It's Perfectly Fine Not to Feel Grateful Right Now

If you can't access gratitude right now, that's ok. Feel what you feel.  As we step into Thanksgiving week, the air is filled with messages of thankfulness and gratitude. Today, I want to share a unique perspective on what it means to truly embrace gratitude.  My life is truly a full of blessings a loving  family, a super cozy home supportive friends, but let's be honest, it's not always easy to feel that gratitude, especially when life throws you curveballs.

My Gratitude Practice

Gratitude is a powerful tool in navigating life's ups and downs and if you follow me or have read my book, you know that having a gratitude practice is one of the survival techniques I recommend for you to get through the heaviness and pressure that you may be feeling. In fact, I recommend having a personal Top Five Hit List of activities that keep you from reaching your breaking point.  I want you to schedule in your planner every single day things that just only take a minute or two that can help you schedule some time for yourself.  One of those five things I recommend is writing down just one thing, just one, that you're grateful for. It's good for your mood, your happiness, it can lower your stress levels. And it's actually been shown to have health benefits. 

But, I do know that sometimes it's hard to channel even one thing that you're grateful for.

My Story

I am speaking to you as someone who experienced a tragic event in my marriage eight years ago.  My husband and I were struggling significantly. I had a toddler and a five year old step daughter and I was just so confused. I was experiencing in my marriage these extreme emotions.  It was so confusing because it felt like the more I was trying to make things better, the more things got worse.

It felt like I was in a field of landmines where I couldn't figure out what would upset my partner. It's like I was going along and everything seemed to be going great. Then out of the blue, my partner was upset with me, and I had no idea what I did to cause that outburst of emotion or what to do to make it stop. I wanted my partner to be happy, but I seemed to always hit a wall. 

No matter what I tried, he still continued to have responses that seemed way out of context, and that were difficult to understand. And what's worse, the more I tried to make things better, I felt more and more discouraged.  Ultimately, I felt so bad about myself because my husband was unhappy in spite of my best efforts to be a good partner.

It was only when we got to the point of not having any other ideas on how to make things better that my husband was able to reveal to the first time for anyone a terrible history of childhood abuse at the hands of the church. That if he didn't deal with what happened to him, that he was going to lose everything.  I was in shock.  I also felt a little lied to because this deep dark secret was the one thing that I couldn't put my finger on.  And then I was hopeful. I really was under the understanding that we would just do the hard work, do the counseling.  In a year or so we would be in a much better place. But,  the reality was that things got worse before they got better.

There were a lot of patterns, habits and responses I had to learn to differently in order to get through it.  One of those things was I had to learn to take care of myself.  It was my instinct to put all of my efforts into everyone else.  To try and piece everything together, heal my husband and try to keep the family together. But what I what I ended up realizing is if I didn't take care of myself, I was more reactive to the triggers.  I just wasn't making anything better. I was actually making things worse. 

That's where gratitude came into play for me. But, I have to say that sometimes I just didn't feel the gratitude.

Ingratitude

 As I was getting ready for Thanksgiving and thinking about all the things that I was grateful for, I recently found inspiration from Jay Shetty's podcast. He talked about someone who publicly shared their gratitude journey on Twitter. From everyday joys to deeper moments of appreciation, their journey was relatable and real.  On one particular day, they admitted to not feeling grateful at all. The Twitter post said "I'm not grateful today. I'm hurting and grieving and angry."  It was a raw moment of honesty that struck a chord with Jay and it also struck a chord with me.

Gratitude is beneficial for mental and physical health. But there's a difference between genuine gratitude and guilt-induced gratitude. Sarah Epstein, contributing to Psychology Today, warns that “the pressure to feel grateful can turn gratitude from a source of relief into a source self-torment.

If you're curious about the indicators of unhealthy gratitude, consider these signs:

- ** Obligation-Driven Gratitude**  Telling yourself you 'should' feel grateful because there are many positive aspects in your life, despite not genuinely feeling thankful.

- **Comparison-Based Gratitude** Believing you ought to be grateful by comparing your situation to those who are less fortunate or facing greater hardships, like thinking, 'Others have it worse, so I should feel lucky.'

 - **Suppressed Negative Emotions** Disregarding your authentic negative feelings under the pretext that you're not entitled to them, thinking, 'I don't have the right to feel sad or upset.

If you're in a supportive role like I was, you may be very good at distracting yourself, pretending everything is fine, that you have it all handled, that you don't need to ask for help. You could be guilting yourself into gratitude.

I want to acknowledge that sometimes you do deserve to be able to say "I'm not grateful today. I'm hurting, grieving and angry."

A gratitude practice is amazing, but don't use it to guilt yourself into being okay. I want you to use gratitude to look at look at things from a different angle, especially if you're suffering like I was. I want you to have a goal of just finding something that you appreciate throughout the day.

The key is don't force it.  Healthy gratitude should be gentle, and not a bludgeon. So if it's too difficult to feel your feelings and make space for thankfulness, take a break and just return to it later.

That's exactly what that Twitter journal guy did. A couple of days later, he was back sharing his appreciation for naps and Tylenol. 

Thankful for YOU!

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let's be kind to ourselves in our gratitude journey. Have you ever felt pressured into feeling grateful? Remember, self compassion is crucial. I'm thankful for each of you and our time together. So share this message with someone you're grateful for and let's spread the true thankfulness this Thanksgiving week.