Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to the women's mental health podcast.
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I'm randy.
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I'm And I'm Jess.
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And we are two licensed psychotherapists, and this is a safe space where we talk about mental health, well being, and strategies for coping with life's challenges.
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And how all of this is normal, and you are not alone.
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In this episode, we're gonna talk about what it means to be grateful as we move forward into November where we're constantly told we should be grateful and focus on being grateful.
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We're gonna explore why gratitude can be hard, why it feels forced, and what you can do to be grateful and not compare yourself to others.
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So find us in more information.
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on womensmentalhealthpodcast.
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com.
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Have you ever had
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these thoughts
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You are so lucky.
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Wow, things seem to work out so easy
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for you.
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Well, somebody else has it worse.
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At least that's not.
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At least you have your job.
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This is toxic, positivity and high alert.
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We did that episode a couple of months ago.
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Mm-hmm.
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right?
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Toxic.
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Yeah.
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We have a episode that you can listen to called Toxic Positivity.
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Why are we focusing on gratitude then for this episode?
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Well because in November, it's all about the holidays and families and it's a national gratitude month and it's pushes us and encourages us to embrace the power of gratitude.
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But with that can also come with a lot of negativity with the
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positivity.
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So when we focus on gratitude, a lot of us will say, they connect to being thankful.
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Mm-hmm.
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Because Thanksgiving, and we should all be thankful and go around the table and say what we're thankful for, but the difference is that thankfulness is a reaction.
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Whereas gratitude is a chosen state of being.
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So again, thankfulness is the reaction.
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Mm-hmm.
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gratitude is the state.
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So that's the difference between them.
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You
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hand me a present mm-hmm.
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and I'm like, Oh wow.
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Thank you.
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It's a reaction.
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Yeah.
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But whereas gratitude is being able to say that action, I am appreciative of this.
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Yeah.
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I'm grateful for this.
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it is an action
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of it.
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Or showing how you are thankful for that gift.
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Cuz you're not always gonna be grateful for everything you get.
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No.
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It might be something that you hate
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so you wouldn't be there.
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You're like, Oh wow.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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Yo, I guess we should say, what are the benefits of the gratitude practice?
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Why do we wanna be grateful for things?
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So there are a lot of studies that show that being grateful and focusing on gratitude can help improve your sleep quality improve how you regulate your emotions, increase feelings of happiness.
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Overall mood.
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Ooh.
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Is it
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that serotonin stuff?
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Yeah.
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It's increasing your serotonin.
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Yeah.
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Hashtag.
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I don't have enough hair serotonin for this shit.
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Just like our sweatshirts we have, It helps you feel like hopeful for the future.
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Mm.
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Okay.
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And it can reduce your burnout rate, things with ptsd, posttraumatic stress disorder, and overall stress.
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So really what I'm hearing, it's a form of appreciation, Whether being thankful for a specific situation or a wider life perspective.
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It's
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the belief that you can connect to your feelings of appreciation and gratitude and that with that, you may feel happier and more satisfied that you're like connecting those things together.
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What I'm also hearing is that we're gonna be comparing, our own situations to others, whereas we know with social media that that's really harmful.
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Yes.
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So that's where this is like a gray area and a slippery slope that you can slide down into with feeling grateful.
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But then you're like, Wait, so and so is doing this or got this.
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I am thankful for this, but maybe I would be like, Thankful or have more gratitude if, I had this and like we tend to think that way.
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I would say especially as women, we can tend to spin our thoughts or
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compare ourselves to people that we think are doing better than us.
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When really, as we know as social media, that's all they show.
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So we don't know their
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situation exactly.
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It could be like they're in a dark, deep depressive hole, but they're posting a really shiny picture.
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And then we're comparing that.
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But like we don't really know the reality.
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It's very harmful because it doesn't justify where we are.
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Mm-hmm.
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And that's the other thing about being false gratefulness or gratitude, is that sometimes it's a sucky day and that's all it is.
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Right?
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And it's feel like there's nothing to be grateful for, you might wanna burn your gratitude journal that day.
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And that's okay to feel that way.
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And that's what we reference too in our toxic positivity episode, is that you don't have to be happy and shiny and grateful 24 7.
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Just because you're off one day is not the end of the world.
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Absolutely.
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Let's go back to, There's a theory called social comparison theory, right?
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Mm-hmm.
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started back in the fifties by this guy, Leon Festinger, and this theory says that people constantly evaluate themselves and others in areas like whether they're attractive, if they have enough money, if they're smart or successful.
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They're showing that at least 10% of our thoughts throughout the day are in some way, shape, or form.
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Comparing something whether, like you said, that's like beauty, finances, our education, You know what we deem successful.
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We are cycling those thoughts throughout our day, at least 10%.
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That's a lot of time to be comparing ourselves.
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I would say that when you
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think about that,
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yeah, 10% of the day that we are awake, if we're comparing ourselves, I could be doing other stuff.
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Yeah.
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So why are you doing that?
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it's toxic.
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Well, it's, it's probably learned.
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We figure out how we stack up against others, and that is how we figure out whether or not we've made it right?
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Mm-hmm.
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or at least that's what we've been
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told.
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And so research is showing people who regularly compare themselves to.
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They can find some motivation to improve, but that can also pair with this, almost like obsession to improve things and then you can start feeling like dissatisfaction with where you're at with that guilt remorse or start like with the obsessiveness.
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And worry about it.
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An eating disorder could pop up.
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Yeah.
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Or like you start lying to yourself or other people like, Yeah, things are great.
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This is going and you're like, world is falling apart.
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Cuz you wanna feel like you're at a certain level, you're doing more harm than good at times.
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It's hard
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to say that you're having a bad day.
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It's hard to say that.
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Feel.
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See here I go, You don't feel as good as the person next to you.
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Mm-hmm.
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How do you know how they feel?
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Cuz you're comparing what they look like.
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You're comparing what you look like.
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So basically this dude back in the fifties already knew social media was gonna
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screw us up and Well, it's always been that way.
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Any type of media, thinking back the early twenties and stuff when they started using like propaganda and things like that.
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Mm-hmm.
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like you're a housewife or you're this, or like you should buy.
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All comes back to advertising.
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Advertising.
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The evil.
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The evil.
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Let's call it what it is.
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It is all propaganda.
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Started with the war.
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They moved it into like home shopping goods and we're here today
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Next thing we have to have that ice maker.
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Yes.
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But we
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do Nugget, but we do Ice Maker is life changing.
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Just side note it'll be here in a couple days.
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Thank you.
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You're welcome.
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You're welcome.
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Done.
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Okay.
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So Theodore Roosevelt called Comparison, the thief of Joy
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and I.
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all the time because it is very true.
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And when we were discussing this episode and researching it thought back to even in one of the 10 commandments.
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It's been of course, twisted and that differently, but it's no shocker.
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But it's thou shall not covet they neighbor, things like that.
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You're not supposed to watch that.
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Was
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that neighbor's?
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Yeah, but Oh, okay.
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Okay.
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Wife nugget, ice maker, whatever it is.
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Like you're coveting.
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I'm just
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good ice maker now.
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Come on.
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There's the reason it's
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number one, it has changed my life.
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It brings me a lot of gratitude,
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Oh.
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But yeah, so I'm just saying, throughout history they have said like, when you compare.
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yourself.
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You're not gonna feel a hundred percent.
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That is
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one of the things I see in my practice all the time, is that women are always comparing themselves to other women.
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Mm-hmm.
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we talk about we don't really dress for men.
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Let's be real.
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We dress up for other women.
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Yeah.
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We want our friends to be like, You look cute.
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Like you dress up to you today.
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I was like, Damn, you look good girl.
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Thank you by the way, you.
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But we don't, we don't dress up for other, other, like the opposite sex or, whoever we're attracted to.
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It's not necessarily the opposite sex.
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Yeah.
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But we dress up for other women.
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We dress up for our friends.
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We dress up not just for us.
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Sometimes it's because we don't wanna be
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judged.
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Yeah, that's true.
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And, and my other company where I do social media and stuff, I am very transparent about showing like when I'm wearing like a cute outfit and stuff, that I'm also a hot mess the other 50% of the time, and wearing, pajamas to work from home.
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Because in social media it can feel like constantly comparing you have your shit together because you're wearing like a cute outfit and I'm.
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I try to be like very real and upfront with my followers that that's not true.
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and I
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was just showing this morning or yesterday that for me in my office, you see this nice picture.
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It's nice and clean.
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Mm-hmm.
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everything is organized behind me.
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Yeah.
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And then if you pan to the right where the screen doesn't show, all of my prime boxes have come in all of my, She has a lot of prime
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boxes.
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All my art supplies are there.
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Yeah.
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And it's just a hot mess right now.
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Yeah.
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And so I was showing somebody yesterday, I was like, All right, hang on, hang on.
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And I panned, I, I moved to my monitor over.
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Yeah.
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And she.
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Oh, that makes me feel better.
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And I was like, Oh good.
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Yeah, and I think that that's, that is so important when learning to practice, like gratitude and things like that, that we.
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In that moment do not compare to other people.
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And more importantly understand they are probably struggling too.
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Mm-hmm.
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they probably have dishes in the sink too.
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They probably have washed that load of laundry five times too.
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What?
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No.
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Or it's already smelly and mildewey in there, so just speaking from experience.
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But yeah, and having more.
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Kindness to ourselves and other people too.
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Like not thinking like she has her shit together because she has those awesome boots on.
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No actually she only slept two hours last night, aka me, but she still has,
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Really good boots on.
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Sometimes it's so difficult to show or be or say gratitude and there's reasons why.
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And the main one I'm gonna go through is, We often overlook these red flags in relationships, right?
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Mm-hmm.
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like we're, we're being so grateful for
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whatever that we're, that we're in a relationship or we're not alone.
