“Gratitude is a powerful catalyst for happiness. It’s the spark that lights a fire of joy in your soul.”

Amy Collette (Hall, 2020)

Well, that was is it, readers. The final stretch of 2020. It’s been quite a wild ride, n’est pas?

I remember last year at this time, envisioning what “life in the ‘20s” would look like. The notion tickled me. What I had in mind was a resurgence of jazz, hipster speak-easy restaurants, beads, fringe, and fedoras. Instead of ‘livin’ the Gatsby life’, what I experienced was 365 days of Boardwalk Empire-level corruption, violence, ruthlessness, and chaos (along with a global plague, no less). Talk about emotional whiplash.

With things as they are, it is often difficult to halt the negative thought-train long enough to feel anything in the realm of gratitude. What’s there to be grateful for? With all the hits that we have taken, why would we want to feel grateful for anything?

There Are Reasons to Practice Gratitude

Well, as it turns out, there are innumerable reasons to practice gratitude. As many psychological studies have shown, people who consciously practice gratitude experience significant health benefits. These benefits include cultivating positive emotions, increasing awareness of positive experiences, developing stronger coping skills, improving interpersonal skills, building stronger relationships, and reducing depression and anxiety symptoms (“Giving thanks can make you happier,” 2011). From a cognitive perspective, practicing gratitude aids individuals who struggle with irrational thought patterns (Komay, 2020). An example of this might involve someone who buys into all-or-nothing cognitive distortions, such as “Life never goes well for me” or “Things are always bad for me.” Practicing gratitude forces one to challenge the irrationality of these thoughts. (After all, if you can sit down and list ten things you are grateful for, ten things that are going well in your life, ten things you are looking forward to, how would you ever defend your dysfunctional black-and-white thoughts?) Disputing cognitive distortions improves the person’s general psychological functioning and ability to cope with negativity. This, in turn, leads to improved mental health.

What Does ‘Practicing Gratitude’ Look Like?

So, one might ask, what exactly does ‘practicing gratitude’ look like? There are many ways to actively practice gratitude and develop gratitude skills, all of which go deeper than making an obligatory thank-you list. (For a more comprehensive look at gratitude therapy exercises, check out this article; Fabrega, n.d.). If you do decide to explore your relationship with gratitude, try to challenge yourself. Get creative with it. Engage your five senses. Go beyond the present. What goodness have you experienced in the past? What do you look forward to happening in the future? Who are the players in your life who help make good things happen? What do you appreciate about them specifically? Dig into the details. You might be surprised at what you find.

To be clear, practicing gratitude does not mean we are minimizing our bad experiences, nor should we ever feel guilty for experiencing negative emotions. We at Jax Therapy Network are not peddling Pollyanna-inspired “positive at all costs” nonsense. The fact is, bad things do happen, as 2020 has proven. Sometimes our losses are so intensely painful, we find it impossible to see any good left in the world. It is a commonly held misconception that, in order to experience gratitude, one must dismiss or invalidate the pain of what we lack. This could not be further from the truth. No one has the right to discredit the pain of your losses—not even you. Gratitude and grief are two separate emotional processes, entirely capable of happening simultaneously without one invalidating the other. The better we get at balancing the two processes, the more clearly we see our reality for what it is.

As dismal as things sometimes seem, remember— there are always aspects of our lives that might inspire gratitude, if we let them. To put it in perspective, no one appreciates the air that once filled his lungs like a drowning man. During the worst of times, there is always something to appreciate. Gratitude should never invalidate the hurt. It should facilitate our efforts to see the good that remains. Because the goodness is what makes our lives worth living, yeah?

A Gratitude Exercise

I will end things with a gratitude exercise of my own. (Feel free to practice it yourself, if you feel so inclined.)

My Gratitude Exercise Prompt: What do I appreciate about my 2020 experiences?

Well…

One thing I can say with absolutely sincerity is that, thanks to the challenges I faced in 2020, I now realize that I am more resilient and resourceful than I ever knew. With all of the stress and pain that has taken place, I remain standing. I am not a hollow shell, but a whole person, capable of coping and taking on challenges that, under easier circumstances, would have seemed unfathomable. I have remained grounded, reasonable, kind, and relatively healthy through most of my struggles. Sure, I have dealt with depressed moments (hours, days, weeks …), but the point is, they have not paralyzed me. I have come to realize what is essential to my own happiness— that some things that previously seemed so important are relatively meaningless in the bigger scheme of things. I understand my own values, priorities, and principles better. I have gotten to know myself in a new light.

So thank you, 2020, for being an effective teacher. It certainly wasn’t an easy class, but I’ll be sure to carry your lessons with me for many years to come.

Courtesy: Gwendolyn Brown, M.S..

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