This Thanksgiving, Don't Let Gratitude Put You to Sleep

"You know the moment. Someone at the Thanksgiving table says, "Let's go around and share what we're grateful for," and suddenly you're scrambling. Your mind goes blank. You mumble something about family and health. You're not ungrateful: You're just experiencing what happens when gratitude becomes an obligation rather than an emotion. When practiced well, gratitude improves psychological well-being, strengthens relationships, and increases goal pursuit."

"But certain forms of gratitude anesthetize more than they energize. They can numb you to feelings that need attention, lull you into accepting conditions that need changing, and dull your awareness of what actually matters. This Thanksgiving, before you pile your plate with one more round of obligatory thankfulness, consider whether your gratitude practice is waking you up or putting you under."

"It sounds like: " I shouldn't feel disappointed about my career because some people are unemployed." What's happening: You're using gratitude as an emotional sedative-not to feel more, but to feel less. Every difficult emotion gets numbed by comparison to someone else's suffering. The disappointment about your career doesn't disappear because someone else has it worse. It just goes underground, where it calcifies into resentment or resignation."

Gratitude can improve psychological well-being, strengthen relationships, and increase goal pursuit when practiced authentically. However, some gratitude forms act as emotional sedatives that numb important feelings and hinder discernment. Avoidant gratitude uses thankfulness to suppress disappointment or hurt, allowing difficult emotions to calcify into resentment or resignation. Obligatory gratitude reduces motivation to seek fairness and can lead people to accept less than they deserve. Generic gratitude, which requires no attention or genuine acknowledgment, produces few benefits. Evaluating whether gratitude wakes one up or puts one under helps ensure it motivates constructive processing and necessary change.

Read at Psychology Today