Counselors in Orlando often use gratitude lists or journals in successful therapy all the time. Making new connections for your brain requires the same effort that your muscles need to grow strong. You have to teach your mind to learn new ways of thinking and journaling can help with that. As people write things, they are seeing them, and their body is also creating a memory with doing the writing. Over time, and as the individual sessions continue to help clients gain insight, they see that their gratitude lists begins to grow and expand beyond simple statements.

I had a client once tell me that he was “so tired” of making the gratitude list because he kept putting the same things on it. He was frustrated because he felt like each day he was thinking about and writing the same things he was grateful for. He was in the beginning stages of therapy at this point, but the simplicity in his statement spoke volumes! He was actively using energy developing a gratitude thought loop that may have once been spent feeding a negative one.

Now isn’t that an unimaginable concept for a person suffering from depression and anxiety? Maybe he didn’t see the difference at the time or in that immediate moment, but I sure did!! Towards the end of his therapy sessions with me, he later admitted the exercise forced him to acknowledge that he had many things to be grateful for. He told me that it was hard to ignore them when he made the effort to remember them regularly. In future sessions, he talked less and less about his depression and anxiety. His whole outlook eventually shifted to a more positive outlook on the future and his own potential for happiness. The gratitude journal was not the only factor that contributed to this, but it was something he could actively work on outside of his sessions to help him shift his thought patterns in a more positive direction.