Typically when I bring up gratitude as part of a treatment plan in my work with clients, I often get questioning glances and wonderings of “how is this actually going to help me?”. And I get it, I really do. Practicing gratitude sounds like such a simple and insignificant exercise. But I promise, the benefits are pretty incredible.

And this is not just me talking. Decades of research supports it as well. So if we can choose to trust the research and have a general understanding of the human brain, then a gratitude practice can really do wonders for us.

How Does Gratitude Help Us?

Not only does gratitude intentionally focus our attention on what is good and pleasant in our life, but this intentional practice helps our brain to more easily seek out and find good things in the future. A gratitude practice actually helps us to create new neural pathways, and when new neural pathways are used frequently, they become stronger and more believable. So, if we intentionally create these pathways and nurture them everyday, they grow and become second nature to us, therefore helping us to more easily find the good in our lives. This is a skill which would benefit us in throes of an anxious spiral or, if we find ourselves in the trenches of depression.

Why Is Gratitude Challenging?

When we are new to a gratitude practice, it is common for it to be challenging for us to identify good things. Especially if we are in the midst of anxiety or depression, our brain is likely pretty set on finding evidence to perpetuate feelings and thoughts associated with both anxiety and depression. Our brain tends to focus on what could go wrong in an attempt to protect us

One of our protective mechanisms is something called the negativity bias. This is when our brain weighs “bad things” (challenges and situations which have not gone according to plan) more heavily than it weighs “good things” (accomplishments and fun experiences). Our brain has developed this bias because in the past, if our ancestors were not attuned to potential threats, they likely didn’t survive. The ancestors who did survive paid a lot of attention to challenges and learned a great deal from traumatic, life-threatening events. Because of this, our brain has evolved and now pays a lot of attention to the hardships of life and doesn't pay much attention to the good things.

So while the negativity bias is well-intentioned, an issue arises when we don’t realize our brain is engaging in this protective mechanism and so we begin to believe our life is terrible because our brain is only acknowledging how difficult our life seems to be.

Correcting The Negativity Bias With Gratitude

We have become so laser focused on the challenges we face and the disappointments we have that we forget to search out the good. This imbalance leaves us feeling anxious, sad and hopeless.

A regular gratitude practice calls us to actively and intentionally seek out the good in our lives. This practice reminds us that there is a healthy balance of accomplishments and challenges in any life. It normalizes the fact that we can and do experience the full range of experiences and emotions day to day, week to week and year to year.

And of course as mentioned earlier, practicing gratitude regularly helps our brain to seek out and find the good things in our life much easier than when we do not practice gratitude.

How To Practice Gratitude

So what does a regular gratitude practice look like?

Well really you can customize this practice however you want to. I would recommend starting by writing them out to begin with, but if you’d rather reflect on them internally, that is fine too. Here are a few prompts to get you started:

What made your life more comfortable today? (the ability to bathe, kitchen appliances, parents or friends helping out, electricity, etc.)

What or who made you laugh today? Express gratitude for this experience

What did you enjoy about the weather today?

Name one thing you are proud of yourself for

Name one activity you are looking forward to.

If you’d like additional gratitude prompts, check out these workbooks:

Take good care, 

Katie