The Dark Side of Gratitude
How unbalanced gratitude disempowers you
If you’re anything like me, you may have come across self-proclaimed gurus, talk show hosts, spiritual influencers etcetera and rolled your eyes at the mention of gratitude. Don’t get me wrong, I think gratitude is an important part of a well-balanced worldview.
My issue with throwing the term ‘gratitude’ around is that it’s used as some kind of panacea. Some way to deflect your feelings or even shame you for your anger, resentment, and fear. I’m from a school of thought that feeling your feelings is an important part of empowering yourself. Emotions are a blueprint of desires and needs.
How many times were your emotional needs ignored as a child? Were you told you were being too sensitive or too dramatic when expressing your distress? When I hear others tell me to be ‘grateful’ — all I hear is “stop feeling your feelings.” Gratitude can sometimes masquerade as positivity and a socially acceptable nudge to sweep your trauma back under the metaphorical rug.
It’s hard to feel grateful when you don’t feel secure. It’s hard to feel grateful when you’re not being heard or your needs are not being met. When things are going wrong, it’s okay to acknowledge your anger or disappointment.
I think self gratitude is the most important, empowering practice of gratitude there is. When things are going wrong, being able to acknowledge your own efforts and actions in getting through is extremely important. You are the one who has carried yourself forward and endured.
Instead of some kind of obligatory, dogmatic gratitude to the universe, have you stopped praising yourself for all that you have done to survive? For all the times you’ve failed and got back up? For all the ways you’ve pushed on?
‘Ingratiate,’ a word related to ‘gratitude,’ is a turn of phrase to express that one has acted in a way to please someone else. Perhaps by conforming to expectations or giving up a level of control in a situation to achieve an end result. Likewise, with gratitude, it is very easy to give up your own personal power by lessening the magnitude of your own efforts and actions. An unbalanced practice of gratitude is overly focused on the external and can distort the powerful truth of your own actions.
Building a practice of self gratitude allows you to honor yourself — the most sacred practice there is. Yes, you can feel grateful to the universe for providing for you. But you are the shining star- the breathing, living, enduring being that is worthy of your own love, protection and praise.
Take a few minutes to sit with yourself and list everything you have done to sustain yourself. Acknowledge your sacred responsibility to be gentle with yourself. Find your power, self-love and the truth that you are capable of. Then, when you are ready — whenever that is — find gratitude for the universe and others in a way that doesn’t minimize all that you are.
