Gratitude is a part
of most spiritual traditions, it is a big part of twelve step programs, and it
has been incorporated into a number of psychotherapy approaches, such as
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Positive Psychotherapy (PPT), and
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP). However, until the last decade, nobody really
studied its impact.
At the Emmons Lab at UC Davis, Dr.
Robert Emmons and his colleagues are studying the nature of gratitude, its
causes, and its potential impact for human health and well-being. They are currently developing methods to cultivate gratitude in
daily life and assess gratitude’s effect on well-being, and developing a
measure to reliably assess individual differences in dispositional
gratefulness.
Their studies indicate that people who adopt a daily gratitude practice
have greater amounts of high energy positive moods, a greater sense of feeling
connected to others, more optimistic ratings of one’s life, better sleep
duration and sleep quality, and higher reported levels of the positive states
of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to
control groups that focused on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in
which participants thought they were better off than others).
Those
who kept weekly gratitude journals
exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better
about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week
compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons &
McCullough, 2003). The researchers also noticed that participants who kept
gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important goals
over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental
conditions.
Twelve step programs talk about developing an attitude of
gratitude. In DBT, one of the
distraction techniques is to make comparisons between one's current
situation and a situation that's worse. In PPT, the "gratitude visit," in which a
person makes an appointment to read a gratitude letter to the recipient, has
been found to cause happiness levels to go up for a full month.
In AEDP, the healing
affects refer to gratitude toward another and feeling moved. The healing affects have contrast embedded in
them. They arise in response to experiences that disconfirm expectations, i.e.,
experiences of contact where isolation was before, of kindness when
indifference or malice were expected, of being taken seriously rather than
being dismissed. AEDP’s healing affects are transformative precisely because
such a positive attachment experience was inconsistent or absent in the past.
Explicitly processing these newly restored reparative intersubjective moments
accesses resources and resilience, and releases a cascade of transformations
that leads to what is known as core state, when one is filled with
"empathy and self-empathy, wisdom, clarity about one’s subjective
truth, and generosity" and feels "open and having a sense of being
grounded, solid, in flow, and at ease."*
I was moved to tears
when I saw all the devastation in beach towns in New York and New Jersey and
heard about tragic deaths from Hurricane Sandy and again when I read about the
heroism of first responders and the generosity of countless others after the storm. I worry about the escalating conflict in the
Middle East and pray for the safety of my loved ones and everyone else who
lives there. My heart goes out to all those who have been affected by both of
these tragedies. May you all regain your
sense of safety and security. I am not
taking mine for granted.
*Russell, E. & Fosha, D. (2008). Transformational
affects and core state in AEDP: The emergence and consolidation of joy, hope,
gratitude and confidence in the (solid goodness of the) self.
Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 18(2),
167-190.
Additional
Sources:
http://gratitudepower.net/science.htm
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/crisis_surival_video_part_2.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200602/make-gratitude-adjustment
