I had a bad relationship with gratitude for a long time. I thought that it was some kind of BS that people who had their heads in the clouds just went on and on about.
Boy, was I surprised when I found out how powerful gratitude can actually be.
In my case, gratitude was the primary vehicle I used to help fix the distorted view I had of the world due to my severe depression.
My brain defaulted to looking for the awful in things because of the depression. And the awful is easy to find. It’s everywhere.
I had to train my brain to see the good. However, there are wrong ways to go about practicing gratitude, and if it feels fake or forced, you may be doing one of these things.
1. Using gratitude to invalidate your emotions.
Gratitude is not meant to be a replacement for negative emotions.
One common mistake people often make is to try to replace unwanted emotions with gratitude instead of allowing themselves to feel sad, angry, or whatever it is they’re feeling.
The normal human experience involves emotions we consider both good and bad, but it’s hard to even consider bad emotions as useful or important.
They are.
When you experience negative emotions, that’s your brain’s way of coping with whatever caused the problem. That helps you emotionally process the situation so you can move past it.
You have to let yourself feel your emotions when you’re able to; otherwise, you don’t move through them. You can get stuck in that mental space.
So if you’re using gratitude to deny your valid, negative emotions, it’s not going to work. That’s not actually practicing gratitude; that’s toxic positivity.
2. Practicing gratitude in a way that does not accurately reflect your circumstances.
One of the biggest turning points for me was realizing that gratitude is not always appropriate.
Gratitude can feel hollow and superficial if you’re dealing with an extreme situation, under a lot of stress, or if you’re really struggling.
What is there to be grateful for in those situations?
It’s not realistic to find gratitude for a situation when you’re just trying to keep your head above water. Not every cloud has a silver-lining – and that’s okay.
As such, I don’t try to find gratitude for terrible situations when they befall me.
Instead, I opt for gratitude that I’m alive to attempt to overcome the challenge ahead of me.
Granted, that doesn’t work in all situations, but I find it works more often than not. But if you can’t find a silver lining right now, that’s okay.
3. Focusing on what you should appreciate versus what you actually appreciate.
There are a lot of narratives out there about how you should and shouldn’t feel. But gratitude only works if it’s genuine and rooted in reality.
Listening to those narratives can get you off course, because you may start looking for gratitude in things that you don’t actually feel grateful for. And that doesn’t activate your brain like sincere gratitude does.
I am someone who has suicide attempts in my history, so when I say I am genuinely grateful to be alive to face the challenges of life, I mean that. I know far too many people who never had that opportunity.
That comes from a sincere place, and that’s why it works for me.
Look for the things that you can sincerely appreciate about your life instead of what other people say is right.
4. Comparing your life to other people who have it worse than you.
I used to use this maladaptive coping technique a lot. It seems like gratitude on the surface, but it’s basically just a way to make yourself more miserable, essentially flogging yourself with guilt and shame over your struggles.
“I’m grateful I don’t have things as bad as X” is not a healthy way to practice gratitude. It can turn into guilt and even self-loathing because you convince yourself you should be doing better.
Suffering isn’t a contest, and we shouldn’t make it one.
It doesn’t matter what anyone else in the world is currently experiencing. It does not invalidate whatever struggles you may have. You don’t have to find a silver lining or minimize your struggles to yourself.
Sometimes, life is just hard, and that’s how it goes.
5. Mistakenly thinking that gratitude means pretending everything is fine.
Pretending everything is fine when it’s not is actually a form of avoidance, not gratitude.
Trying to use gratitude to avoid the problems that you’re dealing with will not help. Instead, it just makes things more difficult to deal with in the long-term.
You don’t have to pretend everything is fine. Gratitude may not be the appropriate approach for whatever it is you’re currently going through.
Mind you, it can be applied in a lot of situations, but as I’ve already mentioned, you do need to make room for those more difficult emotions you don’t want to have.
You do need to acknowledge and accept the struggles you may face as they are. Then, after you’ve given yourself some time to feel your emotions, you can start engaging in genuine gratitude practices.
6. Forcing yourself to feel emotions that you don’t.
Gratitude isn’t necessarily a big, loud emotion or practice. It’s often quiet. Sometimes, gratitude is simply an acknowledgment of something good in a difficult time, even if you don’t feel much “good” emotion with it.
Maybe you’re struggling, but a friend is there for you, so you think, “I am grateful for my friend being here.” However, even if you intellectually understand the gratitude, you may not feel that emotion in the moment.
That’s okay and to be expected. Acknowledge the thoughts, let them come, and let them go if they need to go.
You shouldn’t be struggling to find the “correct” emotion because there isn’t a correct emotion. You just feel how you feel, and that’s okay.
7. Expecting gratitude to be a quick fix.
Gratitude is not a quick fix. At all.
In my case, I was undiagnosed with severe Bipolar-depression for almost 20 years. It took years of work before I felt I really started generating the tangible benefits of gratitude to improve my mental and emotional health.
I’m sure it probably played some role before that, but I only really noticed years later.
My brain was in the habit of seeing the awful and terrible in everything. Unmaking that bad habit and replacing it with a better habit – gratitude – required a big chunk of time.
Now? Now, I can see where gratitude benefits me regularly. I hardly ever fall into depressive spirals because I’ve conditioned my brain to look for the positives instead of the negatives.
8. Gratitude may not be the right tool for the job, or it may not be sufficient on its own.
Gratitude can feel forced if it’s not the right tool for the job.
For my mental health recovery, gratitude was and is just one tool in my toolbox. I needed actual mental health therapy and psych medication to bring my brain into a healthier space to even attempt to make use of practices like gratitude.
Gratitude is a powerful tool, yes, but it may not be the right tool for the job ahead of you, or it may not be the only tool you need.
Instead, you may need actual therapy to address whatever struggles you’re trying to overcome.
A good talk therapist is worth their weight in gold, because they can help you find your way on a difficult path.
They can introduce you to tools and perspectives that you may not have considered, and you may need those instead of, or as well as, gratitude.
In closing…
Gratitude is powerful. I attribute it to a dramatic improvement in my mental health. It has made navigating the challenges of life much easier.
Yes, bad things still happen, because that’s just how life goes sometimes. But I can face them while acknowledging my emotions and finding reason to continue moving forward.
Gratitude is a practice because it mostly works in the long-term. Once you start feeling those long-term benefits, the short-term ones become clearer and clearer.
