INVESTING IN OURSELVES: UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA

May 2, 2023 Buffalo Latino Village

Depression & anxiety are common problems that can develop after trauma. Depression ignites feelings of sadness and low mood. These feelings are longer lasting than 2 weeks and can impair daily functioning. Those experiencing anxiety and depression should always seek professional help. However, practicing the experience of gratitude can be a game-changer for many people. The practice of gratitude helps train your brain to notice and appreciate the things in life and, in doing so, shifts your life experience tremendously. Gratitude can increase your happiness and well-being, life satisfaction, and even overall health while decreasing the stuff we all want less of like anxiety, depression, and anger. It can be a powerful practice to cultivate, especially if you struggle with anxiety or depression.

While anxiety and depressive disorders come in different forms and flavors, they share some commonalities. All are associated with underlying negative thinking patterns. These patterns include both what we think and how we think. In other words, both the content and the process of thinking impact anxiety and depression. The content of anxious and depressive thinking is often negative in nature. These thoughts may overly focus on the negative or problem areas, discount the positive (“yeah but” -ing away any positive aspect or occurrence), and catastrophize or jump to the worst-case scenario.

The process of anxious and depressive thinking is characterized by mental time travel – dwelling on the past or focusing on the future. This mental time travel, known as rumination, pulls us out of the present moment and can add to feelings of depression and anxiety. Psychological research shows that the more present we are, the happier we tend to be, even when the present moment isn’t pleasant or enjoyable. Rumination is a sneaky mental habit that zaps joy away. This is where gratitude can be particularly helpful. Rumination, worry, complaining, and negativity are mental habits with adverse consequences.

These mental habits involve stewing on negative thoughts, indulging them in a repeating and amplifying loop with the effect of dragging down your mood and pulling you out of the present moment. It can be helpful to use gratitude as a competing response to these mental habits.

It is difficult to tap into gratitude and get stuck in negativity. When you find yourself getting wrapped up in those negative thoughts or starting down a spiral, challenge your mind to find something at that very moment to be grateful for. In doing so, you are combating the negative content of your thoughts AND bringing your mind into the present.

Just be sure you don’t go through the motions. You must try to really get in touch with a sense of appreciation, gratitude, or beauty in the here and now. In other words, experiencing gratitude is key! The goal is to truly activate grateful feelings to help buoy you against negativity and to help keep you grounded in the present moment.

Research shows gratitude isn’t just a pleasant feeling. Being grateful can also support greater health, happiness, and wisdom in ourselves and our communities. In the past two decades, a growing body of evidence in the field of social science has found that gratitude has measurable benefits for just about every area of our lives.

Gratitude appears to contribute substantially to individual well-being and physical health. So much so that the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley—a leader in research on the science of social and emotional well-being describes gratitude as the “social glue” key to building and nurturing strong relationships.

Gratitude offers us a way of embracing all that makes our lives what they are. More than just a happy feeling for the parts of our lives currently going our way, gratitude encompasses the willingness to expand our attention so that we perceive more of the goodness we are always receiving.