Why I Don’t Use Gratitude Lists As A Therapist

I grew up in the United States, where once a year, most families get together for Thanksgiving. You will sit at a table with people that you have a variety of feelings about and be expected to share the things you were most grateful for this year.

Yet, the things we are most thankful for are not the things that we want others to know or aren’t the things that people want to hear about.

I have many childhood memories of listening to my family members share what they were grateful for, and I always wondered if they were telling the truth.  

It’s taken a long time for me to get to the place where I can admit that gratitude fires up my perfectionism and makes me want to punch someone because I never feel like I am doing it as well as other people.

Which is why I: 

• Stopped using gratitude lists in my daily life.
• Stopped framing what I am grateful for to others.
• Stopped asking my clients to hold gratitude for things.

These practices only fed the black and white belief that things could only be good or bad. 

I felt trapped by the idea that gratitude limited the duality of the human experience to feel two things. 

Since giving up on the gratitude hype, I have researched and found 3 practices that have supported me and my clients:

1. Listing out the good things that have happened that day
   1. Example from my daily life: My son has loved daycare, my husband and I started communicating better, my business challenged me to rethink how I want to show up, my family decided to get therapy 
2. Cultivating intentional statements that support our desired feeling
   1. Example from my daily life: I am going to be present with my family this holiday season so I can acknowledge the ways they show they love me.
3. Choosing to share the hard thing I am actually holding gratitude for in that moment even when others might not like it
   1. Example from my daily life: I am most grateful that my son finally started holding his own bottle.

If you’re struggling to implement standard gratitude practices, pick one of the above and try it out.

— Becca Post, MSW, LCSW, Founder of Forward Healing Co.

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