// instruments · reframe
reframe
An explanation has three axes. Who — the cause is in you, or in the situation. When — it lasts, or it was this once. Where — it touches everything, or it stays in this one thing. State a setback in one line, flip the axes, and watch the same event get a different explanation. Templated composition, browser-only, keeps nothing.
// the event, in one line
// who — internal ↔ external
// when — stable ↔ unstable
// where — global ↔ specific
// what this is, and isn't
This is explanatory style — the who / when / where of how people explain what happens to them (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978). It is a demonstration, not therapy and not advice. Rewriting the frame is a long-established move: reappraisal, cognitive restructuring, dissonance reduction all name versions of it. Nothing here is new; this only makes the axes turnable by hand.
None of these stories is the certified cause. Introspection can't hand you which frame is true — that's the ceiling (the introspection ceiling). Each rewrite is a hypothesis, and the test is what actually happens next.
The discipline: change the frame, keep the facts. A reframe that denies what plainly happened is distortion, not reappraisal. The event line stays verbatim in every version — the axes add attribution around it, they don't edit it. A story that helps is one that still answers to the world. (Whether "optimistic" frames are simply better is a proposal, not a settled fact — explanatory style predicts some outcomes, and the strongest objection is that it can talk you out of a warning that was real.)
Kin: alter confabulation, the introspection ceiling, auto-psychoanalysis. If a setback is more than a story to reframe, that's worth real help — see dangers.