The Dark Side of Gratitude
Gratitude practice has been trendy in recent years and you have likely heard it recommended. This is for good reason! Intentionally and consistently acknowledging or expressing gratitude for the good things in our lives has numerous benefits, including increased happiness and wellbeing and diminished focus on negative emotions or experiences.
I find in my work with clients, however, that gratitude can have a dark side too. I hear a lot of people using gratitude as a way to shame or invalidate themselves. For example, “I have no reason to feel depressed. I have a good job, a loving partner, and friends who care. I should be happy and grateful for what I have.”
Yikes. When used in this way, gratitude has the opposite effect of the benefits mentioned above. Rather than increase happiness, it makes us feel like there is something wrong with us for daring to have emotions. Rather than decrease focus on negative emotions, it heightens these emotions. Now on top of feeling whatever our original feeling is, we also feel shame for having that feeling in the first place because there is “no reason for it.”
For many of us, this tendency is rooted in childhood experiences. Perhaps you were one of many children who heard when you complained about your dinner, for instance, that, “You should be grateful to have dinner at all. There are starving children in the world who would love to be able to eat this meal.” Though there generally is not ill-will behind statements like these, the underlying message is that your feelings do not make sense and it is ungrateful of you to have them.
These childhood learnings can get further reinforced by the common experience of people referencing gratitude as a way to try to make us feel better when we are struggling. We are a culture that emphasizes positivity, meaning that most of us are not equipped with tools to sit with and respond in helpful ways to painful or difficult emotions in ourselves or others. We often default to well-meaning though generally unhelpful platitudes, like encouraging a person to be grateful and remember the good things in their life when they are down.
For example, maybe you try telling a friend that you feel anxious that your child is falling behind in school and their response is to remind you that there is much to be grateful for as your child is healthy and thriving in other ways. Your friend was trying to make you feel better, but the message you likely received is that your anxiety and complaints are unwarranted because of the many blessings in your life.
So how do we break this often unconscious habit of using gratitude as a weapon against ourselves? I encourage my clients to recognize that we are capable of feeling more than one thing at a time and to embrace the “and” statement. For example, you can feel frustrated by a situation at work AND be grateful that you have a job. You can be depressed AND be grateful for the supportive people you have in your life. One does not negate the other. You are allowed to have whatever feelings you may have about situations, relationships, or experiences in your life. The presence of these feelings does not make you a selfish, unappreciative, or dramatic person.
Regular gratitude practice can be a powerful tool in your larger self-care and wellness routine. However, make sure that you are using gratitude practice as a means to lift up and affirm that which is good and beautiful in your life and not as a means to cut yourself down. If you could use some extra support breaking the cycle of self-invalidation and accessing self-love, contact me today to get started.
