I have a therapist friend who’s been doing a lot of work in the area of trauma-informed care, especially during the pandemic. She says we’re all dealing with a certain amount of trauma now. She likes to guide people who are having trouble finding positivity or gratitude through an exercise.
She asks them to recall when they felt neutral–not necessarily good, but not bad, either. She asks them to identify what they felt during that moment: What they smelled, saw, heard, tasted. If we can recall even neutral moments, we can build new neutral pathways that lead to gratitude, she says. I engaged with this exercise myself. And at that moment and for that moment, I felt, in my heart, truly grateful.
This message is an excerpt from “Faith Reflections: Reclaiming gratitude” by Emily K. Hartner in the November 2020 issue of Boldcafe. Today we remember the Martyrs of Japan, who died in 1597.
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