfIKFGSkgyOTxa3

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