In Praise of Gratitude
Highly Sensitive People can easily get stuck in rumination. Devoting a few minutes each day to feeling thankful can help break the cycle.
Launching on January 1st 2023: The HSP Revolution online community to support your journey of empowerment as a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).
Last week I watched Gratitude Revealed, a documentary by American director Louis Schwartzberg whose film Fantastic Fungi — a magical time lapse journey through the mysterious world of mushrooms and mycelial networks — I also loved. Gratitude Revealed featured inspiring speakers including a mountaineer who’d lost his sight, women serving long prison sentences, and a pastor working to re-establish a sense of community in a deprived area of San Francisco, among many others. The over-arching theme was that cultivating gratitude can help us shift our perspective on even the most challenging of circumstances.
Many of us will already have heard the advice that practicing gratitude is one of the simplest and most effective ways to boost our overall sense of well-being. Certainly, there is voluminous psychological research to suggest that intentionally taking a moment to be thankful can have wide-ranging benefits, from helping us to feel more optimistic and boosting our immune systems, to reducing feelings of loneliness and isolation, and helping us to act with greater generosity and compassion.
That said, I’ve also worked with many Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) who struggle to access gratitude, despite their best intentions. We can so easily fall into over-analysing, or focusing on what could go wrong in our lives, that feeling thankful can seem out of reach. Our capacity to deeply analyse situations can be a great asset — but it can also weigh us down if we’re feeling over-stimulated and our nervous system is stressed.
Transformative quality
When we’re in those negative places it can be irritating to be told to be grateful. We might even imagine that intentionally practicing gratitude is really just a positive thinking bypass to avoid our unwanted feelings.
I would say that cultivating gratitude is very different from avoidance. Being thankful doesn’t mean that we’re denying that life can sometimes be extremely challenging, or that we can suffer painful losses and disappointments.
Watching Gratitude Revealed reminded me of the value of allowing more of this transformative quality into our lives. I was so struck by an observation by Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk featured in the film: It’s not happiness that makes us grateful — it’s the other way around. As Steindl-Rast said in a TED Talk:
“Are happy people really grateful? We all know a number of people who have everything it would take to be happy, but they’re not happy because they want something else or more of the same.
“And we all know people who have had lots of misfortune and they are deeply happy. They radiate happiness. We are surprised. Why? Because they are grateful. It’s not happiness which makes us grateful. Its gratefulness that makes us happy.”
Such is the power of gratitude, Steindl-Rast argues, that practicing it is a truly revolutionary act (one that The HSP Revolution wholeheartedly endorses):
“The revolution of which I’m speaking is a non-violent revolution, and it’s so revolutionary that it even revolutionizes the very concept of a revolution. Because the normal revolution is where the power pyramid is turned upside down, and those at the bottom are now on the top and are doing exactly the same thing that the others did before.
“What we need is a networking of smaller and smaller groups, who know one another, who interact with one another, and that is a grateful world. A grateful world is a world of joyful people. And the more and more joyful people there are, the more and more we will have a joyful world.”
Invoking gratitude
If the idea of inviting more gratitude into your life appeals, I’d invite you to consider some of the following practices that have worked well for many of my clients:
Gratitude diary. Make it a habit to jot down in your journal a few things that have gone well that day. You need only do this two or three times a week. As you write, dwell on the positive feelings you experience. The more detail you can include as to why you are grateful for each entry, the better.
Rituals. Perform little rituals to remind you to focus on the positives. For example, before eating dinner, you or the people you are with could take a turn to identify something they’re happy about.
Gratitude ‘first aid kit’. If something triggers old, negative feelings, or sends your over-active mind into overdrive, it can be helpful to shift your mood by thinking about the many things that have gone well in the past.
Thank-you notes. The habit of writing thank-you notes may have gone out of fashion in the digital age, but writing a short note to somebody who has been helpful, or in return for a gift, is a powerful way to express gratitude.
Delivering a ‘gratitude letter’. Write a letter to a relative, friend or mentor — someone who has inspired, helped or supported you — setting out why you feel grateful to them. Deliver the letter in person and you may feel the most intense wave of gratitude you have ever experienced.
I loved these words in Gratitude Revealed from the artist Alex Grey:
“William Blake said that gratitude is the closest thing to heaven. And I think that genuine gratitude comes about as a result of a loving connection. It’s showing respect for your very existence. You have been given a chance in the cosmic lottery of life. You got a ticket. You got to come to the party. And so it’s only right that you should be grateful.”
Meanwhile, I’ve been working hard on preparations for the launch of the The HSP Revolution online members community on January 1. This will be a warm and supportive space for HSPs to come together, with live Q+A’s and chances to learn practical skills on topics from managing your energy to setting healthy boundaries. I’m really excited to be taking our community to another level. Hope to see you there!
Wishing you a grateful week,