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You’ve likely heard about the benefits of gratitude. Research shows that cultivating gratefulness is among the most effective positive psychological tools and serves to improve well-being and reduce distress when turned to over time. Honing in on and actively appreciating the positive is proven to ease the symptoms of mental health disorders including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and more, all while bolstering physical health.
But depending on your circumstances (or the world’s), tapping into your reserves of appreciation can be decidedly difficult.
“Sometimes we pressure ourselves and scoldingly tell ourselves that we ‘should’ be more grateful,” explains psychologist Terri Bacow, PhD. But this habit isn’t necessarily helpful when things in your life are legitimately challenging. “Gratitude should not feel like a chore,” says Bacow.
The Case for Gratitude
Gratitude is pretty much an internal cure-all—one with roots in our very humanness.
Micah Mortali, founder of the School for Outdoor Mindful Leadership at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, asserts that embracing gratitude creates a spirit of thankfulness, allowing us to focus on what we have rather than what we don’t. “Gratitude was (and is) so integral to earth-based cultures, because they knew that their well-being and survival depended on the well-being and survival of the world they were a part of,” he explains. “It is a way of life.”
And it’s a good way of life, based on what we know about the increased satisfaction, hopefulness, and a generally improved quality of life expressed by those who regularly practice gratitude.
When Appreciation Feels Forced
Knowing that you’re supposed to be grateful when the world seems to be falling apart can come with a strange cognitive dissonance. On one hand, you know that making room for gratitude will likely improve your mental landscape, and therefore your experience. It’s proven by science, after all.) On the other hand, feigning appreciation while in the midst of a tough situation or time period can feel disingenuous.
If you find the concept of gratitude tiresome or even burdensome, you may be experiencing gratitude fatigue. Whether due to happenings in your personal life, shifts in your interior landscape, or the general state of the world, feeling sick and tired of the pressure to appreciate is a normal (perhaps even healthy) reaction.
If you find yourself in such a state, practices like savoring—or identifying positive moments as they happen and striving to soak up the associated emotions—can help you access appreciation in real time, which Bacow notes can be more manageable. Noticing glimmers, aka small instances of beauty and mindfulness, helps, too.
3 Ways to Address Your Gratitude Fatigue
“Gratitude opens a doorway to the heart,” says Mortali. “If you are feeling ‘gratitude fatigue,’ just stop trying to make yourself feel grateful.”
If this feels like a tough task, these three steps can help.
1. Acknowledge Those Places Where You’re Hurting
An all-out avoidance of negative emotions, or failing to make room for them, is known as toxic positivity. According to Bacow, forcing yourself into a grateful state can be similarly categorized. Rather than eschewing the hard aspects of your life or the world at large, make room for them. Feel all of your feelings. Who knows? Some genuine gratitude may begin to creep back in.
2. Make Space for What’s Real and True
Things don’t need to be perfect to be essential. Even if gratitude isn’t available to you, acknowledge those areas of your experience that contain resonance and depth. The important thing to remember is that these aspects of life don’t have to be or feel good—they just have to be real. Your breath. A poem or story. Fresh air. The movement of your body.
Even when life’s flow feels particularly rough, there are always things to appreciate.
3. Ask yourself if there’s anything that feels special.
“In the mindful outdoor experiences that I guide, I use the language, ‘Notice if there is anything in this moment that feels like a gift,’” says Mortali.
These instances (or glimmers) can be both small and simple as long as they spark something within you. “Gratitude can’t be forced—it is an inquiry,” says Mortali. It’s the act of paying attention that matters.
