Cultivating gratitude is widely known as being great for us. So why does it feel so hard at times, and sometimes that it doesn't seem to help? Might it be because we go about it in dysfunctional ways?

On today's show, we get real about gratitude-- what it is, and what it most certainly isn't. We discuss what the research shows is helpful about it, and what we might as well stop doing. The good news is, getting gratitude right really is good for our minds, bodies, and relationships. And on this episode, we give you some actionable steps to start on that path today. (Or tomorrow-- we're not about perfectionism here.)

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Here's more on Dr. Andrea Bonior and her book Detox Your Thoughts.

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Credits: Beautiful cover art by Danielle Merity, exquisitely lounge-y original music by Jordan Cooper

Dr. Andrea Bonior: We've all heard that we're supposed to be grateful, and that it even has some health benefits. Some folks keep gratitude journals. Others make a daily practice of thinking about what they're thankful for. But even though we know it's supposed to be good for us, often times it just doesn't seem to help. And in fact, knowing that we're supposed to be grateful when we're not feeling so grateful can sometimes make us feel worse. Might that be because we are fundamentally misunderstanding the whole concept of gratitude? Today we're talking about six things we get wrong about gratitude, and alternative ways we can think about it instead. Surprisingly, being grateful isn't just about counting your blessings or being thankful that your situation isn't worse. If you've ever been intrigued by the health benefits of gratitude, but find it really hard to summon, or if you've ever felt like being grateful is as trite or as hokey as “Everything happens for a reason,” you'll want to listen to today's Baggage Check. Welcome. I'm Dr. Andrea Bonior and this is Baggage Check Mental Health talk and advice with new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Baggage Check is not a show about luggage or travel. Incidentally. It is also not a show about how “peel” and “unpeel” somehow mean the exact same thing, when “peeled” and “unpeeled” are opposites! Okay, let's get started. Today I wanted to talk about gratitude. Tis the season for showing it, for reflecting on it, and even for singing about it. And honestly, that should be every season. There is really good research that it's great for our health, physically and mentally. It's wonderful for our heart, both literally and metaphorically. But I often work with folks who have an automatic groan when they think about the idea of gratitude, and I can't say I blame them. I find the whole concept entirely confusing in how it's usually prancing around in our culture. To be honest, our first exposure to it is probably pretty early in life. Saying thank you is one of the first social skills we learn, and that's wonderful, of course, expressing thanks to someone else, recognizing what they're doing for us, creating that interaction where we validate how they've had a positive effect on our lives. That's very powerful stuff and very cute when a toddler is learning to say it, but at some point, it almost gets conflated with punishment. Count your blessings. You should be glad that wasn't worse. And I hate to say it, but thank you cards, which I truly am a fan of and are important, are often presented as this horrible chore. You have to do this annoying and odious task that is just checking a box and is otherwise meaningless, except for the fact that now we have to find the postage stamps and did the price go up? Will these stamps even be enough or are now my cards going to be returned to sender? So the whole idea of gratitude starts to sound a little blah. The word just starts to show up a lot with it, too. “Just be grateful for what you have.” “Just be thankful you've got a roof over your head.” And I get those sentiments, I really do. But I think we miss the opportunity to really get the benefits of gratitude, or to teach kids to do gratitude the right way when we make it so punitive. So wrote, we should be thinking about gratitude as an opportunity for us to find some extra depth and joy, too, rather than, oh, uh, we have to give up ten minutes of our lives to check this annoying box, and it's just about manners. Or you need to shut your trap and not feel any type of upset whatsoever, because it could always be worse. Gratitude is deeper than that. It's about leaning in and engaging with the full picture of your life. The good with the bad, the light with the dark. It's more expansive than just comparing yourself to someone else's situation, and it's more profound than simply counting your blessings. Let's talk about a few pitfalls that really commonly prevent people from being able to get and give the full value of gratitude. And let's see if we can start to get a better picture of this thing. Here are six things we tend to get wrong about gratitude, and we'll tie them all together in the end with a real life example. Number one. Gratitude does not mean removing bad feelings or forcing yourself to be happy. Gratitude can coexist with sadness or even anger. You've likely already heard me talk about toxic positivity in our very first episode. And the concept that multiple feelings can coexist at the same time, including positive ones and negative ones. There's no such thing as colors clashing. When it comes to emotion, you can pair the most day-glo neon green excitement with the most reserved chilly mauve fear. Actually, confession time. I don't really know what mauve actually is. I think it's somewhat close to maroon. So a deeper purpler red. Then what in heaven's name is chartreuse? Oh, uh, wait. I think that's a yellow green. Anyway, sorry. There's no such thing as clashing of emotions in terms of experiencing them. At the same time, grief and joy can coexist. Fear and excitement can be together. Some folks call that nervicited. Anger and guilt can be intertwined. Gratitude is the same. Being grateful can coexist with being frustrated at how something turned out. Having gratitude can coexist with sadness too. To be clear, gratitude does not have to mean being happy that something turned out the way it did. It doesn't mean, oh, yes, I'm so very glad that this happened. So what does gratitude mean? It means being attuned to the whole picture of your life in an openminded way, with compassion and with humility. It's recognizing that pain is inseparable from the experience of life and that we wouldn't notice the light as much if we didn't experience the dark. Might it be time for one of my favorite Leonard Cohen lyrics? I think so. Everything gets better with Leonard Cohen lyrics. He sang in Anthem: “Ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” That's how I see gratitude. You're not saying, oh, the crack is absolutely perfect. I'm so thrilled with this big gaping crack. That sounded really bad! Anyway. But you're also saying maybe perfection is not possible. And the cracks in things can give us insight even while we wish they weren't there. Gratitude is honoring the lessons, insights and wisdom that have come from all of your experiences, including negative ones, rather than shutting them out. Gratitude is a form of embracing life in that way, a form of showing up and accepting. And I hope you'll get a better picture of it as we move forward today. Which brings us to number two. Gratitude is not about comparison. We have the capability of expressing gratitude for our life in its own right, and in fact, it's most powerful that way without busting out a yardstick to see how our lives measure up to others. But our, uh, traditional ways of thinking about gratitude often do involve comparing ourselves to others. “Hey, you get what you get. And you don't get upset because some kids get nothing. Be grateful you got any food at all because other children don't always know if dinner is coming.” And to be clear, I am always, always in favor of educating our kids about the world at large and helping them understand their place in the universe and most importantly, their role in helping others who need help and who don't have the privileges that they do. But I think there's a difference between doing that versus just using comparison as an excuse to invalidate feelings. I mean, let's face it if we're always going to use the comparison yardstick, then we might as well have no feelings about anything ever. If you've lost a loved one, well, at least you didn't lose two loved ones. If you lost two loved ones, at least you didn't lose three. If one of your arms is on fire, at least the other one isn't. If both arms are on fire, at least there's no one thrusting a hot poker in your eye, et cetera, et cetera. What is the point of the yardstick? My proposal for gratitude isn't that we ignore the existence of others or their life circumstances. It's that we recognize that we can all make space for our feelings and that we can be grateful that we have a roof over our head, while also allowing ourselves to feel frustrated that that roof appears to be made of compressed grime because there's a leak in it. And we're currently trying to minimize the damage with a series of mixing bowls. We can be grateful that our family is healthy while also being sad that our relationship with them is not what we wished it was. We can be thankful that we have a job while also being upset that it is taking so much out of us. The comparison yardstick doesn't generally help us. And if we want to play the game of deciding that our feelings aren't valid because our situation isn't as bad as someone else's, Someone else's situation will always, always win. Trust me. Number three gratitude isn't always finding a silver lining. And when you do find one, the silver lining isn't always more important than the cloud. The concept of silver linings can be beautiful and I'm not here to rail against it. Who would I be? The antichrist? But the silver lining isn't always supposed to erase the cloud, nor does it have to be more important than the cloud. And in fact sometimes there isn't a silver lining if we're viewing the idea of a silver lining as something that is qualitatively different than the cloud itself. If you really think about that idea, a uh, silver lining, they're still a cloud. They are one and the same, the lining and the cloud. But sometimes in our culture we treat the silver lining as the thing that's supposed to mean the cloud wasn't a cloud after all. But I think that misses the point. The cloud is still a cloud. It doesn't lose its shape because of what it's lined with. And maybe it still rains, that terrible kind of rain that goes horizontally and makes it impossible to see when you're wearing glasses. Even with the silver, we don't have to particularly love the cloud. That's uh, okay, the silver lining can be part of the beauty, but we may still see a cloud first and foremost. There might be a silver lining and you're losing your job, but it doesn't mean that you have to be glad that it happened. There might be a silver lining in the health problem that you developed, but it doesn't mean that it's not incredibly hard and sometimes makes you rue the day you got that diagnosis. Life brings tough stuff. And silver linings don't erase that. Maybe sometimes the silver lining is the gratitude that you develop. I've worked with many people who say after that awful diagnosis happened to me, I had more gratitude for each day that I had been given. So maybe you are just grateful for the added gratitude. Maybe that's the silver lining. Grateful for your gratitude. We're getting really meta here, but it's like the whole “when someone hands you lemons, make lemonade.” True gratitude isn't being forced to make lemonade. What if you don't have any sugar? What if you've got a cavity already? What if you've been a particularly astute listener of my episode with Dr. Nicole Avena about sugar's effects on the brain and you're just trying to make small changes? So true gratitude doesn't have to be making lemonade. If someone gives you lemons, true gratitude is saying, hey, these lemons aren't necessarily what I wanted. (I was hoping for some cheese curds, honestly.) But these lemons are shiny and yellow, and the sourness can wake me up. And just as they are, they are an experience. I don't have to add sugar and change the lemons. This might be getting a little out there for some of you, I know, but bear with me here. What we're after is not trying to fundamentally alter our experience of something, but rather just being willing to show up for it as it is and trust that it has something to give us in its own right. Oh, my. This might be just another time for another quote that I love. Sorry about this. Some of you who have read Detox Your Thoughts know this one and the Leonard Cohen one from earlier, because I love them so much that I put them at the start of chapters. But Mary Oliver's line goes, and I don't think I can read the whole poem here, because that probably runs afoul of some sort of copyright laws, and that would be pretty cruddy of me when I'm trying to just be grateful that her beautiful poetry exists. But one of the lines from her poem The Uses of Sorrow is, “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” Number four: small blips of gratitude, independent of whatever awful thing you're going through, are still helpful. You can be ranting all day against the insurance company that says that you're out thousands of dollars after your car was smashed in the parking lot. And you can still get something important from sending a text to a friend that says, I thought of you today. Thanks for always making me laugh. And then you can go back to being angry at the insurance company, but honestly, you might not be quite as angry. There's some interesting research that suggests that just writing a thank you to someone about something simple can be a mood boost. So if you feel like your life is a raging dumpster fire lately, that doesn't preclude you from saying, you know what? Tasha is a pretty good friend and I'm glad she's in my life. Or hey, the hot water in my shower feels pretty great. or Jeez, the invention of the spork was something that really helps when it comes to a gloopy rice stew. Or the notch in that ramen spoon, that helps it just rest on the side of your bowl without falling in or without having to keep setting it on the side and soaking your napkin. That's pretty amazing. It's not world peace, and it doesn't change the fact that this day has overall been not that great. But let me just sit with that for a few seconds. That ramen spoon or that spork. I know once again, this might feel a little off the rails, but the point is that gratitude for the little things can give you brief snippets of light. And that brings us to number five. Embracing the big picture is the fullest gratitude of all. Now, if you can integrate things, if you can weave together the fact that the ingenuity of sporks and ramen spoons exists in the same world, that there is pain, that on a broader scale. There are people who will take advantage of you and also amazing helpers who will pick up your wallet and turn it in when you've lost it. That integrated picture is what we're really after with the holy grail of gratitude, because it means that we don't have to be afraid of the dark stuff, because the light is right there too. We don't have to block out either light or dark in service of the other. We don't have to numb ourselves. We don't have to numb our pain to experience joy-- like the simultaneous emotions concept we talked about earlier. We can engage with all of it and not run away and not hide and not try to distract ourselves or try not to see. Embracing the whole picture, realizing that the little moments coexist with the big can give us a sense of wholeness that ultimately can help bring calm. And number six, gratitude is not accepting hurtful behavior or refusing to fight against injustice. I think when it comes to interpersonal gratitude, like being grateful for a person in your life or saying thank you to someone for something that they've done for you, we sometimes conflate the idea of being thankful with just accepting the status quo and not wanting anything to change. Like, “Just be grateful your dad wasn't physically abusive, even though he was very emotionally cold and said hurtful things constantly.” There's that JUST again. Or you should just tolerate this other person's hurtful behavior because they do X-Y-Z for you. Or hey, our country has a lot of great things that are better than other places, so we should just be thankful. And if you don't like it, you can leave. Yeah, it's probably not shocking that that's not a healthy way to think of gratitude, or patriotism for that matter. Gratitude isn't being complacent and accepting everything and shutting up. Gratitude is understanding that if you don't see the whole picture and you get bogged down by one small part of it, you will likely start to lack the energy to make the changes that you want to make. If you're busy thinking that the world is a total nightmare and that there's no goodness in it, you'll give up in trying to change it. Whereas if you keep yourself more balanced and allow yourself to experience some of the joy and you let in some gratitude for some of the wonder in the world, then you get the strength to say it's worth it to change things. You bring in hope. So putting this all together in a real life example, one that may or may not have actually been happening as I was writing this very episode, you are sitting on a plane and there is a baby next to you who segues almost instantaneously from the jolly giggler to the screaming banshee. and let's say this baby screams the entire five hour flight and you feel like your head is turning inside out and you're really not sure your ears have ever had that sensation before. How can gratitude play out in this situation? Does it mean that you don't bother to use earplugs because you should just be grateful that you could afford a plane ticket to go on a trip? No, you use the earplugs. Does gratitude mean that when someone asks you later how your flight was, you say, “Oh, it was amazing, absolutely perfect. The bliss of air travel is beyond compared to anything in the human experience” because the silver lining of getting to your destination means any kind of awfulness your eardrums experience should never be spoken of. No, you mentioned the crying baby when your friends ask how the flight was. But here is where gratitude comes in. Maybe you get a laugh from it now that it's over by zooming into the small moment of something that the dad did in exasperation at one point. Or maybe you integrate the big picture, the really big picture. Not just that you can afford a plane flight, but by acknowledging that to have the privilege to live in a society and grow old, that means that someday, years or decades from now, we will need firefighters and doctors and mail carriers and nursing home workers. And that means that right at this very moment, there better be babies being born and they'd better be with their families being cared for or else who's going to care for us? So these babies, they're going to be on planes and they're going to be stinking up their diapers and they're going to be making a ton of noise because that's what babies do. And as much as your ears hurt, their ears probably hurt worse because they don't know what to do when their ears pop. That baby is yelling and crying and it is annoying and it made your flight a lot less pleasant. That's all true. And also true is-- thank goodness there are babies screaming now, because someday the person that operates on my heart or pushes me in the wheelchair or helps me cross the street or sings to me at the nursing home, well, they may be a baby on a plane right this very second screaming their lungs out. And if my hearing goes someday, and this particular baby next to me is my nurse, then in that moment all is right with the world because obviously that is quite a set of lungs they have there and I'll be able to hear their medical instructions for me loud and clear.

Thank you for joining me today. Once again, I’m Andrea Bonior, and this has been Baggage Check, with new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Join us on Instagram at Baggage Check podcast to give your take on upcoming topics and guests. And why not tell your chatty coworker where to find us? Our original music is by Jordan Cooper, cover art by Danielle Merity, and my studio security is provided by Buster the dog. Until next time, take good care.