Can You Be Thankful After Abuse Without Lying to Yourself?
Be grateful. Look for the lesson. Find the blessing in what you’ve been through.
We hear messages like these all the time. On the surface, they sound hopeful. They suggest there is something good waiting to be found, even in the hardest experiences of our lives.
But after abuse, those words are harsh. Because what exactly are you supposed to be grateful for? The lies? The betrayal? The control? The cruel words? The fear? The things that happened to you that should never have happened?
You may even hear someone tell you to find the blessing in what you went through. There is fire in your eyes and your response is immediate, “I’m not thankful for what happened. Not even a little.”
And then another question can creep in. “Is there something wrong with me because I feel this way?”
No. Gosh NO! There is nothing wrong with you.
You do not have to be thankful for what happened to you. And I think it is time we stopped expecting women to be.
When Gratitude Took Me Backward Instead of Forward
When I first started a gratitude practice, I believed it would help me move forward. I had a personal life coach who asked me to write down ten things every day that I was grateful for. It sounded simple enough. Except I couldn’t do it.
I would sit there trying to think of something I was grateful for, and instead my mind would return to everything I had been through. The lies. The betrayals. The control. The harsh words. The look in their eyes just before their fist hit its mark. The silent treatment.
The anger was still there. The resentment was still there. Instead of helping me appreciate my life, the exercise seemed to pull my attention straight back into the past.
I couldn’t come up with ten things. In all honesty, at first I couldn’t come up with one.
And I remember wondering, “What am I doing wrong?” I felt defeated. Here was another thing that was supposed to help me, and apparently I couldn’t even do gratitude properly.
Except gratitude wasn’t the problem. And neither was I. I was trying to make myself feel something that wasn’t true.
You Don’t Have to Find the Silver Lining in Harm
There can be tremendous pressure to make meaning out of painful experiences. Maybe everything happens for a reason. The experience probably made you stronger and there is a possibility that someday you’ll be grateful it happened. But what if you aren’t?
My experience has shown me that you don’t have to reshape what happened to make it easier to carry. You don’t have to find something good in someone else’s harmful behaviour. You certainly don’t have to justify their actions. And you don’t have to become thankful for abuse in order to prove that you have moved forward.
What happened, happened. You are allowed to tell the truth about it.
But here is where something changed for me. I realized that not being grateful for what happened didn’t mean it had no place in my life. I had simply been looking for it in the wrong place.
What If Thankfulness Isn’t About the Past at All?
One morning, instead of trying to be grateful, I decided to be thankful. That tiny change made an enormous difference. Suddenly, I could think of four things.
Air.
Food.
Water.
A place to sleep.
Nothing profound. Nothing inspirational. I wasn’t trying to convince myself that my life was wonderful. I wasn’t searching for a lesson hidden inside everything I had endured. I wasn’t asking myself to feel differently about the past. I was simply noticing what was supporting me right now. And I could truthfully say. “Thank you.”That was something I could do.
Gratitude and Thankfulness Are Not the Same Thing
We tend to use the words gratitude and thankfulness interchangeably, but my experience of them has been very different. Gratitude is often presented as a practice. Something we deliberately do to focus our attention on what is good in our lives.
Thankfulness, as I experience it, begins with noticing. I notice something that is here, something that is helping me, comforting me or simply making this moment a little easier, and the natural response is, “Thank you.”
That distinction changed everything for me. With gratitude, I was searching for something I thought I was supposed to feel. With thankfulness, I was noticing something that was already true.
Gratitude as a practice says, write the list, keep the journal, find the good. It says train yourself to focus on the positive. And for some people, that can be very helpful.
But after abuse, being told to “be grateful” can become another expectation you feel you aren’t meeting. You may try to make the list and find your thoughts travelling straight back to what happened. Then instead of feeling better, you begin wondering why you can’t do what everyone says is supposed to help.
Thankfulness gave me another way. I didn’t have to manufacture it. I could notice something real in my life and allow the thank you to come naturally afterward. That’s an important distinction. Thankfulness wasn’t something I had to force myself to feel. It was something I began to notice.
A Different Question to Ask Yourself
So instead of asking, “What should I be grateful for?” try asking, “What is here, right now, that is not hurting me?” Don’t look for ten things. Don’t even look for five. Find one.
Maybe it is the cup of tea sitting beside you.
Maybe it is the dog sleeping at your feet.
Maybe it is the sun coming through the window.
Maybe it is a friend who answered the phone.
Maybe it is having your own key to your own front door.
Maybe it is the quiet.
Maybe it is simply having enough food for today.
Notice it. And if a thank you comes, let it come. “Thank you for this.” That’s enough. If a “thank you” doesn’t come, don’t force it. As you begin noticing what is here at this moment a quiet “thank you” will eventually come.
You Are Not Rewriting the Past
This is what I came to understand about thankfulness. It didn’t require me to change the truth about my past. It changed where I was placing my attention in the present. For a moment, I wasn’t looking backward. I was noticing my life as it existed right then.
And slowly, I began discovering that there were parts of my life that had nothing to do with what I had been through. There were moments when I could breathe more easily. There were things I enjoyed. There were people I trusted. There were choices that belonged to me.
There were ordinary little pieces of life that supported me every single day. The past hadn’t changed, but the past was no longer the only thing I could see. That is a very different kind of thankfulness.
There Is No Deadline for Feeling Thankful
Your mind may still go back to what happened. Mine did. You may notice something lovely and immediately remember something painful. That doesn’t erase the lovely thing. And it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
You don’t have to force yourself past anger, sadness or resentment to reach some imaginary finish line where you are finally grateful for everything. Thankfulness can exist alongside the truth. You can say, “What happened to me was wrong.” and, “Thank you for this warm bed.” You can say, “I wish I had never experienced that and, “Thank you for the friend who stayed.” You can say, “I am not grateful for what happened.” and still discover things in the life you are creating that are worthy of a thank you. Both can be true.
Start With One Thing
So today, don’t make yourself a gratitude list because someone told you that you should. Instead, look around. Ask yourself. “What is here, right now, that is not hurting me?” Find one thing. Notice it. Let it be enough. Tomorrow, perhaps you’ll notice another.
And over time, you may discover something rather beautiful. Thankfulness doesn’t ask you to lie about where you’ve been. It helps you notice that what happened to you is not the whole of the life you are living now. And there may be far more here to say thank you for than you realized.
Want to explore this with me a little further? I talk about this more personally in the Wisdom Wednesday episode Can You Be Thankful After Abuse Without Lying to Yourself?
You may also find this article helpful, I’m Sorry, I’m Not Sorry.
