Using Ostranenie to Reframe Life Experiences

Sometimes, my days feel like they’re on autopilot. My depression asserts that nothing changes; my CFS/ME makes it hard to change much even if I want to. Post-traumatic stress has made certain familiar sights sound alarms in my body. In social work we speak of recovery, resilience, and reframing. Lately, I’ve been learning about another idea: ostranenie, or defamiliarization. It’s an artistic concept, but I wonder: might it be a tool for making my own life and perception a bit more alive?

Ostranenie—or “making strange”—is a concept from Russian Formalism, coined by Viktor Shklovsky. It’s the idea that habitual perception, or the automatic way we see things, deadens us and makes us numb to the richness of life. Defamiliarization is the opposite: making familiar things strange so we think and see with intention.

Shklovsky argues that the goal of art is to prolong perception: to slow us into noticing things we otherwise overlook, things we’ve come to take for granted. Big Think extends this concept beyond art: companies like Apple or Cirque du Soleil use defamiliarization as strategy, by presenting the ordinary in unexpectedly new ways to disrupt assumptions.

Ostranenie through My Lens

Because of CFS/ME and PTSD, even daily life is filtered through thresholds: energy, safety, memory. The familiar often becomes oppressive: the chair I always sit in, the same walls, the same memories attached to the same objects. Defamiliarization, I realize, might be a practice that could help me reclaim small moments, even when leaving the house feels impossible.

Experiments in Making Strange

Re-describing the Unremarkable
I take one simple object in my room—a water bottle, for example—and try to describe it as if I’ve never seen one. The way light bends through water. The sound it makes when it settles on the table. The edges, the coldness, the condensation. This echoes what Gilliam Writers Group describes: using unusual or cross-sensory descriptions, or changing perspective so that routine things stop being routine.
Memory through New Angles
I think of a moment that is painful. Then I re-imagine it from a different vantage: not as the self who suffered, but perhaps as an outer observer, or even as another person in the scene. What objects were around? Were there any aromas in the air? Moving details around in my mind often shifts the emotional charge, sometimes softening sharp edges. This feels like applying Shklovsky’s idea of removing the automatism of perception.
Rescripting Routine
I try to “make strange” parts of my routine. When taking medication at the exact time I always do, I pause, notice how the pill feels in my hand; the flavor of the drink I’m using to swallow the pill. When feeding my dogs, I try to imagine: what if I’m a visitor from another culture and have never fed a dog before? What about this action seems odd, what seems tender, what seems ritual? These small jolts make habitual acts feel alive again.

Reflections

Pain doesn’t vanish, but perception shifts. The ache in my muscles or the dread in my chest remains, but when I look at my room with defamiliarized vision, something softens. The edges of things blur; the mind’s tight grip loosens a little. The world isn’t less painful, but it becomes stranger—and in that strangeness, there is room.
I reclaim agency over what feels fixed. A lot of adversity in disability and trauma comes from feeling trapped in what is “unchangeable.” Defamiliarization reminds me that how I perceive things matters. I may not control all the circumstances, but I can shift perspective, slow down, notice differently. That is small, but powerful agency.
Emotional overwhelm can be gentled. When flashbacks, panic, or feelings of depression spike, sometimes familiar memories loop. Using ostranenie, I can interrupt the loop: describe the moment slowly, like an outsider, or replace sensory details. That gap, between the habitual memory and the strange re-seeing, gives pause. In that pause I sometimes find breath or a different thought.
It’s exhausting, yet sustaining. Doing this takes energy (already scarce). Sometimes trying to see differently feels like pushing air with heavy limbs. So I need to be gentle: just one short exercise in a day, or even part of one. But those small acts accumulate. Even one strange description or one shift in memory can build something like resilience.

Connecting Ostranenie to Social Work Values

As someone trained in social work, with its commitment to dignity, empowerment, noticing systemic power, trauma, and narrative, I see defamiliarization aligning with many core values:

Narrative therapy: reframing the stories we tell about ourselves. Defamiliarization is like telling our own story in a translated language, one that slows us down, challenges us to see what we usually gloss over.
Trauma-informed practice: recognizing that familiar triggers can be overwhelming. By making the familiar strange, by gently reintroducing sensory detail, we might reduce the power of automatic triggers.
Empowerment & agency: small acts of perception can give back some control over what is often out of control in chronic physical or mental illness.
Mindful presence: slowing perception, noticing each moment as new, is close to mindfulness; but with the added jolt of “this is strange,” which may help break out of depressive numbing or shame.

Challenges

Balance between safety and discomfort. Defamiliarization can feel unanchored. Sometimes making things strange triggers disorientation or anxiety. I have to choose moments when I feel reasonably grounded or have an available source of support.
Not turning it into another expectation. Between depression and fatigue, expectations can cause more disappointment than encouragement. I must remember: defamiliarizing isn’t about being “creative” or “artistic,” it’s about being alive and noticing.
Finding community: doing this alone is possible, but isolating. Talking about what I saw, what felt strange, with someone who listens helps me integrate what I saw back into my being. In social work terms: safe relational connection helps carry the strange.

Small Invitation

If you’re reading this, perhaps you have days where nothing feels new. Where routine is safety, but also suffocation. Maybe defamiliarization could be for you too. Here’s a short exercise to try, if you’re willing:

Choose one thing in your immediate space: a pen, a chair, a coffee mug, whatever you can reach.
Describe it out loud or in writing as though you’ve never seen it before. What is its shape? Its color in the light? Its texture, its weight, its edges? The sound it makes when moved?
Notice what emotion surfaces when you do this. Is there comfort? Strangeness? Shame? Joy?
You don’t need to share the results with anyone. Let it be just your noticing.

I’m still learning to live in a body slowed by illness, in a mind shadowed by trauma. But ostranenie gives me a practice: making the stone stony again. Not because life will be perfect, but so it might feel more alive. In strangeness, there is possibility that the familiar can transform, even softly.