Your Gratitude Practice Won’t Save You

I'm worried about gratitude.

Strange thing to worry about, right? I mean, who can argue with gratitude? What kind of monster tries to throw shade at this age-old practice of delighting in the small joys of life?

Well, those of us who have seen it misused. Instead of eliciting the good vibes you’re looking for, gratitude can show up within the context of self flagellation.

Here's where I see it: "I know I should be grateful..."

(Pro tip: whenever the word "should" shows up in a thought, be very wary about taking that thought seriously.)

Too often, I sit with a struggling person who describes feeling (insert shitty feeling here: guilty, angry, unfulfilled...). I ask, "how do you manage those feelings?" and the answer is "well, I try to be more grateful for what I do have." Usually, those sources of gratitude are things like family, good job, nice home, and general stability.

This person is putting sound advice into action: practice gratitude. It's the key to happiness.

If you've ever worked with me, you won't be surprised to know that my next question is, "do you find it helpful to be more grateful?" And that's when I see the mask slip. "No, not really."

So, why not? Why is it that your heartfelt gratitude doesn't counter balance to free floating guilt?

I have an answer to that, but before I get to it, let me offer one of the more commonly held misconceptions.
"My gratitude practice isn't making my bad feelings go away because I'm not doing it right (or enough, or consistently)."
Or:
"My gratitude practice isn't making my bad feelings go away because I'm truly awful and I am incapable of feeling enough gratitude."

Nope.
It's not because you're doing it wrong.
It's not because you aren't doing it enough.
It's not because you aren't actually grateful.

It's just that your ick and your gratitude aren't really connected. One does not balance out the other. Too little gratitude does not cause too much ick.

To connect gratitude and any other emotion is a strawman fallacy (I just learned this term and I'm obsessed with applying it to all possible statements, especially my own). "I'm angry" cannot be argued away with "Be more grateful."

The mistake here is to turn towards gratitude as the antidote to bad feelings, when in fact, these are two complete separate experiences. Reflexively turning away from the dark emotional experiences and instead leaning into gratitude means that you're shutting down something very real by believing that it shouldn't be there. Your anger, your resentment, your sadness, you cannot hide from them under the blanket of gratitude.

Put in a more violent metaphor, gratitude is not a bazooka that you can aim at your shadows and blast them out of existence.

Your hard feelings are there. Let's not pretend otherwise. When you react to those bad feelings by slamming the door on them as if they were unwelcome guests, they don't go away. They'll get your attention one way or another.

Before you going running from the prison of guilt to the promised land of gratitude, take a moment and be with the guilt. Just listen.

If you're able to access some compassion towards yourself around this, get at it! Connect with your pain and know that you are not alone in it. Pull back the stories you've been telling yourself for years and let the guilt tell its own story.

It may be that the guilt is very, very old, that it's been around you for decades, planted there by some message you received as a child. Based on some studies of inherited trauma, it's quite possible that those feelings of guilt are not yours at all, but that they come to you as an unwelcome birthright.

Gratitude is a truly important practice in the larger toolbox of practices that lead to a better life. When you want to exercise your gratitude muscle, do that. Maybe my guide will help.

Let your guilt do its own thing. Sitting quietly and patiently with it will help it to mature and then integrate with your adult self in a more constructive way.

Therapy, spiritual practice and psychedelic work can push the fast forward button on this deconstruction of your guilt prison. Reach out if you want to learn more.