Verified by 
The maps on my computer and phone tell a different story depending on how far in or out you zoom. At the closest level, the story is about the state of the yardwork around my house (somebody should trim that overgrown bush in the front yard). Then there’s a story about what a cool neighborhood I live in, surrounded by restaurants and retail. Then there’s a story about how far my commute is, and a story about the pioneers who settled down when they got to the mountains even though there is no navigable waterway, and then a story about how far away the ocean is. You get the idea.
People narrate events in a way that, without their knowing it, supports their happiness or unhappiness, that supports their sense that things are going well or badly. (Happiness when things are actually going badly is an opiate that keeps you from improving things; unhappiness when things are actually going well keeps you from enjoying things.) When it comes to unhappiness, psychotherapy can be construed as changing the narrative to one that remains true to reality but connotes a different meaning. One way to think about that narration is to consider the zoom level patients are using, rather than just to consider what they are making of the different events. (Zoom can be considered an example of what systems theorists mean by punctuation, although punctuation typically refers to the question of how far back in time the narrative goes—who started the conflict.)
A man is obsessed with whether his wife is cheating on him. He sees only the wistful smile on her face as she contemplated lunch with a business associate. He does not zoom in for details of the smile; he does not zoom out for an assessment of her character or their marriage.
An employee repeatedly reprimands people for not doing their jobs. She sees slackers and sinners, supported by a zoom level that highlights work not done. She does not zoom in to consider her feelings about the work or her associations to slacking; she does not zoom out to consider the relative unimportance of the work to the overall functioning of the business or to consider her confusing role in the organization (maybe she thinks that being there longer than others means that she is in charge of them).
All the major theoretical orientations have zoom buttons for going in or out. Psychoanalysis zooms in on affect or out to personal history; behaviorism zooms in to specific behaviors or out to occasioning environments; cognitive-behavior therapy tends to zoom only in, to thoughts and patterns of thinking; systems theory zooms in to role-relationships or out to roles in larger systems.
So when you’re unhappy, try hitting the plus or minus button on that little scale on the side of your visual field. You could change your perspective without even changing your seat.
