When Amy Clay, Licensed Professional Counselor and co-founder of Sunstone Counseling, begins a couples session, she asks each partner to share something they appreciate about the other and how that makes them feel.
“It can be anything from, ‘I love that you make me coffee in the morning, and it makes me feel cared for,’ to something grand like, ‘I love that you’re a devoted father, and that makes me feel grateful that our children have you as a dad,’ ” she said.
The practice helps couples stop focusing on what’s wrong in a relationship and instead, infuse appreciation into it. Amy referenced Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist, researcher and prolific author who specializes in couples and discovered that a ratio of five positive responses/interactions for each negative response/interaction results in the happiest couples.
“You want more ‘deposits’ than ‘withdrawals’ in your relationships,” Amy said. “Just like a bank account—if you have a lot of withdrawals over time, the relationship can feel depleted, sometimes nearly bankrupt. Couples have to be intentional about having gratitude for their partner to keep making those emotional and relational deposits to have a ‘rich’ relationship.”
We’re all reminded to cultivate this skill each November for Thanksgiving, but Amy asks people to make this intentional shift to gratitude year-round. Studies show it’s worth the effort, as this positive perspective reduces depression and anxiety.
“We have a survival brain that is always scanning for problems; that’s our default setting,” Amy said. “Since we’re no longer cavemen or -women and don’t have to look for those physical threats, gratitude helps us get out of that primitive way of thinking.”
But Amy stressed that she doesn’t want to oversimplify serious challenges or create toxic positivity. “By no means do I think you can sprinkle gratitude onto a major problem and solve it,” she said. “It’s hard to practice gratitude when you need it the most.”
In over 25 years of being a therapist—including more than a decade with Sunstone, which has 70 therapists across multiple locations in Northern Virginia—Amy has seen people become more open to the practice of gratitude and mindfulness.
“It was considered sort of woo-woo, but now people have apps like Calm or Balance, and it’s widely accepted,” she said. “People have access to this information more readily, so more people are like, yeah, I get it. It’s the idea of really practicing it and making it part of your routine.”
A Selection of Skills-Based Therapies
Vanessa Cheshier, who practices in Sunstone’s Ashburn office, employs Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a skills-based intervention focusing on regulating emotions, balancing acceptance with change, and creating a life worth living. She explained that gratitude doesn’t have to be black or white. “You can acknowledge what’s not going well and still find pieces of gratitude even in things you don’t like,” she said.
Vanessa runs DBT groups at Sunstone to help clients build skills for regulating their emotions, tolerating stress, becoming more mindful, and communicating effectively. “It helps us gain perspective and turn our mind toward the positive,” she said.
In a part of DBT called a diary card, she asks clients to track their daily behaviors and emotions and write something that makes them grateful. “I’ve gotten feedback from a lot of people that it’s their favorite part, and it kind of puts things in perspective when they get to it at the end of the diary card,” she said.
Another mindfulness skill that she incorporates is the practice of Loving Kindness. “It’s a kind of mediation that you do to express peace,” she said, adding that it’s shown to increase gratitude, joy and hope and protect us from judgment and hostility. It involves coming up with genuine well wishes for yourself, others, or the world as a whole. As a meditation, almost like a prayer, you repeat those well wishes for yourself or someone else, for instance, ‘May I feel safe and protected.’
“You can use it toward yourself or toward people you have positive or negative feelings about, which is the more challenging one,” Vanessa said. “If we’re sending well wishes to people who aren’t our favorite, it can make us more grateful.”
As humans, we’re biologically wired to seek out the negative to avoid dangers, and we need to be more intentional about finding the positive. That’s where the dialectical perspective comes in.
“Some people are turned off by the idea of being grateful and find it invalidating or that it’s toxic positivity, that you are expected to gloss over problems and think everything is great even if it’s not going the way that you want it to,” she said. “But there are ways to practice gratitude where you still acknowledge the troubles you’re having or the troubles going on in the world. It can be hard for some people to be grateful when watching the news, for instance. There are terrible things happening and people suffering. There’s almost a sense of guilt that can come for being grateful, and that’s where dialectics come in: Both things can be true. Terrible things are happening in the world, and there are still things we can be grateful for, even if it’s a tiny little piece of something.”
From children to adolescents, adults and couples, all of whom Sunstone serves, gratitude can be woven into therapy, addressing life’s challenges with a range of approaches. Strength-based positive psychology—which includes using skills to improve gratitude—can play a key role in gaining a positive perspective in lives and relationships, and that doesn’t have to end when the turkey and stuffing are gone.
“People get in habitual ways of talking and thinking,” Amy said. Instead of always complaining about what you don’t like, she said, think about what you’d like MORE of.
“As a therapist, I’m trying to help them move out of a low state. Finding what’s working in life can be transformational, particularly as people keep building on it over time,” she said. “They’ll catch themselves in a scarcity mindset, feeling depressed and angry and anxious about that and think, ‘What do I need to do to move myself up to a higher state?’ Gratitude is part of it. Getting into a new habit and flipping that script can help people transform their lives.”
Incorporate gratitude into your daily life with these prompts:
*Bookend the day with a gratitude journal, noting at least five things to appreciate.
*Cultivate gratitude in your relationships, whether with your child, spouse or coworker. Let people know what you appreciate about them.
*Create a gratitude jar, with everyone in the family contributing a slip of paper noting something positive.
*Try “flooding”: Write everything you like and value in another person and share with that person.
*At a family dinner, share something that you’re thankful for that day or say something nice to everyone at the table.
*If you’re stuck, use your senses. What do you see or smell that you’re grateful for?
Is Social Media Stealing Our Happiness?
Most people know that social media can be a powerful driver of discontent. Amy Clay of Sunstone Counseling said to notice how we feel when we see things we want and don’t have in others’ feeds.
“Someone’s trip to Hawaii looks amazing, and you haven’t taken a trip this year,” she said. “Jealousy is always an arrow or sign. It’s saying, ‘I long for something I don’t have,’ but is it really Hawaii that you want, or is it time off? Comparison is the thief of joy.”
She recommended recognizing who you’re following. “Some people are inundating themselves with tough news, and it looks like the world is going to end. It’s really hard to keep a positive perspective if that’s what your social media feed is,” she said. “You might have to turn it off or edit what you’re subscribing to.”