The Season of Gratitude, or, How a Dry Carrot Can Help You Get Through Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. It’s meant to celebrate togetherness and gratitude, but it also carries a complicated history of misrepresentation and suffering, along with a modern layer of consumerism. And then there’s the truth that, for many families, more time together doesn’t necessarily mean more happiness.

Working in high schools has given me awareness that, for many teens, time off from school can mean more isolation and conflict at home, along with worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety. For adults, the holidays often bring additional financial and social pressure, which can also contribute to increased depression and anxiety. On top of all that, this is the season when we’re told we should feel grateful, adding guilt to an already stressful mix.

Funny thing about gratitude: when you’re depressed or anxious, it can be really hard to feel it. Liang and Xiang (2024) found that anxiety and depression can interfere with gratitude. Anxiety keeps the brain focused on what could go wrong, leaving little room to notice what’s going right. Depression dampens dopamine activity, which makes it harder to feel pleasure or appreciation, even for things we value.

So here we are, hiding in our rooms to avoid family blowups or running ourselves ragged to plan a perfect dinner and present a clean house on a budget with this idea looming that we should be feeling gratitude when all we feel is stress.

Then we go to therapy or find a self-help post online, and we hear that an effective intervention in the treatment of depression and anxiety is—yep—gratitude. Oh, for crying out loud. So the season of gratitude stresses us out to the point that we can’t feel grateful, and then we’re told that the remedy is… gratitude. It’s almost comical.

And the thing is, it’s true. There are numerous studies showing that gratitude is associated with improved mental and physical health, stronger interpersonal relationships, and even greater longevity (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010; Iodice, Malouff, & Schutte, 2021; Algoe, 2012; Chen et al., 2024). So how do we get the benefits of gratitude when we can’t feel it?

In cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), an evidence-based approach for treating depression and anxiety, there’s a focus on the interplay between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Essentially, how we feel influences what we think and do; what we think influences how we feel and act; and what we do influences how we think and feel. When we change one, the others begin to shift, too.

Within CBT, there’s a technique called behavioral activation. It’s based on the idea that action can come before emotion, that doing something positive can help shift our mood and perspective. In other words, sometimes we have to “do the thing” before we feel like doing it.

In a widely cited study of positive psychology, which focuses on what’s going right rather than on pathology, Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson (2005) found that writing down three good things each day led to greater happiness and fewer symptoms of depression over time.

More recently, Kini, Wong, McInnis, Gabana, and Brown (2016) used fMRI to examine brain activity while participants engaged in an act of gratitude and concluded that, “even brief expressions of gratitude may have profound and lasting effects on neural activity and sensitivity” (p. 9).

In both studies, the benefits came from expressing gratitude, regardless of whether participants felt it at the time. In other words, we can practice gratitude without feeling grateful and we’ll still get the results.

For myself and my clients, I’ve had to reframe gratitude as a tool, rather than an obligation. The sense of guilt or pressure around gratitude isn’t helpful. I’ve also learned to adjust my expectations of what gratitude should feel like. It doesn’t have to be a deep, life-altering reverence for all our blessings (though that’s lovely when it happens). Starting small is often the most effective way to access its benefits.

Yesterday, while making lunch for my kids, I decided to practice gratitude in real time. As I popped a piece of carrot in my mouth (because if you’re making lunch, you get to eat the scraps), I thought, “I’m grateful for carrots.” Which was a stretch. Carrots are fine, but I wouldn’t say they inspire passion. Then I gagged because the carrot was old and dry and got stuck in my throat (no judgment, please, for feeding my kids old carrots). “This isn’t going great so far,” I thought.

Then I looked up and saw our dog, Evee, who is mostly my husband’s dog. “I’m grateful for Evee,” I thought, even though I also had the passing thought that she licks the floor too much. But she’s sweet, she makes my husband happy, and I’m grateful for that. Then I thought about how I’ll be able to support my husband when she passes, like he did when I lost my cat of 18 years. And then I thought about how grateful I am to have someone to share life’s joys and sorrows with, and for our kids, too.

As I thought these things, I noticed my mind getting quieter and my body more relaxed. Then someone probably yelled or spilled milk and the spell was broken. But a little piece of that feeling stayed with me. I saw my husband, my kids, Evee, and even myself in a slightly softer, more forgiving light.

What started as a dry carrot experiment ended with a deeper sense of calm and connection. Not every gratitude list or reflection will feel profound, and that’s okay. The point isn’t perfection, it’s practice. Gratitude is powerful not because it’s grand, but because it’s simple, accessible, and cumulative. The opportunities to practice it—and to benefit from it—are all around us, even when we don’t feel it at first.

References

Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2012.00439.x

Chen, Y., Okereke, O. I., Kim, E. S., Tiemeier, H., Kubzansky, L. D., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Gratitude and mortality among older U.S. female nurses. JAMA Psychiatry, 81(10), 1030–1038. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1687

Iodice, J. A., Malouff, J. M., & Schutte, N. S. (2021). The association between gratitude and depression: A meta-analysis.International Journal of Depression and Anxiety, 4(1), Article 024. https://doi.org/10.23937/2643-4059/1710024

Kini, P., Wong, J., McInnis, S., Gabana, N., & Brown, J. W. (2016). The effects of gratitude expression on neural activity.NeuroImage, 128, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.12.040

Liang, Z., & Xiang, Y. (2024). The bidirectional relationship between gratitude and depression/anxiety based on three follow-up data. The Journal of General Psychology, 151(3), 390–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221309.2024.2313214

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410–421. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.5.410

Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration.Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.005