How Gratitude Changes Your Brain (Backed by Science!).

Welcome or welcome back. I'm Dr. Margaret. You know, I'm not sure who the first person was to recommend a gratitude journal, but they've sprung up everywhere. Oprah was probably the first major celebrity to talk about how much reminding yourself of what you're grateful for helps balance out your life or stands to remind you of what you can count as a blessing in your life. Positive psychology has also gained huge momentum in the mental health world. Its founder, a man named Martin Seligman, wanted psychologists and therapists to reconsider always looking or talking about what was wrong with the people they treated. This focus on pathology had led to the emphasis on the DSM or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, where you could find hundreds of diagnoses and their symptoms. The focus was on mental illness, not mental health. Seligman wanted therapists instead to teach the things that people could build into their lives that would offer positivity and happiness, fulfillment, and even joy. How do you become mentally healthy was his question. All of this gained a lot of ground in the late 90s, and things like gratitude journals became an important part of healing. But now, in 2025, there's a new term out there, toxic positivity. Before we go further, let me remind you of what exact trait of perfectly hidden depression we're talking about here. Here's the trait. You believe strongly in counting your blessings as the foundation of well-being. There are a couple of really important words in that sentence, strongly and foundation. Basically, the belief is held strongly that counting your blessings, being grateful, being positive, seeing the glass is half full, is so important that it serves as the base of your very well-being. I'm not sure how Martin Seligman would feel about that. He might agree. But to me, as usual, we humans have taken a good thing, a really good thing, and carried it too far. All over everywhere, especially in social media, influencers are trying to show you the way to stay positive. Many religious forums or churches preach gratitude in whatever framework their particular faith holds it dear. Let me be quick to say, I've worked with many people who are so lost, they can't tell me one thing they're grateful for, and that's a real problem. But toxic positivity is as well. And in perfectly hidden depression, being told by parents, your church, or your culture, that talking about sadness or struggle or anger or any painful emotion isn't allowed or okay, that's not healthy either. Susan David, Harvard professor, TEDx speaker, and author, tells this story. Her father was dying and she said goodbye to him every morning as she trotted off to elementary school, never knowing if that was her last goodbye or another in what had become many long mornings of goodbyes. But no one talked about his being so sick. No one. She should be grateful he was still alive, not afraid or angry or sad or confused about him being sick and near death. Luckily, she had a teacher who passed out journals with a simple instruction, write down what you're really going through and feeling. And that's when she began to recognize the pain of the situation as her teacher guided her to talk openly and often about the sadness and confusion of her home. She's gone on to write books about emotional regulation and stresses the danger of toxic positivity, meaning positivity that's so rigid it doesn't allow pain to even be acknowledged. It's true that you're going to be happier if you connect with gratitude, the glass being half full. But in my experience, it's also very important that you stop and take the time to connect with whatever pain is there as well. The half-empty truth of that same glass. Until next time, as always, take very, very good care.