The Power And Danger of Gratitude No One Told Me About

I started my gratitude practice in 1995, with Sarah Ban Breathnack’s Simple Abundance - A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. It was the first step of my self-help journey.

It served as the foundation I carried forward throughout the rest of my life, and my gratitude practiced expanded, with all the latest trends and authors. I had journals. I had lists. I had a daily practice. It was the beginning of a change in my life.

Like with all things, though, it can be a double edged sword.

Practicing gratitude led to my becoming the ‘Queen of Reframing’. It didn’t matter the situation I could always see a different side to it. Instead of looking at the doom and gloom of life, I was looking at the possibilities, for the first time. A friend of mine actually named me the Queen of Reframing. It was useful and helpful to me and to those who I served to help.

Except gratitude and reframing can become denial in a fancy dress.

I gratitude-d and reframed my way into staying in an emotionally, psychologically and financially abusive marriage, 15 years longer than I should’ve. He was never physically abusive or even threatening. If he had been I would’ve been gone. No matter what. I had been hit once before in a relationship and didn’t hesitate to end the relationship on the spot. That much I knew.

Despite being a Social Worker, I had no idea how covert emotional and mental abuse could be. Our training and education focused mainly on the the extreme cases and more overt signs of abuse. I was not prepared. I absolutely had no idea about financial abuse either.

But then again, being born in 1965, this is the timeline I grew up in…

1963: President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, making it illegal to pay men and women different wages for the same work.

1968: The Fair Housing Act prohibited discrimination in housing sales, rentals, and financing based on sex and other protected traits.

1974: Passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) banned lenders from discriminating against women based on sex or marital status. This legally allowed women to open independent bank accounts, get mortgages, and hold credit cards without a male co-signer.

1988: The Women’s Business Ownership Act eliminated the requirement for a male co-signer on business loans and helped establish resources for female entrepreneurs.

1994: The Violence Against Women Act addressed the intersection of domestic violence and financial abuse.

So you see, financial abuse wasn’t even a recognized issue until 1994. Yet, in 2014 a widely cited study revealed that 78% of Americans still did not recognize financial abuse as a form of domestic violence.

But I digress.

The practices of gratitude and reframing, while useful tools, had become my form of denial, specifically because there was no physical abuse and no overt emotional or psychological manipulation. No one was even talking about gaslighting at that time, yet that is largely what I experienced.

What I learned from that whole experience was the other side of the gratitude sword. So I had to really monitor what I was grateful for. I had taken gratitude and used it to gaslight myself.

It was the ‘it could be worse’ formula. Every time something happened that didn’t resonate with me or caused me concern, I dismissed it by ‘being grateful’ it wasn’t worse, in one way or another. That rolled into reframing things like, ‘yes he works a lot but he isn’t cheating on me’. Which morphed into, ‘he works so much he deserves time off to relax and play golf’ - every day of every weekend he was off. “How can I be so demanding when he works so hard?”

We both had the same 168 hours in a week. I worked a 40 hour a week job. He worked 2-40 hour a week jobs. We each slept 6-8 hours a night. I was with our daughter the remainder of the 168. He would golf on the weekends during good weather and during bad weather he went indoor golfing. In all seasons he had a routine of working out at the gym.

I took care of the house, paid bills, managed care for our daughter, made meals, kept the social calendar - and he had rights of refusal.

I was so grateful for scraps that I had no idea I was starving to death.

That’s the power of the double edge of gratitude.

Recovering from that marriage took a great deal of inner work. Truth be told, I’m still unravelling a lot of deeply insidious threads of it. Redefining a new gratitude practice has been part of it.

I am grateful for my true blessings and not looking for the ‘bright side’ of the darkness, like I was.

Living with a cluster-crap of chronic illness sometimes has me less than grateful. Then I discovered a way to use gratitude as part of healing my body.

Often, those with chronic illness find themselves at war with their bodies. Trying this, that, and the other to force it into submission. Many times this comes with harsh criticism and disapproval of one’s own body. Wishing things were different than they are.

I recognized that I was thinking how weak my body was. I would notice pain, and see it as a deficiency -as something that proved my body was less than what it should be. I would push it beyond its limits causing more harm, more pain, which only caused more self-criticism. It was a vicious circle.

Until one day, instead of criticizing my body for its pain, I began speaking to it differently.

Instead of complaining of this particular pain that I believed was in connective tissue in my hands, I said this…”Oh gosh. You must be so worn out from keeping everything together. Thank you for all your hard work. It’s really important.” And instead of continuing the same movement to ‘push past the pain’, I acknowledged the pain and I backed off. I readjusted. I recognized the fatigue that lie behind the issue.

That particular issue was with my hands, specifically when I would grasp something like a pan, or a large heavy water bottle. I got a smaller water bottle with a handle. I grasp pans with two hands. And each time I do this, I focus my gratitude on the connective tissues doing so much work.

Being holistic I also know that the body is merely a reflection of what is going on spiritually, as well. In my journey, I have always been a ‘connector’. As a social worker I was responsible often for connecting families or individuals to resources for help. Or I was the resource, helping them to keep it altogether. In my family of origin I felt like I was the one who had to 'keep it altogether'. In my own family, I was always the one holding all the responsibilites and kept the family together - even to the point of staying in that toxic marriage. So I recognize that in this gratitude work as well. Paying attention to where I am trying too hard to hold on to something I should let go of.

The pain subsided. Even when, on occasion, I have to grasp a big heavy water bottle or a heavy pan, there is no pain. I notice and I express gratitude for the healing. Then I started using it on other pains. Then I started using it on other issues in my body. Then I started using it on relationships - with people, with life, with money, etc.

Then I started sharing the tool with my clients.

If we are still here then our bodies have served us well and we should express gratitude to it and for it every day. Our Western world would have us believe that we have to rely on pharmaceuticals for remedies. I believe we can use pharmaceuticals as tools along with other tools. Sometimes those other tools may even eliminate the need for the pharmaceuticals.

The body is a wonderful intelligent design. It heals itself all the time. Reminding it of that can also be a useful tool. Remind your body of all the times it healed itself - a paper cut, a sun burn, a broken bone, acne, etc. Talk to it with gratitude for all those instances, and encourage it to do that once again.

So far my clients have reported 100% success rate in ‘feeling better’ after doing this. Now, results vary, not everything will disappear overnight. Especially those things we have overlooked or denied for years. They might take longer to remedy, however even less symptomatic is success!

If you use decide to use this tool, let me know your results! I’d love to hear what happens when YOU try it!