Teaching Reframes in a Master’s Level Marriage and Family Therapist Program

Abstract

ABSTRACT Reframing is a fundamental and widely used technique in individual and relational therapy. Despite the widespread use of reframing, we are not aware of explicit and comprehensive guidelines for constructing reframes. This lack of clarity about how to develop reframes may lead clinicians to do so haphazardly. Further, those who train marriage and family therapists may struggle to effectively teach students to develop reframes. In this article, we present three principles that guide the development of effective reframes. We offer these principles as one way to teach students to construct reframes and have developed case vignettes to demonstrate the application of these three principles.