The balance between feeling bad and having gratitude.

When things don’t work out for you, logic would say that you’re allowed to feel dissapointed, right?

But what about all of the good you might have in your life? food, a roof over your head, sight, people who love you etc? How can it it really make sense to feel bad when you have all of these things going for you?

On one hand, being mindful of what you have and practicing gratitude can really help put things in perspective and therefore improve how you feel about a dissapointing situation. Yeah, your vacation didn’t work out and that sucks but is it really the end of the world? Should it be keeping you in bed and impacting your ability to function normally? Probably not. Gratitude can help you reframe your lense on life and keep things in perspective.

On the other hand, should you not be allowing yourself to feel dissapointed that a vacation you spent weeks or even months planning didn’t work out the way you hoped? Is it wrong to feel dissapointment when people most definitely have bigger problems?

In therapy, one of the maladaptive ways of thinking that therapists look out for is “All or Nothing Thinking” (sometimes called “Black and White Thinking”). This is a mindset people often practice that isn’t healthy nor fair. When somebody is looking at life through an all or nothing mindset, they percieve things as either all good or all bad. There is no middle ground or balance.

When it comes to feeling dissapointed in life, it can be helpful to recognize that a middle ground exists. You can feel dissapointed but also be gratefull for what you have. These feelings don’t have to be mutually exclusive.