The Dark Side of Gratitude
I am trying to be more realistic with the number of goals/intentions I set per week. I am aiming to focus on one or two things-whether is a significant task I want to get done that I am putting off, a habit I want to develop or an attitude I want to cultivate. This week I want to focus on actively practicing more gratitude: an intention I have on an ongoing basis, but tends to get forgotten. This led to me reflecting on the practice of gratitude and in what circumstances it may be unhelpful or even harmful.
Actively practicing gratitude-cultivating appreciation for what is going well in your life- is a beneficial habit to develop. However, there may be some situations in which it is an unhelpful approach, encouraging ‘toxic positivity’. Toxic positivity it is positivity taken too far -it is the approach of trying to put a ‘positive spin’ on every situation, leading people to feel like they need to repress negative emotions and their negative emotions are not acceptable or valid.
How can we make sure that regularly practicing gratitude doesn’t slip into toxic positivity? I think it is important to be aware of intentions and expectations, and to be wary of using gratitude in response to painful emotions.
Actively practicing gratitude on a regular basis can nudge you towards having a more positive mindset in difficult situations, and generally feeling more positive emotions. However, it can be counterproductive if we attempt to use it is an avoidance strategy, to try and ‘fix’ difficult emotions in the moment. I don’t think it is the most helpful response to intense negative emotions or incredibly difficult circumstances. In the midst of an intense negative emotion, cultivating kindness and self-compassion may be more helpful.
It is hard to engage with a sense of gratitude when you are experiencing an intensely unpleasant emotion, and the attempt to focus on the positive has the potential to escalate into a feeling of shame and guilt, particular for people who are already prone to having these thoughts and feelings . Many people have had the experience of being told by (well-meaning) people that they should reflect on how ‘lucky’ they are when they are feeling sad, that many people are ‘worse off’ or ‘it’s not all bad!’. Or (by maybe less well-meaning) to ‘snap out of it’. This comes from a standpoint influenced by various different misunderstandings, including the causes and conditions that create negative emotions: even if our feelings were purely based on our external circumstances (which is obviously not the case), our brain does not produce some quantity of ‘sad chemicals’ in perfect proportion to the ‘badness’ of the experience. Some people may experience all their family and friends being massacred-from an external perspective, this may seem 1000 times as bad as being dumped by your girlfriend. But does it feel 1000 times as bad? Most likely not.
For many people, particularly those with more severe mental health issues such as depression, negative emotions may often consist of feelings of worthlessness and shame, accompanied by thoughts that they are ‘pathetic', ‘weak’ or a ‘burden’ on others. It is not hard to see how an attempt to practice gratitude in response to these emotions, could easily escalate into feeling that their emotions are not valid as their lives ‘could be much worse’, or feelings of despair in response to reflecting on others suffering.
I don’t think the practice of gratitude in the midst of intensely painful emotions is completely ‘out of bounds’ if one is mindful of intentions and impact, but perhaps it should be used carefully. It is possible to acknowledge and validate and understanding the pain you are feeling, and then turn your attention towards what is ‘going well’ in your life, as a way of rebalancing the mind. With the right approach, practicing gratitude can be used as a way of counteracting irrational thoughts, without ignoring or invalidating your pain-eg ‘this is a moment of suffering and it feels really hard. Let me not forget that I won’t always feel like this and there is still a positive aspects to my life’.