A while back, you jokingly said of antidepressants to “stop seeing them as anti-depressants, and see them as edging pills.” While depression is a beast that I’ve been wrestling for many years now, that gave me a big laugh. Thank you for having such a sense of humor and way of looking at things, indadvertedly helping people deal with issues be it gender dysphoria or depression. [ TL;DR – U da best James ]

Thank you! I am da bestest!

It wasn’t just a joke though, it’s about learning to reframe things, it’s a hugely useful skill to develop.

Our unique capacity as humans is to not just to react to what happens to us, but to decide how we react – in between the stimulus and response we have a choice, a choice in how to frame the stimulus and to shape our response.

Search for Victor Frankl and logotherapy for more on that topic, it’s interesting stuff.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. 

Groovy.

The one I come up against most is being told something is scary. Is it?

Is it scary, or is it exciting? The two are VERY similar, just a lot of the time you choose which it’s going to be. Decide to be excited, not scared, and it can change everything.

Decide that your meds are ‘edging pills’ and not some side effect loaded drug and it changes the way you feel about them.

Here’s a couple of links that Dr Google says tells you more about it

http://changingminds.org/techniques/general/reframing.htm

http://blog.iqmatrix.com/reframing-thoughts

I love to help, truly. And I love hearing that it’s helped!

James