The Dark Side of Gratitude

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I shouldn’t complain. I have so much to be grateful for.”

Or perhaps you’ve heard someone else say it, their voice trailing off as they dismiss their own struggles?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, particularly after creating an Instagram reel about the limitations of gratitude. Whilst gratitude can be a powerful practice, there’s a shadow side we don’t often talk about.

The side where gratitude becomes a silencing mechanism, where it stops us from acknowledging what’s genuinely difficult in our lives and shuts down our authentic feelings before we’ve even had a chance to explore them.

You know the pattern, don’t you? Something in your life isn’t working. Maybe you’re exhausted, or your relationship is struggling, or your job is draining the life out of you. You start to voice this, to yourself or to someone else, and then comes that automatic response:

“But I should be grateful. Other people have it so much worse.”

And just like that, your experience is dismissed. Your needs are invalidated. Your genuine struggles are pushed aside in favour of what you think you should feel.

This is where gratitude becomes problematic.

Interestingly, this isn’t just something I’ve noticed in my coaching work. Recent research has actually identified what they call “forced gratitude” as a form of emotional suppression. One study found that people experiencing depression sometimes felt guilty or like failures when they couldn’t find something to be grateful for. Even when they could identify something, they often felt ashamed rather than uplifted.

You can, therefore, be grateful for what you have AND acknowledge what isn’t working. These aren’t mutually exclusive. Yet we’ve been conditioned to think they are.

We’ve been taught that gratitude means accepting everything as it is. That being thankful means not wanting things to change. That appreciating what we have means we can’t also acknowledge what’s missing or what’s genuinely difficult.

But that’s not gratitude. That’s suppression dressed up in wellness language.

When you say “I shouldn’t complain, I should be grateful,” what are you really doing? You’re using gratitude as a weapon against yourself. You’re wielding it to shut down your own voice, to invalidate your own experience, to keep yourself small and quiet and uncomplaining.

And if you’re a coach, you might notice your clients doing this too. They start to open up about what’s genuinely hard in their lives, and then they catch themselves. “But I know I should be grateful…” And suddenly the real conversation stops before it’s even begun.

This is the dark side of gratitude, when it becomes a “should”, when it’s used to silence rather than to appreciate, when it stops us from acknowledging our genuine needs and feelings.

We can’t move forward from a place we won’t acknowledge. If we’re constantly using gratitude to dismiss our struggles, we never actually address them. We just keep pushing them down, telling ourselves we should be thankful, whilst underneath, nothing changes.

Real wellbeing isn’t about forcing ourselves to feel grateful when we’re struggling. It’s about being honest about where we are – acknowledging what’s hard – recognising what needs to change. And yes, appreciating what’s good, but not at the expense of our authentic experience.

So what if we approached it differently?

What if instead of “I shouldn’t complain, I should be grateful,” we said: “I’m grateful for what I have, and I’m also struggling with this particular thing right now.”

Both can be true.

You can appreciate your job whilst also acknowledging it’s draining you. You can be grateful for your relationship whilst also recognising there are issues that need addressing. You can value your life whilst also wanting things to be different.

This isn’t being ungrateful. This is being honest.

From that place of honesty, from that acknowledgement of what’s really going on, you can start to find genuine solutions. You can make changes. You can ask for help. You can explore what might actually work better for you.

You can’t do any of that if you’re using gratitude to shut yourself down.

So notice this week when you use gratitude to silence yourself. Pay attention to those moments when “I should be grateful” appears as a way to dismiss your genuine feelings or needs.

And when you catch yourself doing it, pause. Ask yourself: what am I not letting myself acknowledge? What genuine need or feeling am I pushing aside? What would it be like to let that be true alongside my gratitude?

You might discover that giving yourself permission to be honest about what’s hard doesn’t diminish your gratitude at all. In fact, it might make your appreciation feel more genuine, because it’s not being used to suppress everything else you’re feeling.

Gratitude is powerful when it’s authentic. But when it’s wielded as a should, when it’s used to keep us quiet and compliant with situations that genuinely need to change, that’s not gratitude at all.

That’s just another wellness rule we’re following.

And I think we’ve had quite enough of those, don’t you?

If you want to explore more about gratitude and wellbeing, you can read more of my articles here.