Hello and welcome to the podcast. Feeling overwhelmed and struggling to find gratitude in the midst of managing life as a special needs mom? Let's unpack those feelings together. In this special Thanksgiving episode, we're taking a deep-dive into the concept of "defending gratitude." We'll explore why we often struggle to be grateful in the face of adversity, and introduce practical strategies to help you navigate these emotional hurdles.
Positive Psychology
The Enemies of Gratitude: Hidden Brain, Tom Gilovich at Cornell
Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/
Coaching Opportunities
Pathway to Peace {Group Coaching Program}: Schedule a Consult or Contact Me
Join The Special Needs Mom Podcast Community FaceBook Group!! Click here to Request to Join
Hello and welcome to the podcast. Feeling overwhelmed and struggling to find gratitude in the midst of managing life as a special needs mom? Let's unpack those feelings together. In this special Thanksgiving episode, we're taking a deep-dive into the concept of "defending gratitude." We'll explore why we often struggle to be grateful in the face of adversity, and introduce practical strategies to help you navigate these emotional hurdles.
Positive Psychology
The Enemies of Gratitude: Hidden Brain, Tom Gilovich at Cornell
Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/
Coaching Opportunities
Pathway to Peace {Group Coaching Program}: Schedule a Consult or Contact Me
Join The Special Needs Mom Podcast Community FaceBook Group!! Click here to Request to Join
Hi, I'm Cara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible, and the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. This forward has many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created this special needs mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves going trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flare of possibility in your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome, well, hello and welcome to this special needs mom podcast. I had so much fun creating this episode for you. I was trying to make it short, but we'll see after I record how successful I am with that. It's going to be coming out the day before Thanksgiving, so I'm very mindful that most of us don't have an abundance of time on our hands. We're going to talk about defending gratitude or whether that's what I titled the episode, because we're going to do a deep dive into some of the psychology around gratitude and I called it defending gratitude because I'm standing up for gratitude a little bit. I'll get a little bit more into that later.
Speaker 1:Before we get into the bulk and the content of the episode, I thought I'd share a little quick personal story from a day in the life of me over here. So we were fortunate to get a last minute doctor appointment on Tuesday morning. I had gotten some lab results back over the weekend and all of my hairs were standing and I was seeing things that were to me very alarming, and so I sent a quick panic, my chart message and, long story short, we found ourselves in yet another doctor appointment on Tuesday morning, but I was thankful that we were going to get some face to face time with a doctor. So since he hadn't actually had a well-checked visit and who knows how long because I kind of consider them useless since we see so many specialists I figured why not? It would give us a little bit longer to see the doctor.
Speaker 1:So they have, after your kid reaches a certain age assuming they are typically developing they will have the child fell out of form. That is for their eyes only. It's what did they say? We only have them do this in the office on the iPad. I was getting a little testy because in my mind this was a complete waste of time because they really didn't take into any consideration that my son might be disabled. They had no idea who my son in and they're handing me this iPad that's supposed to be only filled out by my son.
Speaker 1:So I thought, whatever, I don't care, and I gave the iPad to my son and he took this very seriously. He had some work to do and he was very focused on it and of course I was looking over his shoulder to see what he was doing, and so the first questions were clearly aimed at helping any child that was in a abusive or neglective situation. I mean, it was obvious Like they were very leading questions and I was looking at like he was really taking a long time to think and in many instances he was answering positively that he was basically in a really, really horrible situation and I was like, wait, what? What is he thinking? But I was like, whatever, let him do what he's going to do, it's not going to hurt anybody. And I just thought it was funny because I'm like, wow, I'm getting like a two star rating from my child. I have I mean, you know what we do for our kids Like we give it all, like it's all out there, I am going deep, I am doing all the things I can think of and spending all the money and doing all the praying, and so I just thought it was kind of funny that I got such a low rating. So don't be too hard on any of ourselves here, ladies, if our children don't agree that we are amazing parents. Because, as he was giving me this rating, I was actually like you know what? No, that's not true. Like I am actually really a fantastic mom for this child and my perfect goodness. No, but I feel pretty confident that I'm doing a great job. So, on that note, reviews, ratings if you're new or old and you haven't considered leaving a review, would you take just a second? Like it really can be done in just a minute or two. Leaving a review really helps other moms. I want you to picture another mom late at night, desperate, needing hope and needing help. That opens the podcast app and these ratings. What they do is they tell the podcast app that, oh, people actually think this one's helpful, so they're going to show it to more people. So we want to help people find this resource and this community, so you can do your part by taking a quick second to do a rating and review.
Speaker 1:So now let's move on to this mysterious, maybe even annoying thing called gratitude. And the reason I say that annoying is because I do notice that in areas like self-care or being grateful, there's maybe even a little pushback of like oh, but you don't understand. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. And I think when you dive into the psychology which I have, like I said, I really enjoy doing a deep dive here there's this perplexing phenomenon because the feeling of appreciation and gratitude feels so good. I mean, think about a moment where you were just so grateful or, vice versa, somebody was grateful or appreciating you. It feels amazing and it's free and it's always accessible to us. So why don't we feel this more? That's the question we're really gonna answer today and we're going to look at the antidotes to that. As a baseline.
Speaker 1:I think the reason why we're looking at gratitude, yes, it's because it's Thanksgiving tomorrow and I just feel like you know it's on point Like we gotta talk about it, especially because we're gonna be confronted with like, oh, what are you thankful for? And if your brain automatically goes to all of the things that are really hard and horrible in your life, one you're probably totally normal and human. But also I want you to consider that that's not your only option, and the reason why I wanna talk about it is because this gratitude is actually the gateway to your happiness, even in all of the situations that we find ourselves in. I have a very high level of belief that even moms like us that have children that are so complex and so hard and giving us two star ratings as mothers that we have the opportunity to be as happy as everybody else. Did your jodges drop, maybe? If so, I think you're really gonna love this episode.
Speaker 1:So why gratitude? It's one of those emotions that it unlocks the best in us. You know, it's like you say live your best self, be your best you. Well, gratitude actually is one of those triggers to help release our best selves. There's studies that show that when people are grateful, they are more generous and there's also an easier delayed gratification phenomenon. So when you're grateful, you're actually able to delay gratification, which we all know like we're not very good at anymore. It also improves sleep and relationships and I'm sure it does more that I haven't listed, but we're gonna now look at. Okay, gratitude does not come easy, in spite how good it is why?
Speaker 1:So the first one I wanna look at is social comparison. What is this? This is when we look around us and we see what's going on and we measure up our experience compared to others around us. One of the reasons that we're less grateful than we could be is because we're largely ignorant of other people's experiences. So it's like the situation where you know what's going on in your own house, like you're right there, you're watching it, but you have no idea what's happening in your neighbor's house over there. All you see is them maybe coming and going. You have no idea if their child is sick. You have no idea if their teenager is doing all the drugs, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think of a comparison, but it's like you really only are aware of what's going on in your experience. You're ignorant, like you literally can't see what's going on, and so we focus on the details of our own experience. So therefore they loom larger. And this is why when we have those moms that are coming and maybe complaining or talking about something that we don't consider to be hugely problematic like, let's say, making an elite soccer team so that to us is a small problem, but to them it's a big problem, and this is because they're focusing on their own experience. They notice what they notice. It goes both ways, like they can't see what's going on for you besides maybe a little bit on the surface.
Speaker 1:So this social comparison is not asking what we have or what we don't. It's asking what we have relative to what others have or don't have. It really skews our perception based on this relativity, this comparison. It's that idea that I can't be thankful for what I have if I think you have more than I do. It's just human nature. It's not the thing itself, but it's the thing compared to what others have. It's mind-blowing, right? We're not really mind-blowing. I think we all know this because we're experiencing it. But I think to slow it down and to really look at this social comparison as a thief of gratitude is really really helpful.
Speaker 1:Let's look at the second theme, adaptation. Shortly said, we adapt to the good things in our life. There's this psychological concept or theory called the hedonic treadmill, and it's really suggesting that it's not the states themselves that are good or bad, it's the change in states. It suggests that humans have a tendency to return to like a relatively stable level of happiness or wellbeing despite changes in external conditions. I think a good example of looking at this is like in the context of relationships. Remember back to when your partner and you were first newly romantic. Like how big and excited, like the butterflies, the exhilaration. Remember all that. Well, where did it go? We adapted, we adapted to the amazingness, who our partners are, and so simply said, like we just don't notice it anymore. It's awful to look at it like this, but like it's still happening. There's still the same person that we married or chose, but we're just not noticing it and so it doesn't feel as good anymore. And so that's why this what's called the hedonic treadmill, kind of we return to that same level of happiness than before. We had that thing Again, cause we're kind of adapting and almost forgetting that that thing exists. So you can think about this in the context of a new job, a new house, even probably a new diagnosis, where we actually adapt to the good and the bad. Right. So some of this can go the other way. Right, we have something really hard that happens, but we adapt.
Speaker 1:There are studies that show that people that are in accidents with spinal cord damage they actually return to statistically right this is not everybody, obviously Statistically they return to a same or greater level of happiness than before their accident. I think that's profound and I think it's great news for us, because many of us there's a before and after, before and after diagnosis Not that those diagnosis is stopped, but, like you know, this may happen over and over again as we get new diagnosises and we go through new stages, but that we still have the opportunity and possibility to return to a great base level of happiness. And the last area I really want to look at is what's called the asymmetry between headwinds and tailwinds, and this is a concept that I became familiar with. That was described by Thomas Glovic, and he's a researcher at Cornell University, and I like this because the imagery is so strong. So when you're heading into the wind right like walking into the wind, flying into the wind, whatever you're doing into the wind, you're noticing the resistance the whole time. Each step is laborious, and the other way around, when you're being pushed from the back, like, let's just say like you're heading into the headwinds and that you, you turn around and all of a sudden it's like you're not only not going into the wind, you're being pushed by the wind. You notice it for that split second, but then that noticing really quickly wears off, like it normalizes. So kind of back to the adaptation.
Speaker 1:Think about an experience. The one that came to my mind is like going home from the hospital. Every day in the hospital, we know, is miserable, some more than others, and it's constantly noticed, it's constantly we are aware we are not home. And then you go home and there's that day that's like so great. And you get home. It's like, oh my gosh, I get to sleep in my own bed and this is just lovely.
Speaker 1:And then pretty soon you're not really thankful for your own bed anymore. It settles in, you don't notice it anymore and there's really good reasons why. Right, like if you think about what it takes to be human when there's these barriers that are resting our progress towards where we want to go. We've got to pay attention to them and those things that are boosting us along. We can just enjoy them. They're not a problem, so we don't really have to pay attention to them. That makes it really hard to appreciate some of the things that we could, like, have an immense amount of gratitude for, and it's very easy to feel the resentful things or the things that we might be resentful about because we're very aware of them, like they're right in our face.
Speaker 1:Think about physical pain when you have something in your body that's painful, you're very aware of it and, depending on the level of pain, like you're really aware of it, but then it goes away, hopefully, and all of a sudden you forgot you even had the pain. Has that ever happened to you? Like I used to go to an acupuncturist often and she'd be like, oh, so how's this? Like some pain I was complaining of. I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. So this happens all the time.
Speaker 1:Simply said, we recognize our obstacles but fail to recognize our privileges. With that, let's look at what I'm calling the countermeasures against the gratitude gremlins. Really, we're going to look at okay, well, how do we raise right? So, like, if there's this hedonic treadmill, this thing that's happening, this phenomenon in psychology, then how do we stop it Right? And so one is actually to like raise our baseline while being in happiness, Because if we're going to return to that over and over again, we might as well have it be good. And we're also going to look at countermeasures to the three things I mentioned above.
Speaker 1:The first one is explicit expression of gratitude. I want you to consider that this is your engine for filling things. This is where, like, you bring that mindfulness in, where you may not be sitting there feeling grateful, but if you decide you're going to express something, you actually can't generate that gratitude. And lo and behold, you feel better. And a lot of times, with this expression of gratitude, like we'll feel the gratitude or we'll be thinking about the gratitude, but then we won't express it, for whatever reason. Usually it's because we feel like, oh man, I could never actually like none of the words, feel like they actually sufficient to expressing how much I am grateful for this person or situation, and so you're reluctant, because it's not good enough, so you don't do it at all. You want to say it right? Well, consider that saying it at all is much better than saying it right. People don't tend to care about the quality of expression as much as they care about receiving it in general. You know, there's the famous quote from Maya Angelou People will not remember what you did. They won't remember what you said, but they will remember how you make them feel. And so this just is so powerful and actually so simple, and, of course, the idea here is it makes hopefully, somebody else feel good, but it will make you feel good as well If you do this publicly. I think it even has a wider impact, because generally it feels good watching people be good to each other, so that one's like a triple power one if you choose to use it.
Speaker 1:Okay, next, intentional activities Service. We'll see so many special needs moms doing this already. You see, there's so many people in the helping space that have gone through much of what we have gone through, and I think this is the reason why is one. It puts purpose behind our pain, but also it is something that generates something that feels really, really good for us. And the reason why this one is really, really helpful is because when you're serving somebody, you're having an experience, and we're much less vulnerable to this adaptation when we're experiencing something as opposed to something that's material. So it turns out that experiences are these super power. They're just very powerful for actually generating this gratitude. Experiences connect us to other people more, they build up who we are. It can be said that we're the sum total of our experiences, and comparisons do apply here, but they're less pronounced. So it almost like de-energizes this comparison. Other intentional activities would be faster.
Speaker 1:Meaningful relationships, again, like I said, the first one, explicitly expressing appreciation or gratitude, also can be you fostering meaningful relationships at the same time. So that's where I think a lot of us are like oh my gosh, I don't want to do one more thing, kara, I'm barely making it as it is. This is where I want you to see that maybe it's not as hard as it sometimes feels and it's almost like if we just move the dial a little bit, you know you get the kite up in the sky and it just flies on its own. So the last one is engage in acts of kindness. So could be same as service, but I think maybe that might kind of inspire you in a different way if you think about just acts of kindness as a way of engaging in your own experience of gratitude. So another countermeasure is resisting adaptation and, like I mentioned earlier, this is also where the experiences like we adapt less to experiences so you'll see, like a lot of these, they kind of all go back to each other right, like they're all so intertwined. So it's really hard to categorize these because they're so intertwined, as I mentioned before, like we have, this experience is such a builder for who we are and for how connected we are to other people, and then it kind of just deenergizes those comparisons.
Speaker 1:So another adaption prevention or resisting adaption measure is I want to read a quote from a paper called Pursuing Happiness the Architecture of Sustainable Change. Lou Bromirsky wrote this in 2005 and I will have all the site style articles and everything I'm referencing or haven't referenced but did source in the show notes. So the thing I'd like to read is Grateful thinking promotes adaptive coping by reducing the impact of negative aspects of situations, promoting positive appraisals of stressful events and preventing the decline in positive affect over time. That one makes me kind of have to think deeply about it to see, like okay, one goes up, one goes down. Like so Negative aspects of situations down, okay, positive appraisals up in stressful events and then preventing decline in positive actions and then the positive effect. This all goes back to the foundational resistance, adaptation here, grateful Thinking.
Speaker 1:So, basically, this is the practice of gratitude that we're referring, and I want to point out that the reason it's called practice is because some of us are not good at it yet. It was pointed out in one of the articles that I read, this expansive view, going back to this social comparison piece. Right, if our view is really small, if it's only of our world, then we're obviously going to have a much harder time. You know, having this expansive view, like we can only see what is in front of us. And so the practice is actually to expand that worldview on purpose. And it was noted that this is a skill, meaning that it can be learned. Yes, some people are more naturally gifted, just like an athlete, right, some people are just really good and they don't even have to try, but it doesn't mean that other athletes can't improve their skills with intention and practice.
Speaker 1:It really hit me the other day when I was doing some research as well, the practice of gratitude, because I myself don't necessarily feel like, oh, wow, I have this like really robust practice of gratitude going all the time. I don't necessarily have a lot of intention. I don't write five things I'm grateful for every day. I mean that's a great idea, but I don't know that I'm going to add that to my life right now. But we don't necessarily have to have this formulaic I'm going to do these five things every day to be grateful. It's really doing all of these things a little bit all the time.
Speaker 1:And that leads me into the last thing that I wanted to talk about is a countermeasure, and that is practicing, savoring and mindful enjoyment. And really what this is is, if we go back to the headwinds and tailwinds, we really intentionally enjoy the time where we're being boosted, or even we could say, when we're not being forced to kind of walk into the wind. So this is just bringing that intentionality, the savoring I love that word mindful enjoyment. It's almost like you know, you can eat a piece of chocolate cake and you can like gobble it down and like almost realize I don't really get to taste that. But if you like slow down and like really enjoy all of it, you experience every single bite and the difference between the frosting and the cake. I love chocolate cake and, yeah, if you experience all of the different things, then you're going to have a much different experience.
Speaker 1:This one, I think, is really interesting. So, essentially, if we're looking at this social comparison problem, it's what we would call an informational problem, meaning that we just don't have the information that, if we did, would actually kind of resolve the situation. If it's an informational problem, it can be solved with more information. So this is where we get to go out and solicit the stories that help us recognize we're not alone. This is when we get to understand, in fact, that other people are walking just as much uphill as we are. And this is where I think social media is really helpful, because we do get to see other people living in the hospital. We do get to see other people struggling with IEPs and sibling relationships and all the complexities in families like ours.
Speaker 1:And so the part here that I wanna emphasize is go out and solicit. This is where there's a saying you don't know what you don't know, right. And so now we're saying, okay, well, I don't know what I don't know, and that's creating the experience I have. So I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna find out on purpose other people who are walking uphill as much as I am. Why? Because then when I measure up, I feel the same or connected or understood, or maybe, if I look at some things, well, I could see a family struggling and be like, wow, like that makes me so grateful for the support that I have in that same situation.
Speaker 1:And one thing I wanna point out here again, because so much of this can land like oh, I just don't wanna have to work any harder. There is a little bit of actually having to put a little bit more effort here because our minds are geared to like look for the things that are hard, because that's kind of the way that we've adapted and survived over eons and eons. When we have to do the opposite like when feeling envious or entitled or resentful is actually easy because we're looking at comparisons, we're looking at the gaps and we're focusing on those things when we do the opposite, it takes a little bit more effort. Consider that one is automatic and one is not. So, again, this goes back to it being a habit that has to be cultivated. Okay, I think I've given you enough to chew on now and I think I was relatively sure this isn't so bad. And I wanna end speaking on that habit to be cultivated just with one quick. I guess we'll call it a call the action, just one little thing to do, and you can scale this as big or small as you want.
Speaker 1:And the thing I wanted to challenge us all to is to express explicitly one expression of gratitude. So this can be as simple as writing a text. This can be maybe you go onto my chart and you think a doctor that's just been really communicative and really supportive lately. Maybe it's an email to school. Maybe you email your biggest supporters. Maybe you have a friend that's just been especially there for you and along for the ride. I feel like I don't often think those friends that are really there, because I really appreciate those friends.
Speaker 1:So allow yourself to do an insufficient job and consider that if all you write is thank you, I appreciate you, then that would be enough.
Speaker 1:If you have the energy and time, you can totally do more, but I want you to really just be like okay, I'm just gonna do it, I'm gonna pull the bandaid off, I'm gonna do it quickly and maybe even poorly, as opposed to not doing it at all. Okay with that, what I would like to say is I'm really grateful for all of you when I get to connect over in the Facebook group or over on Instagram. It just is amazing to me that I feel like I get to be the beneficiary of this community, of this expansive community, and I guess, if we look at it through the lens of what we talked about today, I get to see so many people that are walking up the hill with me that it gives me a little bit easier access to that gratitude. So I thank you for being part of this community and have a happy Thanksgiving. We'll see you in the next show. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.