Episode 41: Synthetic Gratitude: Why It Sucks and What To Do About It
Nov 15, 2023Season 1Episode 41
Sara Fisk
“Just be grateful for what you have.” How many of you have heard this before? This is synthetic gratitude, which is a form of gratitude that is expected of women to provide and perform- to show we are staying in our place. I think understanding how synthetic gratitude works will be really helpful. In this episode, I’ve broken down 4 things that I've noticed due to synthetic gratitude and how to change it for your betterment. Can’t wait for you to listen!
“Just be grateful for what you have.” How many of you have heard this before? This is synthetic gratitude, which is a form of gratitude that is expected of women to provide and perform- to show we are staying in our place. I think understanding how synthetic gratitude works will be really helpful. In this episode, I’ve broken down 4 things that I've noticed due to synthetic gratitude and how to change it for your betterment. Can’t wait for you to listen!
You are listening to the ex good girl podcast. Episode 41. I want to talk about gratitude. It's been on my mind for a long time. And it's just that time of year. It's I'm recording this on Wednesday, November 6th, 2023 and American Thanksgiving is right around the corner. But actually this conversation with me, I've been having a conversation with myself about this. Um, started, um, a while ago. I don't remember exactly when, but I was listening to an interview with Abby Wambach, the American soccer player who was talking about the fight for equal pay in the professional soccer world. And she talked about how time and time again, she was told to just to be grateful and that. Being grateful was the way that, um, she was encouraged to just deal with this problem of playing exactly the same sport in exactly the same way as men and not getting paid enough. Just be grateful for what you have. And it really piqued my interest because I have kind of a complicated, I think, relationship with gratitude, because in a lot of my, um, in a lot of my history, especially my religious history, I grew up in the Mormon church. I felt a lot of the same. Feeling around gratitude, like I should just be grateful. I shouldn't feel I shouldn't feel like I deserved more. I shouldn't feel angry. I shouldn't feel resentful. I shouldn't ask for change. I should just be grateful. And so I really connected with this. This idea, and I'm going to call it synthetic gratitude because it is a type of gratitude that is expected of women to produce and perform in a very specific way to show that we are staying in our place. Women are expected by and large to moderate all of their uncomfortable, sometimes big emotions to not be too much and above all to be pleasing. When I was doing some research and reading around gratitude, I just, I had to write down some of the article titles that just were hilarious because when I would Google women and gratitude, I would get article titles like. Gratitude is attractive. How to be more attractive by being more grateful or gratitude is a powerful anti depressant. Don't be depressed. Women just be grateful or my favorite. Why do women never appreciate good men? So. Now, am I a fan of gratitude? Of course, that is not the point of this. I think you know that, and we're going to get into the kind of gratitude that I'm really a fan of in just a little bit. But the point I am trying to make is that women Are expected to be grateful by default. And then the more in identities you inhabit, it seems like the greater the demand for gratitude. If you are a brown woman or a black woman, you should just be grateful that you have a job. And maybe you're rising through the ranks of an all mostly male, mostly white company. You should be grateful. If you are an immigrant or a refugee, you should just be grateful that another country allowed you to come in and take up space and resources. You should just be endlessly grateful for that. If you are LGBTQ, you should just be grateful that you get to love who you love. If you are in a differently abled body, you should just be grateful that there are accommodations that are made for you, as if we don't have the right. To love who we love to move in the spaces inhabited by humans in a comfortable and accessible way that somehow, you know, being in this country as somebody who wasn't born here is this special kind of privilege that we should just always be bowing down for it when you peel the cover back on gratitude. I think what they're afraid of. Is the rage and resentment that has been building up for centuries because of the repression of women, because we are being told to not be too much to look like this, to do that, to make your body conform to these beauty standards and the rage and resentment and anger that comes up after multi generational patriarchy, it's pretty big. It's pretty big. And so I think understanding how synthetic gratitude works will be really helpful. I've landed on four things that I've noticed. Are there more undoubtedly, but we're just going to talk about these four things that I've noticed because no matter. The situation, they apply pretty much across the board. First thing I've noticed, synthetic gratitude turns every situation into an either or take Abby Wambach's equal pay situation. Either you can just be grateful and play soccer or you become this demanding bitch who always wants more and is never satisfied. Either you just shut up and do your job and be grateful that you have one or you demand equal pay. Either or situation where your only option is to be grateful on one hand, the or is always a negative, a negative emotion or something that is perceived as negative. You can either be grateful or you can be angry. You can either be grateful. You can be disappointed. You can either be grateful or you can be happy. And so. When you are in a situation where you are being prompted to feel grateful and it's either or that's synthetic gratitude. Another marker of synthetic gratitude is that it's the only emotion you're allowed to feel and it should be the only emotion in the room. So you should be grateful. This is kind of back to that, that either or idea, either you're grateful or you're angry and anger is bad. Either you're grateful or you're resentful and resentment is bad. It's the only emotion. That is moral. That is good. That is valuable. And it shuts down other emotions like appropriate anger, appropriate outrage, appropriate feelings of injustice. This synthetic gratitude stops us from processing those emotions that are uncomfortable so that we can move through them and so that sometimes we can get to a different outcome. One of the ways in which this showed up a lot for me in my time in the Mormon church was around the death of a loved one. And if the death Of the loved one was someone who was older, somebody who might expect to be passing on normal timeframe, you know, 80s, 90s. Then we should be grateful that they lived a long life. Our grief and our sadness should be moderated or shut down by gratitude. If they were a baby or a young person or someone who had died unexpectedly, then you should just be grateful that they are not. God has a plan for us and that there is heaven and that we will get to be together again and that there's no need to feel the grief and the sadness and the loss and the regret and the loneliness because gratitude just comes in and mops all of that up and stops you from processing those emotions just cuts them off. And that this idea of being grateful was somehow a sign of faithfulness or a sign of being a deeply committed person. Like, I am so committed to the gospel, or I'm so committed to my job, or I'm so committed to this group of people that I use gratitude to stop me from doing any thinking about my uncomfortable emotions, any processing. And that kind of leads to the next thing that I've noticed about synthetic gratitude, which is it ends conversations. There's no curiosity about it. It just it ends conversations. It suppresses critical thinking and evaluation. It suppresses asking for change. It shuts you up. It shuts your voice down when there are issues to be addressed. One of my favorite things that I read online as I was doing some research was by a woman named Susanna Rinderley. And she said, if our recent ancestors had been more grateful, most of us would be worse off today. Women would have been so grateful to the men in their lives for their fortunate station in society that they might not have pushed for the vote, the right to earn a respectable living, the right to not bear children, the right to exist free of violence. Enslaved people would have been so grateful to master for their food, roof, and clothes that they might not have fought to throw off the chains of bondage and dehumanization. Synthetic gratitude ends conversations. Next characteristic. It's a mechanism of control and it keeps us in situations that aren't good for us. That has a lot to do with the, with the quote that I just read because it dismisses Our experiences. It tells us that what we are experiencing isn't as bad as we think it is. It really is behind the way women are able to say, you know, I'm fine. It's okay. It's not that bad. It's okay. No, no, no, no, no. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. Because. Being forced to be grateful when it is not natural is actually a mechanism of control that dismisses the real human experience we are having. A lot of this control is exercised by being shamed for not being grateful enough. I read a fascinating story about an Iranian. British national Nazanin Zaghari Radcliffe, who was held against her will in Iran for six years on totally made up charges. And she missed the first six years of life of her daughter, her family, she was held in Iran, and when the United, the British government secured her release, and she was returned, you know what people were mad about? That she wasn't grateful enough. That she dared to say, this never should have happened to me. And the British government should have worked this out six years ago. People were so mad that the hashtag send her back was created in connection to her story. And people just lost their shit that this woman didn't react to being released from six years in Iranian prison. Like she had just won a prize and was so grateful and was going to dedicate her life. To working for other people, right? She was mad. She was angry and she dared and people were trying to force her to apologize for not being grateful. So synthetic gratitude uses shame and uses forced apologies because that's how we get controlled. The other mechanism of control that I've noticed is this focus on the positive silver lining. It's kind of a common theme in, in each of these, um, ways that I'm talking about synthetic gratitude, but defaulting to positivity. It's not that bad. It's okay. You'll be fine. Just be grateful. And lastly, synthetic gratitude dismisses our desires. We want more than just a seat at the table. We want to run the fucking table, but we should just be grateful that we have a seat. We want to earn the same amount of money as our male peers who do the same job, but we should just be grateful and, and not have that desire. It becomes a way of monitoring and dismissing the things that we want. In a way that is really insidious and really sneaky, because again, we are shamed for not being grateful enough. So I think the opposite of synthetic gratitude is, I'm just going to call it natural gratitude. And the key to natural gratitude is a little counterintuitive because what I think it is, and what I have. And letting other people teach me that it is, is actually holding opposites and not getting out getting out of this either or kind of culture that is so emotionally stunted, but holding. In a nuanced way, more than one thing, and let me give you an example, recently, um, we celebrated the day of the dead and I created a little altar for some of my ancestors that have passed on and in particular, my abuelita, my grandma, who passed away at 97 years old this last December. Now, Her death was expected. She was in a lot of pain and, uh, wanting to pass on. And so in a lot of ways, it was the outcome that we were hoping for. And as I set up the pictures of her and some of my other grandparents, I felt, and I'm feeling it again right now, this well of grief. Open up inside me. I miss so many things about her. I miss the way she could be found always in her chair, reading, doing genealogy, something she loved to do, and how she would look up and her face would light up and she would say Sarita. That's a name that she called me that not many people call me and it's, it's so tender for me. And As I was putting the pictures out, I let myself cry. I went to the couch, curled up in a blanket for a minute. My dog came and sat with me and I just let myself have a cry. About missing my abuelita, I didn't try to make myself feel better. I didn't remind myself that it was what she really wanted, you know, to, to pass on. I didn't remind myself that, you know, if I still believe in heaven, that means I get to see her again. I just let myself be with that sadness and grief. And the spontaneous outgrowth of that was gratitude for her. So this is exactly what I mean about natural gratitude being just this spontaneous companion to emotions that we really, really, really don't want to feel like grief and sorrow. I once had a coach just for my grief. I've had a lot of grief about The loss of community when I left the Mormon church and I described to her that I felt like my grief was this black pool and that if I dove in there, I was never going to come out and I was surprised that she told me like, yeah, that's how a lot of people describe grief actually. And it gave me a sense for the way that we see our grief as this massive, overwhelming, black, like, uncontrollable experience that we are afraid to go into. Right about the time that my grandma died, I found a teacher named Francis Weller, and Francis Weller is, um, he talks about grief. And he talks about. He calls them the five gates of grief, and I'm just going to go through them quickly. Not because they're going to be like a big focus of what we're talking about today. Oh, believe me, there's a future podcast episode coming just about grief. But it gave me a way to see all the different places I was experiencing grief. Gate number one is everything we love. We will lose. Second gate of grief is the places in us that have not known love. The third gate is the sorrows of the world. Fourth gate, what was expected and did and was not received, what we expected and did not receive. And the fifth gate is ancestral grief. Now, the reason that I bring these gates of grief up now is because grief is Coming up a lot in the work I do in the stop people pleasing group coaching program. We are grieving the loss of relationships that ended when we stopped people pleasing. We are grieving the loss of notoriety. Of being somebody who could deliver the roles that we were in for years, where we came through for other people and they really appreciated us, but we were tired and exhausted. And so when we stopped, we lost that, um, their respect or the, the notoriety or the praise or the rewards for doing that. We're grieving. Options in our life that we didn't take because we thought we were not allowed to. We're grieving the ways in which we were raised by parents who didn't know how to teach us anything other than how to be pleasing. We're grieving the way that we have to change and speak up for ourselves and how hard that is. So to me, it makes abundant sense. That natural gratitude only comes from being in the other side of that emotional spectrum and then trusting that when we can be with the sorrow and the grief of everything that we have lost. Everything that doesn't make sense the ways in which we were hurt the ways in which the what we wanted didn't happen. What we expected never came to be that. We can then clearly open up our emotional capacity for real. Gratitude right now. Gratitude is divorced from this opposite end of the spectrum. And so it's synthetic. We're expected to just pull it out and perform it. And it's forced and it doesn't spring naturally from, from our willingness to be on the other side of the spectrum. And instead of using, instead of allowing grief to just be this natural thing that. That it's the gift of being in our sorrow and in our grief. We try to pull it out and use it as what Kara Lowenthal calls an off road to the human experience. We want our grief to just fix things when really being in our sadness. Being in our grief is what actually opens up the most magnificent type of natural gratitude. Francis Weller tells the story of being with a woman who he said was the purest embodiment of joy and gratitude and peace. And when he mentioned that to her, she said, I cry a lot and she had opened up her capacity for feeling the joy and the gratitude by being in the grief and the sorrow. So what do I think this means? So what I think this means is that if you are tired of this synthetic gratitude. That is used as a weapon how we really get to the type of natural gratitude that can hold opposites is by being in the sorrow by being in the sadness by being in the disappointment in the regret in the loss. That's the way I think that we can hold both. Abby Wambach wrote a book, and here's what she said. Be grateful, but do not just be grateful. Be grateful and brave. Be grateful and ambitious. Be grateful and righteous. Be grateful and persistent. Be grateful and loud. Be grateful for what you have and demand what you deserve. And I think that, and is only possible in a real powerful way when we are willing to feel the opposites of gratitude. If this episode resonates with you, if there's something here that you're curious about, send me a message. I'd love to continue talking about this. And I do look forward to having a bigger discussion about grief. Thank you.