The problem with (forced) gratitude

Hey beautiful folks,

How are you doing? How is life with you?

I am an even mix of English and Irish, so Thanksgiving isn’t something I knew much about until I moved to California 27 years ago.

It was there that I met my American husband, and after a few years we moved back to London. We didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving much over our decades of marriage, but since we moved to Spain a small group of Americans gather every year to eat & celebrate, and it’s just wonderful.

For me I love the principles of giving thanks. I love the idea of just being grateful for all the beauty and love in my life.

But I have a caveat.

A big one.

What I know about emotions is that we can’t force the more positive ones like joy, gratitude, calm.

We can’t feel natural gratitude if we aren’t acknowledging the emotions we find more challenging – anger, sadness, grief, shame, despair etc.

When we try to push away those harder emotions – and we do this only because this is how we are taught to deal with emotions, it’s not the natural human way – then we limit our ability to experience the ‘lovely’ ones like gratitude.

Emotions are all connected, they operate together as a collective. And if we are ignoring our sadness and despair, or our grief and fear, or our rage and disappointment – it dampens our ability to feel all of those beautiful emotions like gratitude.

So I don’t make gratitude a prerequisite in my house. I give space for all emotions knowing that when we have made space for the harder, tougher ones, the other emotions will naturally flow too.

Because doesn’t it make sense that it’s hard to feel only gratitude and joy if we are also heartbroken with grief?

Isn’t anger and rage from boundary violations or feeling unheard super important to acknowledge?

Isn’t feeling fear or terror totally legitimate when we have been exposed to a lack of protection in our lives?

Or the stinging qualities of shame from an overexposure of being shamed?

I would say yes.

These emotions are looking for our attention.

They aren’t trying to punish or annoy us.

They aren’t self-indulgent or stupid.

All emotions have a reason for being there.

And they all require – space, acknowledgement, love, empathy and understanding.

In my family, all emotions are legitimate, and when we can appreciate and understand them all, we get to have them all.

We can allow our grief and also notice that gratitude might spring up at the same time.

We can allow our anger and still experience love.

We humans are amazing, and we are wired to have the whole gamut of emotions. All of them.

Emotions are here to teach us, to help us, to protect us, to support our authentic expressions of our deepest selves – when we know how to understand them.

We are just often taught not to feel.

Or to ignore our feelings.

Or to not trust them.

But the more we can allow our feelings – not to pour them on other people – but to see them, feel them and hear them – then we get to have just the most gorgeous plethora of emotions in our life.

This morning I have been awash with natural and abundant gratitude – I had a lovely walk with my daughter to school walking past a pretty fruit farm, with a chill in the air but bright sunshine. Having a lovely chat with her on the way.

But I also needed to spend some time with some disappointment. With some edgy, uncomfortable disappointment that had arisen over a personal experience in my life.

And instead of saying to myself – no, I shouldn’t feel like that! I spent some time with myself this morning, really feeling that emotion in my body.

In holding it.

In seeing it.

In becoming familiar with it.

And allowing it to be here.

Tending to it with love and empathy.

And after some minutes of really SEEING, FEELING and HEARING this emotion, it released.

And there in its place was a beautiful, heart-lifting feeling of gratitude.

So I am all for gratitude and joy and appreciating our lives – as long as we are also not ignoring the hard, tough, challenging part of us that is yearning for as much acceptance, love and understanding as the rest of us.

Sending you so much love today.

Diana