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Frameing, and Frame Control

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Article Table of Contents

Introduction #

I’ve long wanted to have a definitive place where I can explain why I keep thinking of/referencing this thing I call, others call, ‘frame control’.

Here’s a good-enough concise definition:

Frame control: the act of insisting that only one way of seeing something is valid, and using emotional leverage to force others to adopt it.

Its often-enough a tactic of control, especially when it’s a pattern, especially if there’s a power dynamic involved. (Parents ‘controlling the frame’ of their kids reality is how most people first experience frame control in their life.)

The first time I encountered the phrase ‘frame control’ was in this excellent article:

👉 https://knowingless.com/2021/11/27/frame-control/

We all hold various frames on all sorts of issues. A ‘frame’ is the collection of important-to-the-perceiver components of the situation. Someone who’s a heavily religious european american descendant living in the greater united states will often hold the frame of ‘the bible says…’.

Someone else (or the same person) might at other times hold the frame of ‘this particular person says’ or ‘research says…’ or ‘a particular authority says…’

Having a frame and using it isn’t the same as controlling the frame. Two people could have two different perspectives on the same issue, two different frames, and there is not necessarily any conflict.

The issues begin if one of the person is clinging tightly to their frame, and either refusing to move out of it, or refusing to grant the validity of a different frame. They’re controlling which frame is giving space.

It’s a form of invalidating someone else. Invalidating or dismissing someone else’s POV, especially in situations where there’s a power dynamic or it’s a family situation, is a short step away from emotional abuse and neglect.

If it’s a peer situation and happens repeatedly, it’s pretty bad. If it’s a parent doing this to a child, it is horrible to the victim and the dynamic.

Some people unintentionally ‘use’ frame control to try to achieve a certain outcome on a certain topic. It’s ‘just’ slightly coercive conversation, at it’s lightest, maybe.

My religious-authoritarian/supremacist parents are great prototypical examples of the emotional/verbal abuse and neglect potential of frame control, in their own distinctive ways. My dad gets hostile if asked to step out of the frame of supremacist/patriarchal american pro-slavery evangelicalism. my mom gets ‘forgetful’, and gives a blank face in response to anything not directly connected to her rigid thoughts of evangelicals, religious authoritarianism, performative femininity, and role compliance.

Someone like Donald uses frame control to deftly verbally box and bully the victim into some intellectual position, constraining them emotionally as directly as leg shackles constrain someone’s physical movement.

My childhood experience of my own father figure was similar enough to the experience of the author in the frame control piece link. I long ago stopped interacting with him, and a few times recently happened to use words to communicate with him, and could ‘clock’ the tactics so directly and easily this time.

I nearly laughed in his face when he tried to usurp something I said by claiming a different frame. I could have gladly gone into the frame with him, for the record, but since he wasn’t using words in a mutual or collaborative way, but to overpower me and to make me shut up, I of course didn’t give in to the attempted manipulation. I interrupted him and continued the point I was making. He then accused me of disrespect and tried to end the phone call.

The conversations was short, but productive. I was telling him that despite what he thinks his sky daddy says, he has no permission to beat my own child or make threats of assaulting children in her company. I was also disabusing him of any possible notions he may have been clinging to around the status of our relationship. I evaluate him as an open abuser of children, and feel disgust for the kinds of actions he has exhibited, and continues to exhibit. This is probably the only time in my life I verbally stood up for myself to him, and he acted so affronted by it, we may never speak again. Which is fine! As I told him, I don’t care to have in my life people who think chattel slavery is cool, regardless of who’s penis the semen that led to the fetus we now call Josh came from.

So, in that conversation, as a 36 year old, I didn’t get hurt by this man, per se. (The part of me that remembers holding hope for affection or love from a parent was disappointed, but not surprised). I cannot say the same for the 5, 8, 12, 16, 22, 30 year old old versions of me who spent hours, days, years in the presence of someone like this, getting brushed aside and dismissed and demeaned in every interaction.

Signs of not controlling the frame #

The ‘not frame control’ response to frame control piece would be a conversational style informed by something like:

  • frame “choosing and using”, instead of frame controlling
  • frame ‘following’
  • frame ‘checking’
  • conversational mutuality
  • “that’s a good point”/”i can see what you’re saying”

i keep noticing when I talk with evangelicals about ‘their’ things, I can make a concession and ‘put on’ their frame, which is something that they act entitled to. I can then express everything I want to express from the POV of their frame, but since it’s non-conforming, I get shunned. They certainly never express curiosity about alternative frames.

For example, I can discuss Jesus with them, because they claim to care a lot about him. But american evangelicalism doesn’t actually care at all about the interesting things about Jesus. (Would jesus have owned slaves in the american south? but evangelicals used evangelicalism to justify chattel slavery. When I first encountered the story, I could never un-see it. They seem to refuse to see it, at all.)

But never-not-once have they (and anyone else using frame control as a tactic) expressed a willingness to try out, or even recognize, that there might be a different ‘frame’ on the same issue, and globally useful/good/agreeable actions will probably pass mustard in all frames.

Sometimes one issue is seen as ‘complex’ inside of one frame, but might seem different or even simple, in useful ways seen through a different frame. (see again the story of chattel slavery in the american south. To evangelicals of the day, slavery was so complex an issue it befuddled all thinkers! And yet, in a different frame, is there anything even remotely ‘complicated’ about slavery? not at all. It’s evil, abhorrent, disastrous)

To me, once I learned to dual wield ‘the concept of frame control is real’ and ‘there are many possible frames’, I became a bit pushier in conversation, less enjoyable to discuss things with, from the POV of people who want to control the frame.

I don’t think they necessarily think they’re being controlling and coercive when they are doing frame-control type things, because it’s so habitual. It’s more like… trying to keep things familiar and safe, and parroting thought-stopping clichés is certainly a familiar tactic, compared to having a genuinely novel, surprising, uncertain conversation about an emotionally charged topic.

Why frame control is hurtful #

in theory, people exchange words to share and learn useful things about each other.

In talking to my evangelical father about why hitting kids is wrong, he says “well the bible says ….” and he gets pouty and mean when I reference any alternative framing of the situation. He’s not sharing a point of view that makes sense to him with a willingness to explore my point of view - he’s using frame control, and trying to force me to either stay in ‘his’ frame, where he feels safer, or he wants me to stop talking about it.

He dismisses physically assaulting me by saying “it was just a few swats on the butt”. That he would probably feel a certain way if I gave him just a few swats on the butt is irrelevant to him. He’s grasping for frame control, and got quite disregulated when I didn’t follow along like he was used to child me following along. (Or, of course, when child me didn’t follow along, him/his wife labeled me as ‘rebellious’ as they ganged up on me. Imagine needing another adult to comfort you after abusing a 14 year old. weird.)

He interprets ‘stepping outside of the frame’ as ‘disrespect’, and uses that as an excuse to end the conversation. (my POV is he needed to end the conversation because nothing he was saying was ‘working’ at restoring his sense of emotional superiority/control, and fabricated the justification of disrespect to accomplish ending the call)

Of course, at this point it’s obvious that a collaborative outcome isn’t in the cards, so even if I willingly adopt his frame, he just will keep trying to verbally/emotionally beat me into submission, using ever more narrow slices of his frame.

Once one is willing to look at the shape of a conversation to see if it feels like the other person is being collaborative, or aiming to evade and dominate, it becomes very uninteresting to be in the latter kind of conversation.

The frame controller is trying to prevent new information from impacting their way of viewing things, and they’re willing to try to destroy the sense of self of the other person in the conversation, to accomplish their selfish goals.

examples of frame control #

Bleh. Feels too fraught to try to itemize all the different examples. It’s less about whatever the frame is, and more about the other person being willing to bully you into their frame, or bully you out of your frame.

Once someone is controlling the frame, continuing the conversation is pointless. Maybe, theoretically, at a point in the future it could be tried again (probably not) but it’s certainly pointless in the moment. Each of my parents, now, as I had conversations with them as an adult, it was laughably overwhelming, their need to keep certain frames in the conversation. I could feel the panic in both of them. It was very strange, the first time in my life, noticing that my emotional energy was causing them both to panic. I wonder if that was the case even when I was a kid. Plausible. Lots of abusive people fabricate fearing the person they abuse. A little dehumanization, a little disconnection, huzzah!

On Verbal Abuse vs. Emotional Abuse #

I’ve noticed interactions (my own memories of ‘conversations’ with my verbally/emotionally abusive parents) where the first thing that sorta ‘jumps out’ might be the tactics of verbal abuse.

It’s coercion with words. But words are ‘just’ manifestations of inner emotional state, so verbal abuse is to me indistinguishable from emotional abuse. Also, both of my parents would seemlessly transition from using words as threats, to using anything else they could construe as threats (physical assault, threats of punishment, deprivation) to coerce me into whatever they wanted. So, if there’s no boundaries between, say, words and hitting, why should I receive their coercive words more gently than if they were physically assaulting me? Emotional coercion always preceeds physical coercion.

My mom wrote a story from my childhood, trying to ‘convince’ 3 or 4 year old me to put toys away, or take a bath, and child me kept saying “why?” “why?”. In the story she wrote with her own hand and then printed copies of and gave to each of her kids she said

I [miriam] got tired of answering all the questions, so I just skipped to the end. I said ‘Josh, if you don’t put your toys away and take a bath, I will beat you.” “OKAY”, josh said contentedly as he put his toys away and went and took a bath.

I grant that I’ve always had more respect for people when they verbalize their willingness to coerce directly, instead of hiding it behind manipulation. “go take a bath because if you don’t I’ll beat you” is much more direct than “go take a bath because it’s good for you” and lying about your willingness to beat someone else.

Someone can use words in grievous ways, to tear down someone’s sense of self.

Phrases like “you don’t know what you’re talking about” or “that didn’t happen” or “don’t say such a thing” or “you’re too sensitive” are all words that encourage the victim to trust their own point of view less. They’re words that can only be uttered by someone who believes that a hierarchy exists, and they’re at the top of it.

If you flipped onto them the same language they’re giving you, the way they go through the roof indicates that the language is unfair. If kid me had ever told my dad he was ‘too sensitive’, he’d assault me for disobedience. That sort of minimization is acceptable only by the person who seems on the ‘up’ side of the power dynamic.

Verbal coerciveness is just the easiest-to-the-abusive-person tactic to achieve their goals. It connects to entitlement (a right to emotional comfort) and rigidity (“who are you to expect me to change anything about myself because of your existence?”)

Verbal abuse and emotional abuse are, in my mind, basically the same thing. Words said and unsaid convey the underlying emotional state. Words given with a harsh tone and rolled eyes are so much more than just the words. It’s a whole emotional thing.

Parents use emotional abuse (and emotional neglect) to achieve whatever they want from their kids all the time. That’s why the following book is so powerful as a parenting book. The frame of ‘power over’ vs ‘mutual power’ is everything.

Finding novel frames #

Sometimes I wonder if someone’s use of frame control is rooted in poor imagination. Maybe they think you’ll do to them what they would do to someone else, and they’re willing to coerce and use violence, so they think you are willing to coerce and use violence.

If they had that view, their attacks, their scrabbling for verbal control would feel to them like preemptive defense against you hurting them.

It’s sorta small, sad, to see this being done by adults with decades of life under their belt. It’s more reasonable to me when I imagine them experiencing certain childhood events.

If they never had the experience of interacting with someone who didn’t exploit a power dynamic, they would have an impoverished imagination around sharing conversational power with others. They might not have a felt sense at all that anything good could come from it.

So, to that end, here’s two (very different) books that round to ‘dramatically increasing one’s imagination for alternative frames’:

  1. Legal Systems Very Different From Ours a compendium of many different legal systems that were or are in use around the world. The chapter on pirate law is very interesting. The book is available on the author’s website for free.
  2. Worth the Candle A long, free book in a world that is based on one person’s different dungeons and dragons maps. Very imagination-sparking, in terms of playing along with, rolling with, a number of different frames.

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