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CENT PAPER No.3: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ‘WINDOWS MODEL' OF COGNITIVE EMOTIVE NARRATIVE THERAPY Copyright © Dr Jim Byrne, 2009 (Updated 14th October 2010) 1. Introduction We do not see with our eyes so much as with our brains. Eyes are part of the machinery of perception, but the decisions about ‘what it is' that we see are not made by our eyes. Those decisions are made by our ‘stored experiences' driving our ‘judgements'. We do not see ‘external events' so much with our eyes then as we see them through ‘frames of reference and interpretation' which were created in the past, and which we now implement as habit-based stimulus-response pairings. Or we could call these responses ‘pattern matching' processes. "I've seen this stimulus (or ‘external event') before. This (particular interpretation) is the sense I made of it last time. So that is how I will relate to it this time". The Windows Model is the core model of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT). It is predicated on ‘frame theory', which suggests that all of our perceptions are interpretative, and that our interpretations are driven by habit-based ‘framings' of incoming stimuli, through our senses. The ‘frames' that we use to interpret incoming stimuli are nested sets of inferences, which are derived from past experience. Depending upon the negativity or positivity of the frame through which you are perceiving an incoming stimulus, you will produce a correspondingly negative or positive emotional/behavioural response. Here is a brief introduction to this concept in the form of an animated video clip:
These insights underpin the EFR model of CENT, as follows: E = Event or Experience. F = Framing (of this event or experience), based on past experience. R = Response (being emotional and behavioural). To change undesirable responses (Rs), we need to change the way we frame (F) our experiences (Es). I developed this model over a period of three or so years, beginning with a Four Windows model, and gradually expanding it to Six Windows. (More recently, while working on a new book on Anger Management, I have expanded the system, so there are now three sets of windows: The Brown Windows, which will be reivewed below; the Blue Windows and the Red Windows, which will be described in my Anger Management book in due course). 2. Defining, describing and justifying this approach The Six Windows Model of CENT is a way of drawing attention to the fact that you have already framed[1] some stimulus in an unhelpful way, if you are suffering. One way to conceptualize ‘framing' is to imagine you are looking out through a window on which is written the attitude to adopt towards what you are seeing outside. For example, you look out through a window at some teenagers playing football in a street. If the ‘slogan' on the frame says: ‘They are up to no good', and you buy into that attitude/belief/frame, you will feel much more negative towards them than if the ‘slogan' on the frame says: ‘Playing football with friends is fun'. In cognitive science and cognitive psychology, ‘Frame theory' uses the concept of ‘Frames' to describe the format of stored experiences in long term memory. So when I say you are looking at a stimulus through a frame, I mean you are looking at something in the present moment through a past experience, or cumulative past experiences. (This is also sometimes called using a ‘schema' from the past, where schema means ‘packet of information', like the key features of a situation which allow you to identify it). A 'Christmas' (or holiday) example: One way to clarify the concept of frames and framing of experiences is to revisit a problem I was addressing last Christmas. My concern was that many people would disturb themselves over Christmas, because (1) somebody had not come to visit them; and/or (2) because they did not get the present they desired; and/or (3) because they could not afford to give impressive presents to their loved ones; and on and on. So this is how I addressed that problem: The first thing to do is to teach them the Mind Hut
model. It begins like this: There are large numbers of 'frames' through which you view your frustrations and difficulties, but I have found the following six are sufficient to sort out most common emotional upsets. Here is a graphical illustration of those six windows:
To take a common problem: many individuals upset themselves about the
things that go wrong during the Christmas (or Hanukkah) holidays. By looking at your upset through each of the six windows
in turn, you will effectively 'reframe' the upsetting experience, so it becomes less painful, less disturbing. In the
next section, I will walk you through each of the windows in turn, explaining how to use them to get over your upsets. So now, come with me into the Mind Hut, and let me walk you, one by one, through the six windows, or frames, through which you had better learn to view your upset. Here they are: Window No.1 has a frame that says: Life is pretty difficult and frustrating for all people much of the time. (It does not matter how wealthy or famous a person becomes, they still suffer; indeed wealthy and famous people may suffer even more than most!) Take a look through Window No.1 at your Christmas problem of unhappiness, and recognize that it is happening in the context that life is pretty difficult and frustrating for all humans much of the time. Does that make your problems seem any smaller? Any less distressing? (Normally it will!) Indeed, all of us suffer somewhat, much of the time. And this applies
whether it is "Christmas time" or not. "Christmas time" is a "cultural creation", which
mainly has commercial drivers these days. (And consider this: In December 1978, in the days before 24th and 25th, I
was living in Bangkok. I was eating crabs legs - or frogs legs? - and drinking Chinese beer. I was still
thinking about Chinese New Year. It was not Christmas there! "Christmas" is a social construct!
It is no more "real" than "Yogi Bear"! Can you "feel it in your bones" when Chinese
New Year arrives, or is arriving? No? Well in Bangkok the locals can! Because
they have been trained to think and feel that way). Window No.2 has a frame with this
slogan: Life is without difficulty provided you give up picking and choosing. In other words, if you
look out through Window 2 at your problem and you feel there is any difficulty involved here, then you need to know that this
is becauseyou are picking and choosing how it should be!
If you give up choosing that it be the way you would like it to be, does it seem any better? (Normally it will!) ‘It's tough stuff
that my life happens to be the way it happens to be!' Window No.3 has this slogan: Life is both difficult and non-difficult. When you look out this window at your Christmas problem, do you notice anything? Where in this vista are the non-difficult bits of your Christmas? Isn't it the case that you have filtered them out of the picture? In other words: although your mono-focal[2] angle of orientation towards your problem makes it look as if the world is "all bad", there are lots of really good things about your life right now that you are filtering out of your awareness. Choose to see the balance in your life, or choose to moan and groan about your distorted perception of your life. But know this: It is you who is choosing your angle of orientation; especially now I have woken you up! Try to think of three things you can be grateful for, in the midst of your disappointment! Suppose you burned the turkey; the person you were hoping would turn up for the festivities decided not to come; you got crummy presents; and somebody did not like the present you gave to them. So what? Were there any good moments? Did you eat anything that was nice? Did you drink anything you appreciated? Did you have any little conversation with anybody that was positive? Make a list of the things you can appreciate about this Christmas, and then go over it many times until you overbalance your pessimistic 'frame' of mind. Window No.4 has these words written around the frame: Your life could always be a whole lot worse than it is right now. If you look at your problem and think it is totally bad, then know that you are being unrealistic. Imagine how much worse it would be if you had the problem that you can see through window number 4, plus an alligator was now eating your rear end off at a terrifying rate of knots! Be realistic in the way you rate the badness of your problems! Your Christmas could have been a whole lot worse than it was. For examples: Did you die of starvation? Did a civil war occur in your hometown, resulting in your home being torched? Were you driven from your home by enemies; or kidnapped by pirates? No. Then many good things did happen, and many bad things that could (theoretically) have happened, did not happen. Be grateful for small mercies. Don't focus on the negative events to the exclusion of the positive. Recognize that your situation is not now, and never will be, 100% bad! It might be 20% bad; or 40%; or even (sometimes) 60% bad. But it is not now, and never will be 100% bad. So be grateful for that fact! Window No.5 (which is a skylight in the left side of the roof
of the Mind Hut) has this slogan on the frame: There are certain things you can control and certain things you cannot
control. If you are upset because it is raining - instead of snowing, (for a ‘white Christmas') - then
that is crazy. You cannot control the rain; or how other people have already behaved; or how Christmas turned out.
What aspect of your current problem is controllable? Look for it. Clarify it.
Then make a commitment to change that bit which is changeable. Which bit of your current problem
is uncontrollable? If the turkey is burned, it is burned. Nothing you can do to control that!
If you got the wrong present, you got the wrong present. The outcome is cut and dried! It cannot be changed.
Learn to accept the bits that cannot be changed. That does not mean becoming a victim of anybody. If you cannot
change your partner, give up trying. But relocate if it's too unpleasant being with them! The first bit [how they
are] is beyond your control. But the second bit [where you choose to live, and with whom] is entirely within your control
- ultimately! Window No.6 bears the slogan: If life was a school, what valuable lesson could you learn from your present problems and adversities? Instead of seeing only the problematical aspects of problems, try to see that problems can teach us. In particular, they can teach us how to solve problems. If you had never encountered any problems, you would not have any experiential knowledge or skill in problem solving. There are two main operational definitions of the process of thinking: (1) Asking and answering questions; and (2) Finding, defining, analyzing and solving problems. The way to deal with problems, in order to learn from them, is to think! Stop automatically emoting about the fact that you have difficulties. Ask yourself: What can I do to solve this problem? If this problem is not solvable in itself, what action can I take to counterbalance that outcome? How can I minimize the negative impact of this problem? How can I try to avoid this problem in the future? And on and on. If you will only think about your problems, you can learn valuable (school of life) lessons from them. You could say, problems are ‘sent' to educate you in the refinements of effective living! So welcome them; embrace them; and learn how to work on them and profit from them! 4. Windows, frames and effects The windows in the Six Windows Model are designed to help the client to ‘reframe' the original stimulus about which they are upset, so that they get a happier outcome. Initially we use the Mind Hut and the Six Windows in sequence, to get the client trained into thinking in a new way about their E's and F's, in the E>F>R Model***. Instead of thinking that the emotional response (R) is an inevitable effect of the Event (E), we teach them to look for the Frame, or Framing process (F). In the process, we are also teaching them that there are always at least six ways, and possibly 66 ways, to think about, and perceive, any event or difficulty. Eventually, people who study CENT learn to distrust their mind's coming up with THE ANSWER. Because there are always at least SIX ANSWERS; and potentially 66, or 666. Later on, framing can be used outside the context of the Mind Hut. For example, to produce a more empowering frame about having a dog charging towards you, would entail analyzing your old narrativesabout dogs; including negative experiences of dogs; perhaps combined with some experiential experiments with dogs in the here and now; to try to ‘over-write' the old frame, and produce a new, updated, more realistic/reasonable/logical, adult narrative. The therapeutic effects of Cognitive
Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT) stem from the fact that a person who looks through a lens of one configuration
(or tint) will not experience the same stimulus-response as a person who looks through a lens differently configured (or tinted). And
to be absolutely clear: You do not have to knowwhat the depowering frame (buried in your non-conscious mind)
is in order to construct a new, more self-helping frame. You will normally have to inferwhat
the depowering or distressing frame is, and to construct an alternative that would work better. Over a number of weeks and months, I kept looking at ways of responding to adversity.
Ways of framing our experience so we cope better with life's difficulties. So let's look at this some more. Or: "I'm sipped off". Or: "I feel like tish". And so on. When I look through Window No.1, I am reminded that this is the human condition. Why would I be upset about having problems, when all humans have problems? Forget it! Window No.2 reminds me that my life would be without significant difficulty if I would just stop picking and choosing to have rid of my financial problems, just because they are somewhat difficult for me. Window No.3 reminds me that I have omitted the good bits of my life when coming up with an automatic response to the question, "How are you?" So I had better add back in the good bits, and not just focus on the financial difficulties! When I look through Window No.4, I see that as bad as things have been, they could have been a whole lot worse. When I then lie on the couch, and look up through the first of our two skylight windows (No.5) in the roof of the Mind Hut, I see through a frame that says: "There are certain things we can control, and certain things we can't control". Therefore, obviously, I accept the financial problems I cannot change and change the financial problems I can control. Then, when I look through Window No.6, I realize that life is a school, and that I can learn something about financial management, and life management, from my current problems. So I take a pad and pen, and write out the questions I need to address about my financial problems. I also jot down anything else I learned from the whole of the six windows process, including remembering to include the positive bits in my statement about "How I am". So that is how I now would choose to respond to your question, "How are you, Jim?" And again, morally,
I have a responsibility not to 'ontically dump' a pile of carp into your mind. That is to say, it is too easy for me
to respond to your enquiry by dumping all my problems into your lap, as if you were indifferent to my struggles, and then
to walk away leaving you with the aftertaste of that dumping of my 'created reality'. And next time somebody asks how you
are: why not stop and think? 6. Reviewing the Six Windows Let's go back to the six windows and review them: (a) In the first place, before we go into the Mind Hut, and consciously think about our circumstances, we are already looking through a frame, or a set of frames, involving a network of linked inferences. If we are distressed, then we need to be aware that we are looking through a "distressing frame". For example, we may be suffering some serious setbacks and frustrations, and telling ourselves (or ‘framing it') that: This should not be happening. When we go into the Mind Hut, and look out through Window No.1, we are reminded that life is unavoidably difficult much of the time. So why are we whining about our current difficulties, in a world which tends to be pretty reliably difficult for all people much of the time? (b) Secondly, when we look through
Window No.1, and we say "Life is difficult or suffering much of the time", we also remind ourselves that this not
permanent. Life's difficulties do not continue all of the time! Life is difficult
much of the time, because of environmental stressors, and because of our finite internal resources
for coping with those stressors. Life is difficult when we try to cheat, or indulge in other vices; but life is often
very sweet when we try to be grateful, compassionate, accepting, loving, and so on. In other words: when we indulge
our virtues. And also when it's ‘our turn' to have happy moments. Perhaps we can say: "Most ordinary frustrations and difficulties can be largely overcome if we are willing to give up choosing that they not exist". Or as we say in REBT, we make our ordinary frustrations and difficulties worse by DEMANDING that they be different from the way they happen to be. This is what I mean by the modified statement: "Life is (normally) without (insurmountable) difficulty, provided we avoid picking and choosing". So stop picking and choosing in an extreme
way. Stop demanding that your life contain no difficulties. Stop treating relatively minor difficulties
as if they are major difficulties. Stop pretending you cannot stand having major difficulties in your life. You
can! And learn to accept that life will deliver a mixed bag of good and bad experiences, and do not choose to avoid
what is unavoidable. Window No.5: "Some suffering can be controlled and some cannot". If we lie on the couch and look up through the left-hand skylight, the frame on the skylight window prompts us to ask: ‘Can my current frustration, difficulty, suffering, etc, be controlled by me, or not? If it can be controlled, make a plan to control it, and get into action to change it. If it cannot be controlled, and then changed, then we had better accept it with equanimity, peacefully, and realistically. Window No.6: "If life is a school, what could your current adversity be teaching you?" While still lying on the couch, look out through the right-hand window in the roof. Instead of focussing on what is wrong with your current adversity, focus instead on what it could teach you. This is a change of emphasis from negative to positive, and will produce a corresponding change in your emotional response. Ask yourself the questions: What (positive thing) could I learn from this? What is it teaching me that could be helpful for the future? 7. Applying the Windows to your life Imagine you are emotionally disturbed by
a practical problem in your life. Instead of asking yourself whether you are looking at this in a rational or irrational
way, imagine you are in your 'Mind Hut' and looking out through Window 1. Through this window you see your problem in
the frame of 'Life is difficult'. How does that change things? Isn't it the case that, since life is difficult,
your problem seems a bit less disturbing, since you were probably holding it in the frame of 'this should not be so difficult'?
But if life is difficult, then why should you be exempt? Why should you not have your fair share of difficulties and
problems? In that moment, your problem becomes lighter. Then, if you lie on the couch in the Mind Hut, and look up through the left-hand skylight, you will see the Window No.5 framing which says, "Certain problems can be controlled and others can not", you will be able to decide if this is one of those problems you had better accept, or should you make a plan to change it? Once you accept that a particular problem cannot be controlled, you achieve the relief of giving up trying to control the uncontrollable. On the other hand, if it does seem to be controllable, you need to put the "white hat" on - from Dr Edward De Bono - and ask yourself, What information do I need to collect in order to optimize my chances of being able to control this problem? Finally, Window No.6 encourages you to think about the positive things you can gain from this problem, by learning from its presence. You could, for example, learn how to solve problems of this type, and not have to endure them in the future. Or you could learn how to manage such problems better when they do arise from time to time. 8. Frame Theory I mentioned earlier that ‘frames' and ‘schemas' are different ways of describing how we have our experiences stored in long-term memory. It might be more accurate to say that sometimes they are used interchangeably, and sometimes they are used in distinct ways. You might now be wondering how frames compare with scripts and schemas. Frames, schemas (or schemata) and scripts are all terms used in cognitive science and cognitive psychology to describe the format of stored experiences in long term memory. (MacLachlan and Reid, 1994[3]; Eysenck and Keane, 2000[4]). As in any area of academic study, there are different paradigms (or camps and groupings) with different understandings. And sometimes, as I said above, the same people use these terms to mean the same thing, on one occasion, and to mean different things, on another. For examples: For Eysenck and Keane (2000) some confusion exists. In their glossary, they define a ‘frame' like this: "Frame: an organised packet of information about the world, events, or people, stored in long-term memory (also called a schema)." However, in their main text they say: "The term schema is used to refer to well integrated chunks of knowledge about the world, events, people, and actions. Scripts and frames are relatively specific kinds of schemas. Scripts deal with knowledge about events and consequences of events. Thus, for example, Schank and Abelson (1977)[5] referred to a restaurant script, which contains information about the usual sequence of events involved in going to a restaurant to have a meal. In contrast, frames deal with knowledge about the properties of objects and locations". (Page 352). Needless to say, I do not agree with this distinction, as I see frames, scripts and schemas as attempts to explain what is going on in the mind of an individual when they use their past experience to comprehend and respond to their current environmental stimuli. They are all 'narrative elements' or 'forms of story'. I am also a therapist first and an academic second, and so my aim in life is to identify strategies and perspectives that help to change the world of the client, and not just to understand it. Frames seem to me to have certain advantages over scripts and schemas in helping to direct the mind of the client towards possibilities of changing perspectives on their lives in general, and not just on "objects and locations". One student who piloted my procrastination programme (which is based on frame theory), said he found my use of the concept of frames to be particularly helpful as they clarified for him that he had control over his perceptions, and that he could change his behaviour by changing the frames through which he was looking at his world. As opposed to Eysenck and Keane, I like Eric Lunzer's description of Frame Theory (in Lunzer, 1989)[6]: "The concept of cognitive frames and their role in the interpretation of experience is one which was first evolved within the context of artificial intelligence theory as a way of accounting for the fact that a finite system like the brain can recognize an infinite variety of situations by assigning each new complex to some familiar category, which already incorporates a necessary structure and an equally necessary flexibility." This is helpful because in CENT we are looking at habitual responses to situations, and how to change those habitual responses by changing the Frame through which they are being perceived/ interpreted. Lunzer continues: "The construct (or concept of ‘frame') has been fruitfully applied to the interpretation of visual scenes, which change in lawful ways as a function of movements of the viewer and the object (Minsky, 1975[7]), and to the interpretation of spoken and written discourse (Rumelhart and Ortony, 1977[8]; Schank and Abelson, 1977[9])." And it is in this way that we use the concept of ‘frame' in CENT. We use it to describe the (normally non-conscious) intervening process - between an event and a response - which involves the interpretation of spoken (and written) discourse. Lunzer continues: "A frame is a network of related elements (which can be thought of as ideas), which has the added characteristic that not only the elements but also the links among them are distinctive and defined. If you have a frame, you know what goes with what, and also how". When Lunzer says our frames allow us to know what goes with what, and how, he is not implying that our frames are ‘accurate representations of reality', nor that they are normally conscious. What he means is that, non-consciously, we ‘know' that when Colombo arrives, there will be a cigar stub, a crumpled overcoat, some fumbled questions, and razor sharp detective work. When Christmas is mentioned, there will be turkey, crackers, Christmas cake, decorations, holly and ivy, presents, wrapped in multicoloured paper, parties, alcohol, hangovers, too much food, family joy and/or family despair. In short, we have a nested network of concepts/inferences linked to each of our frames, below the level of conscious awareness, based on past cumulative, interpretative experiences. Therefore, for me, frames are results of our subjective and socialized experiences, which means they exist within some social ideology, and are ‘relative takes' rather than ‘absolute facts'. They exist as electro-chemical corollaries of cumulative, interpretative experiences, stored in long-term memory. 9. Identifying and changing frames One of the implications of frames is that they are clusters of inferences, at many different levels - subordinate and superordinate. When a frame is triggered - e.g. ‘I don't like that person looking at me in this way in a public library' - a whole host of superordinate frames is apparently simultaneously triggered - such as ‘People should not use intrusive eye contact with strangers'; ‘People who look at me like that individual obviously mean to harm me'; and so on. According to Lunzer, we do not unpack the cluster of inferences. We simply respond on the basis of our perceptual take indicated in the trigger frame. In REBT a great deal of effort is put into trying to unpack those clusters of frames - in a process known as ‘inference chaining'. And in CBT in general, there is a similar process called ‘the vertical arrow technique', whereby the therapist keeps trying to find out: "What's underneath that inference; and under the next one; and under that...". By contrast, in CENT we do not do any unnecessary unpacking of clusters of inferences. We find the activating frame - normally as an inference, rather than conscious awareness - and get the client to reverse it. If appropriate we also encourage the client to develop a positive frame that impacts the same area of the old negative frame. We then encourage the client to overlearn the reversed-negative frame, and any appropriate new positive frame, with the understanding that in the future, when presented with the problem stimulus - e.g. a stranger stares at them in a public place - the reversed-negative frame (and any new positive frame substitute) will now be activated. We therefore do not spend time looking for ‘the most noxious' inference in the client's problematic cluster of frames. The technical justification for the CENT approach is that, in our daily functioning ‘...wherever possible, we operate with unanalyzed chunks of information', and that process often works very well to produce good results, and when it produces bad results, the linkage between the stimulus and response is still ‘impressively reliable (even though inaccurate)'. Since this kind of link is so reliable, why unpack the unnecessary? We encourage our clients to learn new frames, and over time we assume that those frames will attract to themselves increasingly-clustered relevant networks of frames. In time, the client will have a new cluster of (more positive) frames related to the old, problematical stimulus, and will therefore (automatically) respond with a more functional response (without knowing, consciously, why they do so!). ~~~ To reference this paper in a publication please use the following citation: Byrne, J. (2009c) An introduction to the 'Windows Model' of CENT. CENT Paper No.3. Hebden Bridge: The Institute for CENT. Available online: http://www.abc-counselling.com/id174.html ~~~ Applying the Windows Model If you want to get some practice in applying the Windows Model, and seeing how I have applied it, then please take a look at my Happiness Blog, at http://www.abc-counselling.com/id143.html. Alternatively, you could contact me for a coaching session on applying the Windows Model to your life. Dr Jim Byrne ABC Coaching and Counselling Services Email: Jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com Telephone: 01422 843 629 (from inside the UK), or 44 1422 843 629 (from outside the UK). ~~~ ~~~
[1] To frame a problem means to look at it through a particular frame of reference, or interpretative lens. If you look at an event through the frame which asserts that ‘This should not be happening', then you are likely to be much more distressed or angry than if you looked at it through a frame that asserts, ‘This seems to be unavoidable'. [2] Mono-focal means ‘single viewpoint'; or ‘one way of looking at things'. Is it ever true that there is only one way of looking at anything? (I don't think so!) [3]MacLachlan, G. and Reid, I. (1994) Framing and Interpretations. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press. Pages 10-14. [4] Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. (2000) Cognitive Psychology: A student's Handbook. Fourth edition. East Sussex: Psychology Press. [5]Schank, R.C. and Abelson, R.P. (1977) Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. [6]Lunzer, E. (1989) Cognitive development: Learning and the mechanisms of change. In: Patricia Murphy and Bob Moon (eds) Developments in Learning and Assessment. London: Hodder and Stoughton, in association with the Open University. Pages 29-30. [7] Minsky, M. (1975) A framework for representing knowledge. In: P. Winston (ed). The Psychology of Computer Vision. New York: McGraw-Hill. [8]Rumelhart, D.E. and Ortony, A. (1977) The representation of knowledge in memory. In: R.C. Anderson, R.J. Spiro and W.E. Montague (eds), Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 99-135. [9]Schank, R.C. and Abelson, R.P. (1977) Scripts,, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Why not post this to your social network(s), with this button:
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This instinctual urge to create narrative accounts of our perceptions is probably the root source of science, religion and neurosis. Dr Jim Byrne, November 2009.