Gratitude journals?

[Owlbird83]

Have people who've tried writing down what they are grateful for/happy about each day found it helpful or made any kind of difference to your thinking?

How do you write your gratitude journal? (paragraphs/dot points/everyday/drawings/aesthetic/duration ?)

me

I feel like writing down what went well each day has made a very small but noticeable difference to my thinking. I think it has made me slightly more likely to notice more positive things that I would have otherwise ignored. Also stopping the gratitude journal seems to decrease the built up habit of paying extra attention to positive things - back to normal.

Lastly, do you think gratitude journals feel like 'toxic positivity' by not acknowledging negative emotions?

[lm21074]

I have a gratitude journal in app form (Presently) which lets you know how long you've recorded on the app for (e.g. 25 days of gratitude, 100 days of gratitude) - pretty nifty. The generic prompt is, "What are you grateful for?" but the app also gives you hundreds of prompts that you can use. It also has a pretty decent UI and the colours can be changed which is nice.

I've pretty much had the same outcome as you, Owlbird! Some days when everything goes to shit, I sort of dread having to do the exercise but I've noticed that I've paid attention attention to positive things slightly more than usual which does lift my mood a little. With the toxic positivity thing, the gratitude journaling does encourage you to focus on the positives but I've found it to be a supplementary sort of tool rather than changing my entire way of thinking to solely find the positive in everything

I also think for there to be any benefits from gratitude journalling, it should be kept at for a little while to the point where it becomes a habit.

[Calebark]

I had one a while back. It was a miniature notebook that I'd keep in my jacket pocket along with a pencil. If something made me happy I'd try to acknowledge it, sometimes do a sketch.

It helped. Definitely helped. I was able to recognize that there are things I enjoy which helped me with my 'nothing is cool' mindset. I don't use one anymore as I've moved past it and progressed in other ways, but it had its use and I appreciate it.

I never really felt like it was toxic positivity. I was already acknowledging the negative bits constantly — albeit in my head — so this just helped even the scales a bit.