Between Thanksgiving and the upcoming winter holidays, there’s been a lot of talk about gratitude. And, of course, even the normal gratitude talk that always reaches a crest at this time of year is currently tempered with a particular “2020-ness” -- “Things suck, but I have so much to be grateful for.”  This framework, which is even more visible this year than most, however, represents a common misconception: that gratitude should be able to cancel out pain and, in fact, if it doesn’t, that we should feel guilty for our insufficient gratitude. 

This is not, of course, to say that gratitude isn’t powerful and deeply important. Recognizing what we have as well as being deeply aware of privilege are critical ways of both engaging with a disturbingly unequal world as well as bringing an important perspective to the ways in which we understand our lives and the lives of those around us.

And gratitude can also be quite healing. By noticing the things that are going well, from the highest levels of safety and security to the most minute details and moments, we can change the ways in which we see our lives. In the same way that how we name things shapes our reality (see this fascinating article for more on how language shapes thought), consciously practicing gratitude can help shift our focus to what is going right in our world. 

And yet....gratitude is often not enough to make our pain go away, and our culture’s tendency to want to only focus on ways in which we are #blessed can sometimes perpetuate the myth that if we are sufficiently grateful, we would not be in distress because….look at everyone who has it worse.  But this overgeneralization, which I will call toxic positivity, cancels out the nuance. By saying “just look on the bright side” we, in fact, end up minimizing our pain, shaming ourselves for those painful feelings, and often shoving those feelings to the side where they can fester and come out in other ways. Often rather than shifting our focus to those who are suffering, we just end up feeling worse. 

Instead, what might it look like to hold both our gratitude and our distress side-by-side, using each to help us build a sense of perspective about both our internal and external worlds without giving them the power to cancel each other out? What might it look like to be able to notice what we are grateful for while also recognizing the ways in which we might wish things were different. In holding both of these feelings, we can add a greater complexity and depth to the ways in which we understand our own experiences and the experiences of those around us.  In the wise words of Daniel Tiger, a children’s character based on the works of Fred Rogers, “Sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time...and that’s okay.” When we both practice gratitude and also bring attention, self-compassion, and curiosity to our feelings of pain, we enable ourselves to better understand and care for both ourselves and others. 

See related: The Power of Gratitude