Research has shown the many benefits of practising gratitude for both our physical and mental health. But did you know that practising gratitude can also help combat anxiety? In this post, we will explore how exactly gratitude can help calm the mind down. We will then look at a variety of different ways to practise gratitude when you are feeling anxious!
Anxiety and the Brain’s Negativity Bias
Have you ever noticed that our brains can be magnets for negativity? Or that the way we think and feel tends to attract more of the same? To better understand how gratitude combats anxiety, it is helpful to know about one of our brain’s innate processes called the negativity bias. Especially as this bias tends to be particularly active in anxiety sufferers, making it that much more difficult to calm the mind down.
What the heck is the negativity bias you ask? Believe it or not, it’s a survival function that our brain developed to keep us safe. By being hyperaware of all the things that could go wrong in our environment, our brain feels better prepared to protect us from those PERCEIVED threats.
This was an extremely helpful function back in cave people days, when immediate threats like sabre tooth tigers or lack of food were lurking around every corner. With all the modern conveniences we have keeping us safe in the 21st century, this function isn’t AS necessary. Unfortunately, our brain didn’t get the memo and can be a tad extra when it comes to scoping out negativity in our lives.
Retraining the Negative Brain
Now what if I told you that we could start training the brain to notice more of the positive and the neutral, and not just the negative? While we definitely don’t have complete control over the events of our day, I have noticed that there is a correlation between our outlook and our reality. In more woo woo terms, the energy that we put out into the world often comes back to us. Therefore, the key is to become more intentional about the energy we are putting out into the world.
You might be thinking “but Shanen, if this is an automatic function of my brain, how can I possibly shift my anxious mindset away from the negativity bias”? Well lucky for you, it is possible to retrain the brain. It starts with simply becoming aware of the ways in which our brain functions automatically that might not be serving us. Then we can intentionally shift these processes using strategies like gratitude!
Before we move on, I also want to be clear that retraining our brain away from its negativity bias does not entail toxic positivity! I am not teaching you to find the sunshine and rainbows in every situation, because that is actually a way of invalidating your emotions. It’s more about recognizing that not everything is always doom and gloom, despite what our brain tells us.
Gratitude’s Effect on the Anxious Mind
Practising gratitude can help to calm the mind down and soothe anxiety in several ways. First and foremost, when we are focusing on something we are grateful for, we are not allowing our mind to stray to things that cause us anxiety. This works similarly to mindfulness – when we bring all our attention to something in the present moment, it’s hard to ruminate on things that happened in the past or worry about things that might happen in the future.
Practising gratitude can also help us to alchemize our anxious emotions and sensations into something more positive and pleasant. This requires tapping into the sensations and emotions gratitude brings up in our bodies. Let’s try a simple little exercise to help you better understand what I mean:
- Think about and notice how anxiety feels in your body. For example, this might feel like a weight in your stomach or chest, tension in your jaw, tightness in your throat, frenetic energy coursing through your body, etc.
- Now think about something or someone you are grateful for; really focus on this thing or person and think about why you are grateful for it/them. Imagine yourself interacting with this thing or person.
- Notice how this experience of gratitude feels in your body – maybe a smile came to your face, or your heart felt warm and relaxed, or you felt giddy with excitement.
Super different, right? I’m assuming gratitude feels waaaayyyy better in your body than anxiety does. Gratitude cues safety to the body. When we are thinking about something that we love and are grateful for, our body responds in kind. This signals to the brain that all is well, which ultimately helps to calm the mind down.
How to Practise Gratitude to Calm the Mind Down
In a pinch, we can simply think about something we are grateful for to reap the benefits of gratitude. But sometimes it’s fun to spice things up a little too! With that in mind, here are 6 additional ways to soothe your anxiety using gratitude:
Make a List
Is there anything type A anxious girlies enjoy more than making a list? Writing a list is a great strategy to calm the mind down when you are feeling overwhelmed. Actually following through with said lists is a totally different story though… Luckily, with gratitude lists, there’s nothing to follow through on! You are simply going to write a list of everything you are grateful for.
If you want to practise this regularly and keep things fresh, you can use different prompts or categories to guide your reflections! Here are some category ideas to get you inspired:
- The people I am grateful for
- The foods I am grateful for
- My personal strengths and traits
- My favourite travel experiences
Play a Gratitude Game
Another great way to practise gratitude is to gamify it and turn it into an I-Spy type challenge. Give yourself a category and see how many things in that category that you are grateful for throughout the day. Can you find 5 orange things that you are grateful for along your commute? Can you tell 3 co-workers what you are grateful for about them?
Create Some Gratitude Art
Being creative is a great way to connect with our emotions and calm the mind down. You don’t have to be particularly artistic for this to work! Definitely speaking from experience here – if you ever need someone to draw you a mean stick figure, I’m your girl. Luckily, it’s truly about the process of creating, and not the final product. Here are some ways you might practise gratitude through art:
- Take pictures of 5 things you are grateful for throughout your day
- Write a song or poem about someone you are grateful for
- Draw or paint your favourite scenery from your travels
- Represent your favourite part of yourself through clay or playdough
- Create a collage or vision board of all your favourite things
- Cook a meal using your favourite ingredients
Visualize What You Are Grateful For
The brain doesn’t actually know the difference between real and imagined. This is why visualization can be such a powerful tool for calming the mind down. If you can visualize yourself engaging with something or someone you are grateful for, the brain thinks this is really happening, and your body responds in kind. Really play it our like a movie scene in your mind, making sure to pay attention to any sensory details (i.e., scents, sights, sounds, tastes and sensations of touch).
Keep a Gratitude Container
For my more visual people, it can be helpful to have a concrete representation of your gratitude. Pick a container that has some kind of meaning for you, or even create one! Then use it to store little mementos of things you are grateful for. Or keep sticky notes handy and write down things you are grateful for as they come up, and see if you can fill a jar with these gratitude notes!
Meet Your Anxiety with Gratitude
Anxious about a specific situation? See if you can come up with at least one thing you are grateful for about that situation. Then think about at least one thing future you will be grateful for once the situation has passed.
Conclusion
Like with many things, gratitude is a skill that gets easier the more we do it. That’s because we are literally changing our brain each time we practise gratitude, by building new neural pathways. The more we practise gratitude, the easier it will become to calm the mind down.
A way to ensure you actually use this tool is to find a gratitude practice that truly resonates with you. This might take some trial and error, but I really encourage you to give it a good try and notice the difference it makes in your life! Remember, if we expect to find negative, we will find it; but if we intentionally look for the good, we will find that too. We just have to remember to actually look for it!
PS – looking for more ways to soothe an anxious mind? Check out these posts:
