Reclaiming Gratitude
Why reclaim gratitude?
Because of BULLSHIT SOCIALIZATION, of course!
Because those of us raised and socialized as girls and women are taught, in both big and small ways, using gratitude as a catalyst, to stay small.
“Just be grateful for what you have,” they say. Meaning, “Stop wanting more.” Leading to, “Stop wanting…at all.”
Gratitude has been coopted by puritanical, white-supremacist patriarchy and late-stage capitalism as a weapon of oppression.
If we stop wanting more, we’ll settle for what’s handed to us. Those in power get to stay in power. And we learn to live off of less than what we truly desire.
We become separated from our desires and resentful of anything that reminds us of what we once wanted.
Eventually, we become complacent and accept that things just “are the way they are,” and weaponize gratitude against ourselves. “I should be grateful for what I have” becoming a mantra for over half of our population.
But what does gratitude even mean? What does it mean to be grateful?
To answer this question, I’ve created another free guide for you. (I know, I’m just FULL of presents right now! You’re welcome!) You can access it at www.KeliLynJewel.com/gratitude.
I’m giving you this workbook as an opportunity to explore together. Because I’d like to invite you to consider that grateful is not something you “should” be. Ever. It’s not something to BE at all. It’s not an identity.
Gratitude is an emotion. Which means it’s something you can feel any time you want. And in that, it can be incredibly powerful as a tool for forward momentum toward what you desire.
Let me say that again: Gratitude is a tool to reclaim your desire, not a weapon to disconnect you from it. This is the “why” behind reclaiming gratitude.
In your Reclaiming Gratitude workbook, we’ll explore False Gratitude, the emotion of gratitude, the bullshit behind ungratefulness, and your ability to choose.
As we dig into the concept of what I call False Gratitude — the societal expectation of being grateful for something because we “should” and trying to force ourselves into gratitude from that place of socialized expectation — we’ll explore your own internalized narratives around gratitude: what you think you “should” be grateful for and why, how you ACTUALLY feel about that thing, and how it feels when you tell yourself you “should” be grateful for it.
Commonly, what I hear in response to these kinds of questions are narratives that sound something like this:
I should be grateful for my children because otherwise, it makes me a bad mom. How I ACTUALLY feel about them is stressed, worried, and overstretched…sometimes even burdened. When I tell myself I “should” be grateful for them, I feel guilty and ashamed…like I AM a bad mom.
I should be grateful for my career because otherwise, it means I’ve put all this work in for nothing. How I ACTUALLY feel about it is burnt out, overworked, and under-appreciated. When I tell myself I “should” be grateful for it, I feel guilty for complaining…I mean, some people never make it to where I have!
I should be grateful for the pay I receive because to ask for more means I’m greedy. How I ACTUALLY feel about it is belittled because I know other people are making more than I am. When I tell myself I “should” be grateful for what I have, I feel ashamed for wanting more…who am I to take that much?
Sound familiar?
Gratitude is something you FEEL. Not something you ARE. Our emotions are not permanent states of being but cognitively generated, malleable fluctuations of physiological sensations — which is why we FEEL them. And we behave from the emotional state we’re in at any given time. For example, you may curl up under a blanket and cry yourself to sleep when you’re sad. But that’s not likely something you’ll do when you’re happy.
When we look at the above examples, the emotion generated from telling ourselves that we “should” be grateful is commonly guilt or shame (or both). And I’m betting that even if your response wasn’t guilt or shame (or both), telling yourself you “should” be grateful doesn’t lead to you feeling grateful.
Again, I’ll state this: our emotions are cognitively generated. That means how we think is what generates our emotional state. And thinking you “should” be grateful generates something OTHER than the emotion of gratitude. It will never generate gratitude to think you “should” be grateful.
But what does the emotion of gratitude even feel like?
That’s a question we don’t often ask ourselves. We say we “should” be grateful, but we don’t think thoughts that lead to feeling gratitude and we don’t even consider what gratitude actually feels like. So we end up digging ourselves into a hole that, instead of climbing out of, we just dig further into.
Because our emotions are cognitively produced — what we’re thinking determines what we’re feeling — that means when you’re feeling gratitude, you’re thinking certain kinds of thoughts. It’s these thoughts that put you in the emotional state of gratitude in that moment. Of course, you’re likely feeling grateful FOR something/someone, but the gratitude wasn’t generated BY that something/someone. It was generated by YOUR THOUGHTS.
This means you can step into the emotional state of gratitude any time you want to. But it won’t come from telling yourself you “should” be grateful. Instead, it’ll be a temporary emotion (as all emotions are temporary) generated by thoughts like those you were thinking the last time you felt gratitude. Because THOSE are the thoughts that produce the emotion of gratitude for you.
In your Reclaiming Gratitude workbook, you’ll discover what the emotion of gratitude actually feels like in your body. And you’ll learn how to generate it for yourself on purpose.
You’ll also learn what emotions you feel when you think you’re being “ungrateful” or when someone else accuses you of being “ungrateful,” why you’re afraid of that accusation, and how to reclaim your agency over whether or not you feel gratitude in those moments. (Because is that even what you WANT to feel?) This is another layer of socialization. We’re often taught NOT to be “ungrateful,” and we’re afraid of coming across or being seen as “ungrateful.” And while gratitude is an emotion, “ungrateful” is not. “Ungrateful” is neither an identity we can be nor an emotion we can feel. Instead, it’s a bullshit label used for coercive control that you didn’t ever consent to and can choose to opt out of if you’d like.
There are many benefits to tapping into the emotional state of gratitude. And you can choose to tap in any time you’d like to experience those benefits by thinking thoughts that generate the emotion for you. But there’s not that same level of benefit to using guilt and shame-producing thoughts to try to force yourself into a false sense of gratitude. That simply doesn’t work.
“Ungrateful” is neither something one can be nor feel, so when someone accuses you of “being ungrateful” (even — perhaps especially — when that someone is YOU), consider what you are actually feeling in that moment. And then decide if you WANT to feel gratitude. If so, great! You can focus on the thoughts that produce the emotion of gratitude for you! If not, you get to own that choice and own your emotional state.
This gives you autonomy as a person and authority over how and what you feel gratitude for, rather than defaulting to the socially constructed notions of what you “should” be grateful for. This ensures that when you do tap into the emotion of gratitude, it’s ACTUALLY gratitude, rather than guilt, shame, or something else that doesn’t allow space for true gratitude.
If you’d like to work more on gratitude and other socially constructed concepts, I’d love to invite you into Project Reclamation. We’re an equitable self-coaching community built on concepts of nervous system regulation, emotional processing, and cognitively shifting the oppressive narratives we’ve been handed. We would love to welcome you into our community. Sign up today at KeliLynJewel.com/reclamation.
And if you’d like more in-depth work, I’d love to meet you over Zoom and talk about what it looks like to work with me for 1:1 coaching. Book a consult call at KeliLynJewel.com/consultation.
Wherever our working relationship goes, I’d love to see how your workbook on Reclaiming Gratitude has helped you. Tag me on socials and let me know!
