Plans fall apart. Flights get canceled. People let us down. And we often react automatically: irritation, anxiety, disappointment. But sometimes, we succeed in stepping back and reinterpret what’s happening, and suddenly it all feels much more manageable.
That shift doesn’t mean you’re ignoring reality or pretending things are fine. It means you’re seeing the same situation through a different lens. And when you change the lens, you often change the emotion.
Psychologists call that shift “cognitive reappraisal” and it’s a powerful practice which you can learn to use more often, whenever you face inner resistance or a challenging situation.
How Cognitive Reappraisal Shifts Your Emotions
Cognitive reappraisal is a way of reinterpreting a situation in order to change its emotional impact. It’s one of the most effective strategies for managing emotions. Instead of trying to suppress how you feel, you change the story behind the feeling.
Psychologist James Gross, a key figure in this research, has shown that cognitive reappraisal leads to better emotional outcomes than just trying to push feelings away. People who use it regularly tend to be less anxious, less depressed, and more resilient.
It’s not about being overly positive. It’s about being flexible in how you think, and seeing a situation from a different perspective, for example going from ‘this delay is ruining everything’ to ‘this gives me unexpected time to rest’, or from ‘I failed’ to ‘I learned something useful.’
This process involves the prefrontal cortex helping to regulate the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in processing emotional intensity. When you reframe a situation, you’re influencing how your brain processes and responds to the situation emotionally.
Over time, cognitive reappraisal can help you to respond more calmly when things don’t go as expected and stay grounded in situations that might otherwise feel overwhelming.
How to Use Cognitive Reappraisal
Knowing that cognitive reappraisal is helpful is one thing, but how do you actually do it when you’re in the moment? Here are three steps you can try the next time something throws you off.
Step 1: Zoom out. Ask yourself: Will this still matter next week? Next year? Ten years from now? Most of the time, the answer is no – or at least, not as much as it feels like it does in the moment. Zooming out puts things in perspective and helps reduce emotional intensity by activating brain areas involved in reflection.
Step 2: Flip the frame. Explore whether there might be another way to look at the situation. What’s something good that could come from this situation? Maybe it’s an opportunity you didn’t expect. Maybe it’s just a funny story you’ll tell later. Flipping the frame will help you change how it feels.
Step 3: Shift your inner dialogue. We often blame ourselves when things don’t go to plan. If someone you cared about were in your shoes, what would you say to them? Probably something kind, calm, and reassuring. Use that same tone with yourself. It helps interrupt the spiral and ground you in a more self-compassionate mindset.
Cognitive reappraisal doesn’t make bad experiences go away, but it gives you a better way to meet them. It’s not always easy, but even one small shift in perspective can change the entire emotional experience.
Next time something goes wrong, try looking at it from a slightly different angle. It won’t change what happened, but it can change how you carry it, and with practice that simple shift will become less effortful and more instinctive.