Rengganis Rizka Prasanti With the rise of positive psychology in later years, gratitude has become a concept many people are familiar with. Gratitude is known to have lots of benefits for our health, both physical and psychological. Many people have regarded gratitude as a virtue, yet its practice is not without criticism.
While it’s common for concepts such as gratitude to have opposing sides of supporters and critics, much of the objection comes from lack of understanding. Before we start practicing gratitude in our lives, it’s essential to first understand what gratitude means and what it’s not.
Through this article, let’s skim through the most common misconceptions about gratitude and the facts behind them.
Understanding Gratitude
To study gratitude scientifically, first it needs to be conceptualized. Psychologists have categorized gratitude into three types: gratitude as an affective trait, a mood, and an emotion. Research by Rosenberg (1998) shows that people with a grateful disposition tend to be happier, more hopeful, and are livelier than others.
Only a handful of people may have gratitude as an affective trait. A person who has a grateful disposition tends to feel more grateful than others, within any situation.
However, everyone has felt gratitude as a mood or emotion. Maybe you dropped your wallet on your way home and someone unexpectedly returned it to you. Maybe you forgot your umbrella at home when it rained and someone offered you to use theirs.
The feeling you get when receiving this good deed from others is gratitude felt as an emotion. When you feel grateful, you acknowledge that you’ve gotten a positive outcome given by others. You may also feel that you want to reciprocate with the same good deeds in the near future.
The Benefits of Gratitude
A collection of studies curated by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley have named many benefits of gratitude, including both physical and psychological benefits.
In a study that follows cardiac patients, patients with high levels of gratitude report better sleep, have lower levels of cellular inflammation, and are less fatigued. More grateful people also tend to have better health, and practices to increase gratitude can also improve your health and motivate you to live a healthier life.
Gratitude also has various benefits for your psychological well-being. When you feel more grateful, you may feel more socially connected, are more interested and satisfied with school or work, and inspire you to become kinder, more generous, and more helpful towards others.
Misconceptions About Gratitude
Gratitude is a well-known concept in positive psychology, yet there are still lots of misunderstandings out there about it. To fully take in the positive outcomes of gratitude in your everyday life, it’s important to truly understand what gratitude really is and how to integrate it into our lives.
Here are some of the most common misconceptions about gratitude and the facts behind them.
1. Gratitude is impossible to foster during hard times
We’ve all thought of this at some point. It’s hard just to get by on rainy days, let alone to think about sunnier times. How can we think about gratitude when things don’t go the way we want and there’s hardly anything we can be grateful about?
However, research has shown that not only can gratitude be felt in challenging times, it’s also beneficial. Gratitude helps us see the negative events that happened in our lives through another perspective and may even help us overcome these challenges better.
In a published study from Journal of Positive Psychology, participants of the study who wrote about past unpleasant experiences and tried to see it from another perspective that helps them to feel gratitude reported closure and less unpleasant emotions.
2. Practicing gratitude means being positive 24/7
Many people seem to think that to exercise gratitude in your daily life, it means you should only focus on the positive side of your life and deny or ignore the negative experiences you have. When you put it this way, the concept of gratitude teeters very closely to toxic positivity.
While many people may choose to ignore or suppress any form of negative emotions, it will eventually cause you more harm. Many research shows that in the long term, suppression of emotional discomfort may cause anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological difficulties.
Practicing gratitude may help you go through difficult times, but the most essential thing is to accept that you’re going through hard times and the unpleasant emotions that come with it. Make sure you process and go through the grief, anger, and sadness that may come with it first before seeing the situation from a different perspective.
3. Gratitude has immediate positive effects on you
The abundance of research papers about gratitude and its benefits for mental and physical health may make it seem like it’s a magic cure that instantaneously makes all your problems disappear. Of course, that is not the case.
Like any other habit, gratitude grows stronger once you cultivate and practice it regularly. Gratitude journal can be kept for weeks before you start to feel long-term effects on your emotions.
Gratitude should also not be forced. The task of writing down what you’re grateful for daily may end up feeling like a tedious task. Ideally, write in your journal only two or three times per week and no longer than fifteen minutes per day.
4. Gratitude makes you self-centered
It may seem paradoxical at first to thank others for their good deeds in hopes of receiving the benefits for your own physical and psychological well-being. That’s why many people see the practice of gratitude self-centered.
However, gratitude is also known to improve relationships. In a study by Lambert and Fincham in 2011, people who express more gratitude about their friends and partners report a more positive perception of them. It also strengthens the bond in their relationship and make them feel more responsible for their well-being.
Known as the “social glue” of emotions, gratitude works best when shared with others. That’s why when speaking to others, try to share your gratitude for them and for other people as well. While sharing your stories through platforms like Reyo, make sure you also express your gratitude for the listener and for other people in your life to get the fuzzy, feel-good emotions.
As an emotion that’s known to cultivate many positive effects, we have to understand gratitude and its many myths.
Knowing the myths behind gratitude is essential to understand the best way to conduct your gratitude exercises, and experience the positive effects not only for yourself but for your loved ones as well.
References:
Allen, S. (2018). The science of gratitude. John Templeton Foundation.
Lambert, N. M., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior. Emotion, 11(1), 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021557
Rosenberg, E. L. (1998). Levels of analysis and the organization of affect. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 247–270. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.247
Watkins, P. C., Cruz, L., Holben, H., & Kolts, R. L. (2008). Taking care of business? Grateful processing of unpleasant memories. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 3(2), 87-99.
