In this season with gratitude being sold everywhere, so much can become inauthentic and unhelpful. “There’s so much to be thankful for, so stop feeling sad/mad/anything but happy.”
Toxic positivity sneaks in to ruin the benefits of real gratitude.
Here are three tips to embrace gratitude while ditching toxic positivity:
1. Be very mindful when telling others how to feel or respond.
You may want to find the silver lining, but all of our emotions take time and energy to be processed. Allow space for both frustration and thankfulness.
2. Allow the good and the bad (for an extra challenge, accept both too).
Allow space for the ups and downs in every season. Pretending that the downs don't exist is delusional, and pretending the ups don't exist is depressing.
Accepting both could look like offering gratitude for hard things, avoiding the ditches of fake positivity or wallowing in despair.
“I didn’t plan for it to rain while biking, but at least we made it fun!”
"I'm grateful I loved someone so much that their death impacts me so profoundly."
3. Build a gratefulness practice that feels good for you.
- Keep a note on your phone.
- Having a standing question for the dinner table like "High, low, buffalo" (something great, something hard, something random).
- Start a paper chain, writing what you're grateful for on each loop, and add to it every day during the season.
Find something practical to do regularly to train your brain to notice the small and large things to be grateful for all around you.
When we begin to tune ourselves to gratitude, we'll see it more around us. True gratitude deepens our connection with others and ourselves. It becomes a way of living, not just something we pull out with the holiday decor.