In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.
Brother David Steindl-Rast
Negative Thoughts and Depression
One of the signs of depression is the tendency of your mind to produce negative thoughts about yourself and your life. Your mind is always generating thoughts. It is always looking at circumstances and evaluating them as helpful or unhelpful. It is always looking at qualities and characteristics about who you are and how you are in life and judging if you have been right or wrong, good or bad. With depression, it seems like the only evaluations and judgments that get through are the negative ones.
It is easy to respond to these negative thoughts by believing them, which only strengthens the depression. You may try to control the negative thoughts by distracting yourself or avoiding them. Those efforts may work for a while, but eventually these thoughts reemerge.
Instead of getting caught up in or fighting the negative thoughts, depression treatment invites you to a different perspective, a different relationship with your depression. One of the most powerful ways to do this is the practice of gratitude.
Gratitude is not trying to replace negative thoughts with more positive ones. It is not a matter of thinking happy thoughts and everything will be okay. More than altering your mood, gratitude can change the way you perceive reality. With gratitude, you move beyond the negative thoughts and evaluations to bring awareness and attention to all that is happening in your life.
There are many forms of gratitude. Simple gratitude is bringing attention to the everyday things that you take for granted: a house where you can live, food that you can eat. Challenging gratitude is awareness of things that you would rather not have in your life, but for which you can still be thankful. Perhaps you got a flat tire on the way home, but someone stopped and helped you change the tire. For that, you can be grateful.
Practicing Simple Gratitude
You can practice simple gratitude throughout the day, or you can find a time at the beginning or the end of the day to review ordinary moments for which to be grateful. Pick one of your five senses and be aware of all the things that come your way. All the amazing smells and sounds. The shape of a tree or a plant that you pass by every day but never noticed. When you get in your car and turn the engine, you can be thankful for the ability to get from one place to the other. When you sit down for a meal, you can be thankful for the tastes of the food, and all the people who played a role in you having it in front of you.
Practicing Challenging Gratitude
This type of gratitude takes your practice beyond reflecting on good things or happy times. When you are struggling with depression, it may seem easy to think of things that you would not want in your life. The challenge is looking for something within those difficulties for which you can be grateful. If you are upset or sad about the ending of a relationship, you can recall and be grateful for all the things this person added to your life. If you are struggling with your job, you can recall the things and the people you really like about it. When the depression shows up and seems to take over, you can recall moments of delight when the sadness was not in control.
When It Happens, Take Note
It is helpful to take note of these simple or challenging moments as they happen or as you reflect on them. Do this in specific and tangible ways. Write them down in a journal. Use your phone to take a picture of them or write a note about these grateful moments. If there is a person for which you are grateful, you could take a moment to express that in a letter or email. From time to time, you can return to these moments you have captured and be grateful yet again.
Again, the practice of gratitude is not a way to control your depression. Instead, it is a way to help you to see and to experience your life, even if the depression is there. My depression treatment page will give you more information about depression and ways to overcome it.