Expressing gratitude for your blessings isn’t just a nice Thanksgiving tradition to enjoy with loved ones around the dinner table. It’s also a great way to support your own mental health. At Carolina Dunes Behavioral Health, in Leland, North Carolina, we treat adolescents, adults, and seniors who are experiencing a psychiatric crisis and provide their families with the tools to support them. We offer whole-person care that addresses the mind, body, and spirit.
Looking on the Bright Side
Being grateful for the good things in life is one form of positive thinking. Having an optimistic mindset has been linked to a wide range of health benefits:
- Increased life span
- Lower rates of depression and anxiety
- Decreased pain and stress levels
- Better coping skills during difficult times
- Better psychological and physical well-being
- Improved ability to resist illnesses
Giving Thanks Throughout the Year
There are many ways you can increase your focus on gratitude in your day-to-day life. How you choose to do it might look different from another person’s gratitude practices:
- Expressing thanks for/to the people around you allows you to spread warm feelings to another person. You can:
- Call someone to thank them for something they’ve done for you.
- Write a card or letter to tell someone how much they mean to you.
- Contact the supervisor of someone who has made your day brighter, such as a server in a restaurant or a customer service professional.
- Focusing on the little pleasures that you experience can be a reminder that life isn’t just about the big joys. Express gratitude for:
- A cup of tea
- A warm blanket
- The sunrise
- Unexpectedly running into a friend
- Watching a favorite movie or TV show
- Time with your pet
- Keeping a journal of the things that make you grateful and your daily accomplishments can provide you with a tool you can reflect on when you encounter difficult days. You’ll learn that even when things don’t go as planned, you can still find something to appreciate. Your journal can take many forms:
- A paper journal that you write in by hand
- A gratitude app on your phone
- A word processing file
- Spending time in nature. Many people feel a sense of awe and thankfulness when they are outdoors in a beautiful setting, like a garden or a neighborhood park.
- Engaging in practices like meditation and yoga, which keep you focused on the present instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.
- Figuring out what gives you a sense of gratitude and adding more of it to your life:
- Giving back to others
- Prayer
- Fellowship with people who share your spiritual beliefs
- Spending time with family or friends
Saying No to Toxic Positivity
If you’ve tried to share a difficult emotion or experience with someone, only to have them respond by telling you how much worse it could be or that you should be grateful for what’s going well, you might have felt some frustration. Gratitude does not mean that you have to pretend everything is perfect or that nothing bothers you. It just means that you have decided that you will not allow the difficulties to overshadow the blessings.
For example, a person can simultaneously be glad to see all of their friends and family for the holidays, but also feel anxious because large gatherings are loud and chaotic. In dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), practitioners teach clients to embrace this concept of opposing ideas (dialecticals) being simultaneously true, in order to find a middle road that better facilitates their well-being. Feeling the difficult emotions alongside the pleasant ones and being free to express the full range of emotions that one feels is healthy and beneficial.
At Carolina Dunes Behavioral Health, we use evidence-based, trauma-informed practices to support our patients in their mental health journey. Our programs are tailored to meet the needs of each client and to help them utilize their support systems to optimize mental health and well-being.
