When I was twenty-two, my longtime boyfriend tried to kill himself. He tried it twice. Each morning, when he would wake up even after swallowing a bottle of pills, the explanation he would offer was that he did not want to be in this world without me. I had been trying for more than a year to leave him. We had hurt one another terribly over our many years in a long-distance relationship. He had been my young love. I wanted more.
Years later, I would marry and then eventually divorce that man. In our twenty years together, I never truly understood his claim that he chose death over being without me, until now.
My Darkness
Just now, I am going through yet another breakup with my Twin Flame. The relationship has been the most rigorous, tumultuous one of my life. I love the man desperately. He has penetrated my flesh and my dreams. I cannot stand the thought of being in the world without him, but it is a reality that I must face.
Every time we break up (it’s happened several times before), I fall into a deep depression. The world covers over with grey. I cannot feel my love, even for my children. For weeks, I go through the motions in my life like a zombie.
Keeping A Gratitude Journal Changed Everything
This breakup, the one I really think is final, has been different. I am more practiced at breaking up with him now. I can recognize the ebbs and flows of my grief and my rage. I know that I will return to myself eventually, that the sun will again cut through the grey.
But, there is another difference too.
After years of opening my daily meditation practice with ten breaths in gratitude, in the last several months, I have opted to end my days by keeping a gratitude journal. Gratitude has been described as “the appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself and represents a general state of thankfulness and/or appreciation” (Sansone & Sanson, 2010). To date, hundreds of studies have been done assessing the positive impacts of gratitude practice on feelings of well-being, job performance, depression, anxiety, and more (Wood AM, Froh JJ, Geraghty 2010).
Like meditation, the effects of keeping a gratitude journal have been well-studied by the discipline of Positive Psychology. Positive Psychology is “the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008). It gained notoriety thanks to Harvard’s long-running most popular undergraduate course, Positive Psychology 1504, taught by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar.
One key recommendation that emerges from the field of positive psychology is the recommendation to keep a Gratitude Journal.
How to Keep a Gratitude Journal
The “Greater Good in Action” Science Center at UC Berkeley suggests the following steps for how to keep a gratitude journal.
- Be as specific as possible — specificity is key to fostering gratitude.
- Go for depth over breadth.
- Get personal.
- Try subtraction, not just addition.
- See good things as “gifts.” Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts guards against taking them for granted.
- Savor surprises.
- Revise if you repeat.
- Write regularly. Whether you write daily or every other day, commit to a regular time to journal, then honor that commitment.
. . .
I am always at my lowest emotionally the morning after a breakup. The night before, when things are all falling apart, I tend to be propelled by anger. By the morning, all of that subsides. What is left in its wake is overwhelming sadness.
The night we broke up, I was so distracted by the drama of it all that I forgot to write in my Gratitude Journal. At the height of my tears the next morning, I remembered. Though I was alone in bed, I said aloud, “I forgot my Gratitude Journal!”
Through my tears, I opened it.
To make space for myself in its pages, I wrote a bit of context; that it was the morning after, that I had forgotten to write the night before because of the breakup.
And then, as a practice, I forced myself to review the events of my day yesterday, especially those having nothing to do with my love. Reflecting hour by hour, I counted my blessings, recalling a sweet phone call with a friend and two very positive sessions with clients at work. One by one, I listed those things I was grateful for in the day, even though it had also been a day that broke my heart.
Conclusion
Our grandmothers were right. Counting our blessings is a practice. It is one of the best practices around. The human brain, attuned to notice the threat, so often tunes out the good stuff, those very things that make us happy. We have to train our brains to notice the good. As it turns out, doing so is a skill. We improve with time. The gratitude muscle strengthens and we begin to notice the good everywhere, even as we are in great pain. The world gets brighter. Our lives feel richer.
My Gratitude Journal was the factor that supported me in moving through my sadness in days, rather than weeks. It was life-saving. When I could not see my the path forward, it helped me find the way.
. . .
Sarene B. Arias is a hands-on healer and massage therapist. She blogs on Medium and offers 1:1 intimacy coaching those who want to feel more alive. Email [email protected] for details.
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This post was previously published on Wholistique.
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