I so enjoy when Brené Brown talks about being wary of gratitude used as a cure-all elixir for depression and anxiety.
I recalled back in the day, when people would tout the attitude of gratitude being the antidote.
Self-help books ran rampant with that idea.
“Turn that frown upside down-
And fake it til you make it.”
I had a counsellor once that assisted me in becoming the queen of self-loathing.
Her solution to the majority of my issues was:
“Well have you prayed about it?”
As if the simple act of prayer should wipe my proverbial slate clean.
This-
The dogmatic undertow of believing that everything is solved through gratitude and letting it go was a wound that I thought I had healed when I embraced my own spirituality without the confines of “Thou Shalt”.
Yet....maybe not so much.
I stared blankly at my new therapist.
Following a traumatic situation, I find myself in this bizarre limbo of knowing I need help but not knowing what...exactly...I need help with.
Isn’t giving yourself fully over to service a good thing?
Isn’t forgiving people who wish to cause you harm the antidote?
Aren’t I supposed to be grateful- because things could always be so much worse?
“Tell me what you are feeling right now.” He pushed.
I had asked for this...you know?
After a couple of sessions where he called me on using “I don’t know” as a cop-out.
We had made this incredible break through about anger-
How I was allowed to feel anger and not act on it.
In fact-
He had helped me locate the difference between anger and anxiety...and together we had developed the understanding that I acted mainly from a place of anxiety and overstimulation... not anger.
With his help, I relived a situation where I was “angry” and discovered that I froze in those situations- not my assumption of action.
Anger had empowered me- not caused me to act in a way I regretted.
To answer his question I sucked in a long breath.
“I’m feeling irritated, because I want to say ‘I don’t know’ but I know that isn’t a good answer”
I could see a hint of humour around his lips, however he maintained good composure as he delivered the shocker in his British accent.
“So let me get this straight. I’m here, solely for you. This is me, here for you by your decision. Yet you are not willing to say what you want to say because you think it might upset me.
Is that right?”
....dang.....
“Uh...mmmm”
He leaned forward with one eyebrow arched high above the other.
“So even though you are paying me to serve you, you have somehow figured out a way to make yourself responsible for serving me?”
.....oh snap.
I felt the heat rise all throughout my body.
As we continued to work through the rest of the session,
I found myself being genuinely grateful.
I am grateful, beyond words- for him cutting through all the nonsense that I have been carrying for far too long.
How messed up- is it- to rationalize why people do shitty things?
To balance out why it’s my fault that someone else did a shitty thing to me?
To feel guilt for not being enough, doing enough, keeping busy, showing up- constantly-
Yet not even showing up for myself?
Gratitude is a great thing.
It enriches your life.
Forgiveness is a liberating thing.
It helps you release the animosity of a situation you can’t change NOW.
But... we have a duty...and a responsibility...to feel our genuine feelings in the moment of hurt, betrayal, fear, sadness...and so many more.
Reflection always comes AFTER- never before.
So in order to have any sort of genuine gratitude and thankfulness, we have to first feel and then heal.
I think gratitude is a practise of grounding- based in a reality where we have allowed what is -to be.
I can be grateful for my roof, my job, my family etc... but not in a bright-eyed mindless way.
It’s not a Thanksgiving Day practise of reciting the same mundane stereotypical “thank-you for..”
But rather-
A painful, gritty reality check.
Perhaps in that way- it goes to enriching your life.
Without the snake oil approach of “having the attitude of gratitude”.
Take good care