Seeking Gratitude
Gratitude journaling has been “on trend” as of late. The concept of gratitude from a therapeutic perspective derives from mindfulness work and encourages people to be present with the entirety of their experience, whether those experiences are challenging or comforting. Unfortunately, gratitude work within the context of popular culture often becomes transformed into positive thinking mantras, which can leave people feeling that their more difficult experiences are invalidated and/or misunderstood.
So what does healthy gratitude look like? Healthy gratitude practice does not discount the difficult aspects of your life at any point in time. Rather, it simply invites you to be present with the smaller joys in life that may be overshadowed by particularly challenging times. When we become so entrenched in our negative experiences that we miss any positive occurrences in our lives, it can become taxing to get ourselves out of a negative cycle of thinking. The term for a cycle of negative thinking without lending credence to positive experiences is known in therapeutic circles as “discounting the positive,” and is indicative of distorted thought.
Gratitude is particularly useful for disrupting negative thinking loops and allowing ourselves to reconnect with the simple pleasures that life affords us day to day. To practice gratitude, it is important to be mindful of these pleasures each day. If you find yourself stuck in a negative thought cycle, try to set some time aside at the end of your day each day to reflect on the day as a whole, taking into account both positive and negative experiences you may have had that day. For each negative experience you reflect on, try to seek out something that you can express gratitude for that particular day.
What you can seek gratitude for each day is entirely up to you. You do not have to force yourself to be grateful for things that do not resonate with you. It is also important to note that things that you are grateful for do not have to be grand things. You can be grateful for something as simplistic as hitting all green lights on the way to work or even making it from the grocery store to your car before the afternoon thunderstorm started. You can also note gratitude for things in your life that are ongoing or repetitive like being involved in a healthy relationship or having someplace to sleep at night. These can sometimes be things we take for granted, so it is important to recognize the things that we do have in our life that are positive, especially in our most challenging moments.
It is important to reiterate that gratitude work is not meant to invalidate or outweigh negative experiences. It is simply meant to bring attention to the joys that exist in our lives, even when our life is hard. Gratitude can be a powerful tool for bringing people out of negative patterns of thinking which can create entrenchment into negative experiences. Remember to try to take time to give credence to your positive experiences daily, so that you are properly equipped to experience your life in its entirety.
