Clearly, reframing involves redefining terms like “happiness”
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aregiving and grief make us feel powerless. We can’t control the course of a loved one’s illness and decline, nor the negative emotions that flood us. But by choosing to focus on something positive, however small it might be in the larger scheme of things, we gain a sense of agency and also feel better about our circumstances and become more energized to deal with our challenges. Psychologists call this reframing, deliberately shifting our point of view of any given situation.
In his book From Death Camp to Existentialism, Victor Frankl explains how finding something positive to focus on — in his case, planning how he would use his devastating experience to teach others — helped him survive in the concentration camps. It kept him from being defeated by the suffering, loss, and despair that threatened to engulf him.
Our struggles as caregivers and grievers are hardly comparable, but there is a lesson to be learned here. Like Frankl, we need to find something positive to focus on during our darkest times.
I won’t pretend this is easy, but I can assure you that it’s worth the effort. At one point in my husband’s illness, I made a resolution that I’d take something positive away from each and every day. Some days this was easier to accomplish than others; often I had to be the one to make it happen.
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