The Therapy Edit - On diving deeper into the practice of gratitude

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

In this solo episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna considers the practice of gratitude and shares a new idea about how we might approach the powerful tool that is feeling grateful without it becoming repetitive or like a mental tick list we run through on repeat.We really hope you enjoy it.

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, Psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello, welcome to this solo episode of The Therapy Edit. It's just me chatting away today. Something I want to share with you that has bought me an immense amount of joy in my life in recent years. And it's nothing that has been added to my life, nothing that has been changed. It's nothing to do with anything or anybody else. But it's just this one thing, this one way of approaching things that fills my heart on a regular basis in a way that I didn't feel before.

Now, I want to use the word gratitude because that's what it is. But I don't want you to switch off here because I feel like I want to talk about it in a slight different way. I have been coaching a group of seven mums and as part of that I have written them little journal points to fill in every single day and in the morning there's just a little space to write down three things that you feel grateful for now we had a conversation about this because I think it felt quite monotonous each day there was a temptation to write down the same things my family my kids my safe home, for example, those three big things that just went in every single day. Now, we know

we're grateful for that. So I would love just to drill down a little bit more into gratitude. I listened to a talk years ago and something that the speaker said really, really struck me. And he said, if we feel grateful for the big things, we'll feel joy some of the time. If we feel grateful for the small things, we will feel joy more of the time. And I think it struck me that I have, I find it very easy to feel gratitude at the big things in my life, the gains, the mountaintop highs, the celebratory moments in life. But I realized and I felt challenge to start looking a little bit deeper into my life and the good things with. within it. And I started to just say to myself, you know, what do I feel grateful for in this

moment? And I might think I'd feel grateful to go out for a walk. Oh, that's great, isn't it? That's what I'm doing, going out for a walk. I feel really grateful for that. Something I actually wouldn't have felt grateful for a few years ago. It would have just been, well, of course, I can go for a walk. I don't necessarily feel grateful for that. It's just a walk. Most people can do that. But as we kind of start lifting the layers of the privilege and the gratitude in that moment. I feel grateful that I can go for a walk. I feel grateful that I feel safe. I feel grateful that my legs work. I feel grateful that I'm not in pain. I feel grateful for the shoes that I'm wearing that many people cannot afford to buy shoes for themselves or their children. That is a

massive expenditure that is a real tricky thing. Actually, you remember as a child buying school shoes was a huge, huge cost to my family, a huge cost. I feel grateful for the stability in my body. I feel grateful that I can look around and I can see the beauty. I feel grateful for the trees. I feel grateful for what they do to the air that I'm breathing in. I feel grateful for my lungs that they work and I can breathe clearly.

I feel grateful. I feel grateful. I feel grateful that I've walked from a home I feel safe in to a home, back to a home I feel safe in. And starting to unpack that very top level sense of gratitude and just really noticing more within that moment. And I remember hearing, I always say this. I remember someone talking about this and I remember hearing this, but I devour so much information. I listen to so many podcasts, so many talks, I watch so many things. And I totally forget where I've heard this stuff from.

So if you ever hear these things and you want to tell me where I might have heard it from, please let me know and I can put it in the show notes. But I remember hearing someone giving a lesson on gratitude and he got his students to just notice and they felt grateful for in that moment. And, you know, they said, I feel grateful for this lesson. And he said, hold your pen. Look at your pen. It's just a pen.

Let it inspire gratitude. I feel grateful for this pen. Someone, somewhere designed this. Someone, someone, somewhere made this. Someone, somewhere taught me how to write, opened up a whole world of literacy, a whole world of reading, someone created this piece of paper, someone sewed together the leaves of this workbook. And that little pen inspired so much gratitude that we begin to recognize the intricacies and the privileges of our lives because we know full well. Many of us struggle with health

anxiety and anxiety about all the things that could go wrong in the future. Now this practice has really began to anchor me over the years into the presence. Now, a number of Christmases ago, I think it was even before. Actually, I think I had a couple of kids by then. So we're going back, kind of five this year, six this years, I imagine. It was Christmas and I was sat on the sofa at my brother's house and my mum and my sister-in-law said to me, you just seem so much lighter, happier. Now, I'd gone through a really dark, deep period of depression at that point after my second baby, as many of you will know, had silent reflux. I got postnatal anxiety and postnatal depression, really dark time. But it wasn't just that I was coming out of that period. It wasn't just

that I was getting more sleep. It was that I'd started practicing gratitude to a deeper degree than I had done before. Of course, I knew I felt grateful for many things in my life, but really tapping into and drilling down into that feeling, letting my heart be filled, really, really had made a massive, massive difference. I would honestly say that this, this deeper understanding of how gratitude can feel supportive and in our lives has really just been a game changer for me. And whilst at the beginning, this kind of practice has to be really intentional, we have to really prompt ourselves to do it. I promise you that in time you will find your heart bursting

totally spontaneously. These days I will walk. I will go out and I will walk. It's my favorite thing. It's what grounds me. And I will just stand there and the sun will be on my face and I will put my arms out and I will just say, wow, wow, this is incredible. I will be driving through. through the country roads where I live. I'm very privileged to live in this beautiful area of the country. And I will just say to the kids, look, look at the colour of this grass. Now the rain has been on it. Look, it is so green.

Look at the trees arching over the road. And they catch onto it too. They catch onto it too. There was a moment I think I shared a good while ago where my son was in the bath and he just said, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, well, I've got you, I've got Florence, I've got daddy, I've got, and he listed off these things. And he had just been sat there in the bath and obviously had just moved into this

place of gratitude. And I absolutely loved it. And I think it means that when you go through challenging times, it enables you to recognize the good that is there alongside as well. And it doesn't mean that the challenging time is fixed it doesn't mean that there isn't hurt there isn't overwhelm there isn't grief there isn't frustration there isn't fear and all of those feelings that are responses to what you're going through but it does mean it does mean that there can also be pockets of laughter that there can also be moments of absolute awe and wonder which is so incredibly good for our mental health so so incredibly good for the soul i recently journeyed through a really really challenging couple of weeks with a close friend of mine and big things were going wrong big things

were happening but she also has been practicing gratitude in this way and we laughed together it felt a lot for her but there were real moments of release real moments of joy gratitude it's like it just turns on a light, even in a dark room. So you know that whilst it's bad and hard and challenging, it's not all bad and hard and challenging. There are moments of reprive and respite when we are able to drill down and we choose to sometimes we have to try even harder to drill down into those points of gratitude.

Take those big layers away, those big things that you're grateful for. you know that that's familiar to you but go further take it further and further and further I often challenge people to write down a list of a hundred things they're grateful for and of course you start with the big things and then you really have to start scraping the barrel you know you have to start yeah I've got a water bottle on my desk I am so grateful for that water bottle honestly I didn't even use to drink that much water at all used to get headaches and now I have this beautiful green bottle that comes around with me and it's like this little hydrating companion and I in this moment I just feel really grateful for it and it's given me joy just looking at this

water bottle. So there are things around us. That's a silly example. But in the hard times there are also good things and this practice of drilling down has really, really helped me realise that. So I wanted to share it with you. Thank you so much for listening. Please do take a moment to subscribe, rate and review as it really helps get these words out to benefit more juggling parents like us and head to anamatha.com to find my resources on everything from health anxiety to people pleasing starting at only 20 pounds and finally don't forget to pre-order my new book raising a happier mother how to find balance feel good and see your children flourish as a result i can't wait for you to have that take care and we'll chat soon

Thank you.