reappraising vs reframing

[Dr. Filipe Rocha]

It depends. Reframing is typically taught mostly as a cognitive process, which is something I tried to emphasize in class: Reappraising should be done with the emotion and not against it. Reframing can often mean changing the emotion by changing your thoughts, in which case it would be different from what I teach as Reappraising, which works by balancing the stories (beliefs) and meanings (values) behind the emotion.

How I teach Reappraising is more about changing the emotion through working with its causes rather than its symptoms.

Basically, if you first connect with the emotion and its appraisal process and then reframe from there, it’s what I call Reappraising. If you just reframe without connecting first, it’s what’s usually called Reframing. The difference is that in one you reframe to change the emotion and in the other you help the emotion reframe.