Engaging the shadow side of gratitude

In the early 2000s, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar taught a revolutionary course at Harvard University: Happiness 101. That’s right, a professor constructed an entire course around happiness. By using positive psychology, the course aimed to boost folks’ levels of optimism and happiness. The materials covered topics ranging from self-esteem, mind-body connection, goal setting, and relationships. One of the key topics discussed and practiced was gratitude. Students kept gratitude journals to practice being happier each day and experiencing a wider range of emotions. 

The positive psychology approach from this class, Happiness 101, has been revolutionary—especially for popularizing gratitude practices to the public. Folks like myself have been inspired by this and have thought, “Grateful people are happy people. Just be grateful.”  Be happy and grateful, like the passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” While statistically and theologically, there is tremendous truth to the positive impact of gratitude on well-being, there is also another piece of gratitude we don’t often talk about: the shadow side. 

As some of you know, I work with a team of psychologists studying virtues. One of the virtues we study is gratitude. We understand gratitude as acquiring the capacity to see the goodness in others and the world, to feel appreciation, and to be moved to reciprocate. We have found in our own studies and in the literature that people often experience a competing set of emotions when feeling appreciation. This means that while a person might feel all the warm good feelings towards someone, they also might notice “negative” emotions (the shadow side) come up as well. With a lot of the practices on gratitude, we are taught to just think about the good and let that goodness flow.

I would like to propose that with gratitude (and most things in life) we actually have to engage with the shadow side so that we can feel the good emotions even deeper (and don’t have shallow or forced versions of gratitude). As you may have heard, “what we suppress, we express.” With things like gratitude, we actually just can’t think our way to happiness. We have to feel the wide range of emotions in order to have a deeper, more genuine sense of gratitude that moves us to action. 

How about I use myself as a case example? 

A mindful exercise of gratitude (and the shadow side) for my gramma

I am deeply grateful for my gramma. I see the ways she listens to me and supports me in so many areas of my life. I am grateful I have her to look at as a role model in my life. She continues to get outside, move her body, engage in conversations about difficult topics (like racism), and fight for equality of marginalized people. Her presence in my life makes me feel so known, and her work against systemic injustices truly inspires me. When I survey any negative emotions that come up as I think about her, I become aware of sadness. I feel deep sadness that our time is limited and she won’t be in my life for too much longer. I also feel guilty and sometimes ashamed that I don’t go over to her house and spend more time with her. I also feel sadness (and at times disappointment or resentment) that she did not spend more time with us when we were children. 

When I think about my gramma, I have a wide range of emotions. Where do I go with this wide range of emotions? Using neuroscience, the goal for me with gratitude here is to create neurological pathways to feel each emotion. This means taking time to pause, breathe deeply, and for several minutes feel the depth of appreciation, of joy, of admiration, of respect I have for my gramma. Then, in the same way, I pause, breathe deeply, and for several minutes feel the depth of sadness, guilt, shame, disappointment, and resentment. 

Okay, I have thought about the good and I’m left with the bad. What’s next? 

It’s time to make some neurological links. 

Now, I need to imagine these two spheres of emotions coming together, like two hands holding one another. This might sound silly, but I am literally training my brain to not suppress the bad, but also to not be overcome by the negative. I’m training my brain to befriend the humanity of my gramma—the both/and. 

If the negative emotions feel overwhelming, I return back to the positive emotions of gratitude I experienced for her. I dwell in those, and when/if ready, I return back to imagining the positive and negative emotions holding hands. While doing all of this, I breathe deeply and notice what is happening in my body. 

So there it is, a personal look into how I practice gratitude and going into the shadow side. This example is of a relationship where I feel safe, comfortable, and overwhelmingly positive. There are many other relationships in my life where gratitude feels significantly more complex. 

I am still a beginner on this road. For today, I’m choosing a person for whom I think my brain and body are up for the challenge. For another day, I will go into the shadow side of gratitude for a relationship that is a lot more turbulent and the emotions feel much more tender. Until then, little by little I am building my own capacity (the skill of gratitude) to go into the shadow side and come out of it with a deeper sense of awareness and appreciation. 

For this week, my encouragement for you is to choose one person to hold in gratitude. Choose someone who is safe and whom you trust. Take time to go through this process of feeling the positive and the negative emotions and then imagining them holding hands. As you feel them, ask how this is moving you towards reciprocity. Or how are these feelings moving you to action? 

The hope is that by engaging the positive and the shadow side, we would each deepen our capacity to feel and ultimately appreciate the full humanity of the people around us. And hey, maybe by doing this we will actually become happier—and so will those we are grateful for.