I wanna talk today about a subject that might not seem all that relevant to you as you're struggling with tinnitus.
And that subject is gratitude.
Gratitude is an intervention of sorts.
It's linked to a series of studies related to what's known as positive psychology.
And as such,
There's been a lot of studies on developing gratitude,
The benefits of gratitude.
And there's even been one study on specifically tinnitus and gratitude.
And I'll read the conclusions of that study now.
This study demonstrates that greater levels of dispositional mindfulness,
Gratitude,
And self-compassion in a sample of adults with tinnitus are associated with lower levels of tinnitus distress and psychological distress.
Individuals reporting a greater tendency towards dispositional mindfulness,
Self-compassion,
And gratitude reported a lower tendency towards experiencing distress about tinnitus and psychological distress with small to large effect sizes.
So we know gratitude is beneficial,
Or at least it's connected to cause and effect.
It's always a difficult thing to establish in research,
But it's connected to a lower tinnitus distress.
And we want to talk about here what gratitude is and why it might be useful to develop a gratitude practice.
Because like mindfulness,
Gratitude is a practice.
Of these things that.
.
.
Don't seem specifically related to tinnitus.
In fact,
Having had a large impact on our life with tinnitus,
So many of these mental health interventions.
So what is gratitude?
It's not so easy to define as you start to think about it.
So here are a couple definitions from some research.
Gratitude is generated by gifts that fulfill two criteria.
They come as a result of a perceived effort from the giver,
Are valuable and fulfill important needs of the recipient.
Gratitude is a disposition or mood that enables people to respond positively to the benefits they receive from people,
Nature,
Or a moment of peaceful bliss.
Emmons and McCullough define gratitude as a two-step process,
Recognizing that one has obtained a positive outcome and recognizing that there is an external source for this positive outcome.
So the shared criterion of receiving a gift from an outside source,
Something that one is not responsible for,
But it has been bestowed upon one.
The word gratis comes from the literal meaning from the word for grace,
Gratia,
And it's originally in a sense of a divine dispensation.
And gratitude is this sense that we're gifted with many things.
Now,
That doesn't sit along real nicely with the sense of our tinnitus,
Which is not a gift and doesn't seem like a gift and is not a gift.
So how do we squeeze the notion of these gifts into this situation that is is tremendously non-beneficial.
That is a challenge,
And developing a true gratitude practice is not immediate,
Easy,
It doesn't take place overnight.
As I said,
It's a skill,
Something we want to develop and practice,
And I wanna talk about some ways to go about developing a gratitude practice.
First,
We'll give you a little gratitude assessment here.
And rank yourself from one to seven.
One is strongly disagree.
Seven is strongly agree.
Four is kind of neutral.
So rank yourself.
Here are the questions.
One,
I have so much in life to be thankful for.
Again,
One,
Strongly disagree.
Seven,
Strongly agree.
Four,
Neutral.
Two,
If I had to list everything that I felt grateful for,
It would be a very long list.
Three,
When I look at the world,
I don't see much to be grateful for.
Four,
I am grateful to a wide variety of people.
Five,
As I get older,
I find myself able to appreciate the people,
Events,
And situations that have been part of my life history.
Six,
Long amounts of time go by before I can feel grateful to something or someone.
And the key here is you have to reverse score 3 and 6.
So 1 becomes 7,
2 becomes 6,
3 becomes 5,
4 stays 4,
5 becomes 3,
6 becomes 6,
7 becomes 1.
And there's no real scale yet of this,
But higher scores are correlated with more gratitude.
And more gratitude is related to a whole bunch of effects,
Not just related to tinnitus,
Some of these with the research and there's been dozens of studies on this.
Is more costly,
Valuable,
And altruistic,
Grateful people are less angry,
Hostile,
Depressed,
And emotionally vulnerable,
And experience positive emotions more frequently.
So if those traits sound like worthwhile goals and gratitude is one practice you want to establish and the fact that you might not feel particularly grateful at this point in your life doesn't mean that this is not a skill you can develop.
And I want to talk about some ways you can develop that skill.
I'll give you a couple of practices today to work on.
The first and probably the most famous practice is the Gratitude Journal.
And this is,
In conception,
Pretty simple.
Just write down things you're grateful for every day.
There's a wonderful a book you can work with this on,
The Five Minute Gratitude Journal.
It's called Give Thanks,
Practice Positivity,
And Find Joy by Sophia Gotkin,
Which I can recommend.
But really,
You don't need it,
Although it's a nice little thing to get yourself started.
But you want to do more than just write stuff down,
Because that can become rote.
So here are some instructions.
As you write and record things every day,
At least five things you feel grateful for.
Be as specific as possible.
Specificity is the key to fostering gratitude.
You're grateful.
It has more of an impact than focusing on things for which you are grateful.
Four,
Try subtraction,
Not just addition.
Consider what your life would be like without certain people or things,
Rather than just tallying up all the good stuff.
Be grateful for the negative outcomes you have avoided,
Escaped,
Or prevented,
Or turned into something positive.
Try not to take the good fortune for granted.
Five,
See good things as gifts.
Really,
This is things that are given to you when you had no did not deserve in any way.
Thinking of them as gifts,
Precious gifts,
Guards against taking them for granted.
Six saver surprises.
Try to record the events that were unexpected or surprising.
Seven,
Revise if you repeat,
That is you can start writing the same things over again so that it becomes rote and that then it becomes simply a non-effective strategy.
Seven,
Write regularly.
Whether you write daily or every other day,
Commit to a regular time to journal and then honor your commitment.
So that's a good way to start with a gratitude journal.
A practice that I like even more or in addition to that,
It's called a grateful flow and I got this off of There's a.
.
.
A thing on Netflix,
It's about Jonah Hill's psychologist and some of his interventions.
I can't think of the name of it.
His name is Stoltz,
S-T-O-L-T-Z.
And he does an exercise called The Grateful Flow.
What I like about this is it's focused on bringing up the attitude,
The feeling of gratitude,
Because that's where it comes from,
Not just writing stuff down.
If you write stuff down without evoking that feeling,
It's gonna be really worthless.
So this practice is one you might want to do maybe every time you do a gratitude journal section.
So I'm going to lead you through a little grateful flow practice.
Close your eyes and start by counting specific things you're grateful for.
Don't worry if it's a slight struggle to come up with new things.
That's part of the tool.
As you're recounting each thing you're grateful for,
See if you can get the feeling that there's just much more to appreciate than you're usually aware of.
Step two.
Feel your heart soften and open up,
Just like a flower unfolding to receive the light and warmth of the sun.
And let the specific things that you're grateful for gradually fade away.
In their place,
Sense the presence of a mysterious source that's giving you all these things.
You don't have to give it a name.
You don't have to understand what it is.
You just have to find it,
To feel it,
And be able to receive what it's giving you.
Giving you endlessly.
Step three,
Feel that unknowable source of goodness draw near to you.
See if you can feel its presence,
Really close and intimate,
Almost like a soft breath on your cheek.
And feel your heart melting and overflowing with thankfulness.
And mark this moment in the back of your mind.
This source of goodness is always with me,
Even when I'm not aware of it.
It is aware of me and giving to me boundlessly.
And when you're ready,
Open your eyes.
So there it is,
A little practice that I would urge you to begin to include in your daily routine.
If you already do something like this,
Maybe make it more regular,
But this is a practice that the more you devote to it,
The more it will give back to you.
So I urge you to give it a chance.
What do you have to lose?
All right,
Good luck with that.
See you next time.
