Tis the season to be thankful. Gratitude is good for your mood and mental health, but have you ever tried to force thankfulness when you are soundly depressed? You see people smiling and enjoying themselves and wonder how when the world is so bleak. Then someone tells you to be grateful for the hard times. I am grateful for my challenges and difficult experiences, but usually not until they are well over. In the midst of the struggle, an attitude of gratitude is hard to conjure.
Anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure, is a hallmark symptom of major depression. Life isn't all about pleasure, but the ability to experience it, is key to feeling, and loving, and living life. But is it key to feeling gratitude? Can we find gratitude when the darkness is pressing down? (FYI, this does not mean saying "I'd be grateful if the earth would swallow me up.")
In the words of Meredith (my favorite character from Grey’s Anatomy), “Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be human. Maybe we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.”
Robert Emmons spent some time studying people who kept gratitude journals or had other ways of practicing gratitude. He noted physical, psychological, and social benefits of these practices. These included better sleep, more pleasure, increased compassion, and less loneliness. He postulates that gratitude has great benefits because of four effects. It helps us be in the present, it blocks negative emotions, it promotes resistance to stress, and increases one’s sense of self-worth.
Maybe it starts with gratitude that today is not quite as awful as yesterday or even that today is nearly over. Sometimes there are glimpses of gratitude in a sleeping baby or a rolling puppy. Can you be grateful for the grit that got you out of bed today? If you didn't get out of bed can you express gratitude for that bed?
I found that being in the present moment helps me to start finding gratitude. I look around me and start counting blessings that are right in front of me. Simple things are often the most important things. There is more value in listing unique items or moments that you are truly grateful for rather than re-hashing an overused list of things we 'should' be grateful for (family, friends, food, home, etc.).
To you dear reader, I pose the questions: What are you grateful for today? How do you practice gratitude when it is tough to feel? If you have survived depression, I know you can do hard things. I pose the challenge: be depressed AND grateful.
Reference:
Emmons, R. A. (2010). Why gratitude is good. Retrieved from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good/
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