When Gratitude Feels Fake: Support For You And Your Clients

GRATITUDE

Michele Mazelin opened the session by naming the tension many providers and clients feel during the holiday season. While this time of year is culturally framed as a time of thankfulness, she noted that “the season of giving thanks can feel uncomfortable for people wrestling with grief, regret, and emotional exhaustion, including those like yourselves offering care and support for others.” Michele explained that the presentation would explore how to hold space for both gratitude and pain—without minimizing either—and how providers can help clients navigate that same balance in abortion healing work.

To lay a foundation, Michele offered several definitions of gratitude. She shared that, in its simplest form, gratitude means “appreciating benefits received.” Psychologists, she said, understand it as an emotion centered on appreciating the helpful actions of others, while researchers describe gratitude as “a life orientation toward noticing and appreciating the positive in the world.” According to those researchers, including a professor of mental health and wellbeing, gratitude is strongly linked to overall wellbeing.

She outlined the session’s roadmap. The presentation would explore the benefits of gratitude, the ways trauma complicates it, the harm of forced or inauthentic gratitude, emotional readiness, emotionally congruent support, and practical tools for both providers and clients

NEUROSCIENCE BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE

Kylee Heap then shifted the conversation toward the neuroscience behind the benefits of gratitude. She emphasized that “gratitude isn’t just a feel good idea, it changes the brain,” explaining that it enhances clear thinking, calmer responses, and resilience. Kylee described how gratitude activates regions of the brain connected to reward and motivation, which is why people often feel a lift in mood and energy when they incorporate gratitude practices into their lives.

She went on to explain that repeated gratitude practice can interrupt negative mental loops. Over time, she said, it helps retrain the brain away from worry and chronic heaviness, opening space for “a more even and grounded perspective on life.” This shift is not only emotional but physiological: pausing to acknowledge what is going well nudges the nervous system out of a heightened stress response, quiets internal alarm signals, and reduces the physical load of stress.

Kylee highlighted that these neurological changes translate into tangible bodily effects. Gratitude, when practiced consistently, tends to improve sleep, steady energy, and support broader physical wellbeing. These changes, she noted, make everyday functioning easier by helping individuals stay more focused and present.

SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH GRATITUDE?

Kylee then asked a question so many people carry beneath the surface: If it’s so good for us, why is it so hard to do? She noted that most people expect gratitude to come naturally, yet when life feels heavy or complicated, the practice often slips out of reach.

To help explain why, Kylee invited participants to imagine mental health not as a fixed state but as three inner “dimmer switches,” each one capable of sliding toward light or toward shadow. “I absolutely love this graphic,” she said, referring to a slide showing three sliding scales.

She described the first switch as a person’s view of the world — whether life feels mostly unsafe and threatening, or mostly good and trustworthy. The second dimmer switch reflects how a person sees themselves. She described the difference between feeling “not enough” or broken and seeing oneself as capable and growing. The third switch shows how someone interprets the future: does it feel hopeless, or is there still room for good things ahead?

Kylee explained that when these inner settings lean toward darkness — when the world feels unsafe, the self feels inadequate, or the future feels closed off — gratitude becomes difficult to access. In those moments, she said, trying to force gratitude is like insisting someone flip every light on while their whole system is still sitting in the dark.

Rather than helping, that pressure asks people to perform an emotion they cannot authentically feel. “It doesn’t help people heal,” she noted. “It just tasks them to perform.”

THE GRATITUDE DILEMMA

Kylee introduced what psychologists and researchers call the gratitude dilemma. She observed that gratitude isn’t simply good or bad — it carries both possibilities within it. For many people, especially those navigating grief, there is a real tension between what they think they should feel thankful for and what they are actually feeling inside. After abortion, she noted, that tension can feel even more complicated.

Kylee explained that the session would explore both sides: how genuine gratitude can support healing, and how forced or performative gratitude can get in the way. “There are both helpful forms and harmful forms,” she said. “And for many people, especially those navigating grief, there’s a real emotional clash between gratitude and what they’re actually feeling.”

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF GRATITUDE AND TRAUMA

Michele picked up the thread by looking at the neuroscience behind gratitude and trauma. She began with a gentle reminder about trauma itself. While many immediately think of violence, abuse, or catastrophic injury, she noted that trauma can also be anything that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope — affecting emotional, physical, social, mental, or spiritual wellbeing. “So yes, it includes what happened,” she said, “but it also includes how your nervous system experienced it.”

She explained that this is why not everyone who experiences abortion identifies it as trauma, and why language matters. Participants were invited to substitute the word pain as a parallel term when they hear the word trauma used in the presentation.

Michele described the body’s response to trauma: the fight, flight, or freeze system activates in the moment, and even afterward, triggers, intense emotions, and lingering “shoulda/coulda/woulda” thoughts can keep a person in withdrawal. An overactive nervous system, she said, can make gratitude feel out of reach.

“When the reactive part of the brain is in charge,” she explained, “the part that can initiate gratitude is mostly on the sidelines.” The pain and aftermath of trauma can leave someone feeling ashamed, guilty, unworthy. And even if they may want to “be positive,” the upper parts of the brain are too disengaged to generate gratitude authentically.

She also cautioned against trying to force gratitude too soon. Attempts to “fix” emotions, she said, can signal the brain that something is wrong, activating survival mode and pulling people back into withdrawal. Quoting Brené Brown, Michele said, “You can’t gratitude your way out of pain.”

Reflection: Pressure That Didn’t Fit

Michele invited participants to pause and reflect on moments from their own lives when grief or disappointment was met with well-meaning but mismatched encouragement. “Maybe you were grieving, maybe something had just gone wrong and somebody said, ‘be grateful,’ or ‘at least,’ and it just didn’t land,” she said.

She shared her own experience, recalling a miscarriage. “What comes to mind first for me, was after one of my miscarriages and people meant well, but they kept saying things like, ‘At least you have other kids,’ and ‘Be thankful it was early.’” Michele explained that, while she was of course grateful for her other children, she was also devastated. “And not only can those two things exist at the same time,” she noted, “but the devastation and the grief… that needed space first.”

You may take a moment to pause while reading this to reflect too.

HARMFUL OR FAKE GRATITUDE

Michele then introduced the topic of harmful or fake gratitude, inviting participants to consider an analogy from childhood. She asked them to remember a time when they and a sibling were fighting — “maybe you’re standing there holding your toy they broke while trying to pull it away from you, or you’re nursing a red arm from where they slapped you” — and were told by a parent or adult to apologize. “Maybe they tell you to ‘say you’re sorry,’ or even, ‘say you’re sorry and mean it,’” she said.

Participants were asked to imagine the feelings underneath the forced compliance: the lingering hurt, the anger, the unacknowledged experience. Michele likened this to forced or fake gratitude. “The forced apology was like putting a bandaid on a wound without first cleaning and disinfecting it,” she explained. In the same way, she said, gratitude that is coerced or performative can fail to heal, because it bypasses the authentic processing of feelings and needs.

BYPASSING: EMOTIONAL, GRATITUDE, AND SPIRITUAL

Kylee began by naming a phenomenon many providers and clients may recognize: toxic positivity. “I’m sure you’ve all seen those ‘POSITIVE VIBES ONLY’-type messaging,” she said. She explained that when people push themselves or others to be upbeat, grateful, or look on the bright side—regardless of what the heart is actually feeling—they shut down the very emotions that need attention.

Toxic positivity, she emphasized, isn’t about genuine hope. It’s about forced optimism. Instead of creating space for real emotions, it blocks healing. Kylee noted that gratitude itself can sometimes be used in this way: even with good intentions, it can become a tool to suppress grief, anger, shame, or trauma rather than work through it. “It’s called gratitude bypassing,” she said. “It’s a form of emotional bypassing where gratitude is encouraged too early, and it’s used like a tool to fix someone’s pain instead of sitting with it.”

She described how this shows up in after-abortion healing. People often say things like, “I should just be grateful,” or “Other people have it worse,” or “I chose this so I don’t have the right to be upset.” On the surface, these statements sound like gratitude, but really they are avoiding the hurt that needs acknowledgment. Healthy gratitude, Kylee emphasized, does not skip over grief; it makes room for both.

She described examples of what gratitude bypassing can look like: telling yourself or someone else “just be grateful” while pain is present, or offering phrases like “at least it wasn’t worse” or “you should be thankful for what you really do have.” These messages may feel positive, but they silence the emotions that need attention. Some people even feel guilty for feeling sad, thinking they are failing by not being grateful. “Or they feel pressure to be grateful instead of being encouraged to voice what they need.”

Next, she introduced the term spiritual bypassing, describing it as a similar pattern, but using faith or spiritual language “to move around pain rather than through it.” Statements like “It’s all part of God’s plan—just trust Him,” “Let God use this for good,” or “Offer it up,” can unintentionally close the door on grief. She clarified that spiritual practices themselves — trusting God, noticing blessings, uniting suffering with Christ — are meaningful. The concern arises when these practices are used to bypass real emotions, rather than hold them before God.

Referencing grief expert David Kessler’s Six Needs of the Grieving, Michele noted that part of healing involves “the need to have your pain witnessed—to be seen—and the need to express your feelings.” Gratitude bypassing interferes with these needs. It minimizes emotional pain, leaving people feeling invalidated, unseen, or isolated. Suppressing emotions elevates stress markers, increases depressive symptoms, and makes regulating emotions harder. It delays healing because unprocessed grief resurfaces in other ways. And it can reinforce shame, particularly when people already feel their emotions are wrong or unjustified.

Spiritual bypassing adds another layer, she said, often creating guilt on top of the pain. People may wonder: “If I’m not feeling thankful, am I failing as a Christian?” or “Am I disappointing God because I’m sad or angry?” As theologian Glenn Packiam put it, “Gratitude that bypasses grief isn’t healing, it’s hiding.”

Michele asked to picture all forms of bypassing — emotional, gratitude, spiritual, toxic positivity — as a hand pressing down on a pressure cooker, forcing feelings to stay bottled up rather than processing them before they leak out or erupt.

She emphasized that not feeling gratitude or resisting fake gratitude is not ingratitude. It is a signal that the system — whether your own or a client’s — is in pain, grief, or stress.

“Think blocked signal, not closed heart,” she said. What a heart in pain needs is not performative gratitude, but real healing. When the underlying wounds are acknowledged and addressed, the block is removed, and the responsive parts of the brain can engage. Only then, Michele concluded, can genuine, healthy gratitude emerge.

EMOTIONALLY CONGRUENT AND INCONGRUENT SUPPORT

Kylee framed a crucial question for anyone supporting others: when is the help we offer emotionally congruent, and when is it incongruent? In other words, are we meeting someone where they actually are, or responding from a place where we wish they were?

She walked participants through what emotionally incongruent support can look like in practice. It occurs when a response simply does not match the other person’s emotional state. “It might not be wrong,” she explained, “it just is the wrong fit for that moment.” Sometimes that takes the form of being overly upbeat when someone is weighed down, or sounding clinical when warmth is needed. Other times, it could be offering spiritual guidance when the person isn’t ready to receive it, or practical advice when they’re longing for emotional or spiritual grounding. “Basically, any time our response is ‘too something’ for the moment — too bright, too heavy, too directive, too distant — it’s a mismatch, and people can feel that mismatch immediately,” Kylee said.

By contrast, emotionally congruent support meets someone in the reality of their experience. Kylee outlined the key practices that define it. First, “it acknowledges the hard before inviting hope.” People need to know their pain is seen before they can consider anything else. Second, “it holds space for both the hard and the hopeful” when appropriate. Someone can be grieving and grateful, hurting and healing. The role of the supporter is to make room for the full picture.

Finally, she emphasized the approach to gratitude practices: offer them gently, as an option, never as a requirement. “Gratitude is powerful only when it’s chosen, not when it’s prescribed,” Kylee said.

Roleplay: Emotionally Incongruent and Congruent Support

Kylee invited Nyles and Michele to demonstrate the differences between the two support approaches with her through roleplay. She positioned herself as the provider delivering emotionally incongruent support, Nyles as the client, and Michele as the provider delivering emotionally congruent support. “As we navigate this,” Kylee asked participants, “just sit in the shoes of the client and notice how these two types of responses — even if mine comes from the right place in my heart — land differently.”

Role Play 1: Nyles described waking up sad every day. Kylee pushed for listing blessings, while Michele first acknowledged the weight of the morning and invited him to share what came up most or first.
Role Play 2: Nyles shared feeling dismissed by family telling him to focus on blessings. Kylee agreed that gratitude really does help, whereas Michele recognized the underlying feeling of being unheard and offered attentive listening.
Role Play 3: Nyles shared that seeing babies and pregnant women is really hard and his worries that being around family for the holidays would be triggering. Kylee suggested he think about about he’s thankful for and try to be happy for others, while Michele reflected the difficulty and invited practical support, like planning exits or breathing breaks.
Role Play 4: Nyles expressed guilt for not feeling thankful, compared himself to others, and said he really should be thankful. Kylee encouraged practicing gratitude and said the guilt would fade, while Michele validated the pain, affirmed that his experience matters, and offering space to talk.

Michele emphasized that statements like “I should be grateful” can be red flags, signaling that someone may be pushing past their real emotions rather than processing them.

Reflection: Gratitude Bypassing

Michele invited participants to consider a time in their life or work when gratitude may have been offered too quickly — not necessarily to dismiss pain, but sometimes out of discomfort with it. “Sometimes we do this to ourselves too,” she reflected.

She encouraged a quiet moment of reflection. Participants were asked to think of a time when gratitude bypassed something deeper — whether in their own healing or while supporting someone else — and to consider what that moment truly needed instead.

Michele then invited Nyles to speak about gratitude in men, introducing a new section focused on understanding how men experience and express gratitude in the context of healing after abortion.

GRATITUDE AND MEN: WHY IT MATTERS

Nyles highlighted how men experience and express gratitude differently than women, particularly in the context of abortion healing:

Disenfranchised Grief: Many men don’t feel permission to grieve. Gratitude — when pushed by themselves or others — can double down on silence. It may feel like a required mask, shutting down space for real emotion.
- Examples: “At least she’s okay now.” “My friends say I dodged a bullet.”
Cultural Expectations: Men are often taught to man up, move on, or fix problems rather than acknowledge pain or vulnerability. Quick shifts to gratitude can be a way to appear in control, not a sign of healing.
- Example: “I need to be strong and focus on the good.”
- Reflection: Are we interpreting a man’s gratitude as healing, or could it be a strategy to avoid pain he feels he can’t express?
Research Findings: Gratitude is linked to wellbeing for men as strongly as for women — sometimes even more. Yet:
- Men express gratitude less often.
- Men often view gratitude as undesirable, difficult to express, or even humiliating.
- Men feel more burdened or indebted by gratitude, similar to receiving gifts, favors, or help. This may come from strong cultural expectations of self-sufficiency and seeing gratitude as showing vulnerability.
- One-third of men aged 35–50 prefer to conceal gratitude rather than openly express it.

GRATITUDE AND ABORTION HEALING PROVIDERS

Nyles also discussed how gratitude can feel fake or forced for providers, particularly in challenging work environments. He identified five key ways this shows up:

Compassion Fatigue / Vicarious Trauma: Holding space for others’ pain repeatedly can numb emotional responses. Gratitude may feel like a task rather than genuine, causing guilt.
Secondary Grief: Hearing stories that echo personal experiences can stir unresolved grief. Gratitude pressure may collide with feelings like anger, helplessness, or guilt.
Unresolved Grief: If a provider’s personal abortion story “still stings or hasn’t been named, honored, or healed,” gratitude can bypass unprocessed emotions. This might show up as encouraging clients or themselves toward gratitude too soon before processing grief.
Holiday Hustle: Demands to do more with fewer resources, show up for clients, attend events, meet family or social expectations—can exhaust your emotional bandwidth.
Fundraising Season Fatigue: Hope-filled year-end campaigns, donor expectations, and social pressures can make gratitude feel performative or inauthentic when you’re witnessing or experiencing complex or unfinished healing journeys.

He also discussed signs you may be emotionally checked out or overcompensating gratitude, including:

Emotionally checked out: Numb, disconnected, skipping breaks, or using platitudes (“at least”) instead of processing emotions.
Overcompensating gratitude: Posting cheerful updates (“so grateful!”), performing positivity, jumping to silver lining thinking, feeling guilty for fatigue, or using toxic internal monologue while ignoring fatigue, grief, or stress.

He then illustrated with a provider story:

“I felt emotionally drained after working with several clients in crisis…I told myself I shouldn’t feel this way — I have a good job, a supportive team, and a purpose. I should be grateful.

In that moment, I wasn’t using gratitude as comfort. I was using it as a weapon against my own pain. I was trying to gratitude my way out of being tired and overwhelmed. But it just made me feel worse—adding ungrateful to my list of criticisms about myself.

What I needed instead was self-compassion and acknowledgement: I could say to myself: I appreciate helping others—and I’m also tired and sad. It’s okay to feel it all. It’s okay to take time to rest. I needed rest, release, and permission to feel.

Reflection: Are You Faking Gratitude?

Nyles invited participants to “think of a time you told yourself to be grateful when what you really needed was to be gentle with yourself.” Some questions we can reflect on include:

What stories, pressures, or expectations are shaping how gratitude feels for you this season?
Are you faking gratitude just to keep going, or minimizing your own pain?
What would self-compassion and acknowledgement look like right now?
Where might you need space to pause and honor fatigue, grief, or other emotions you’re experiencing?

GRATITUDE FOR THE GRIEVING

Michele shifted the focus to practical guidance for supporting clients with gratitude during grief. She emphasized the importance of assessing a client’s readiness for gratitude practices and meeting them where they are emotionally.

She described gratitude in different stages of grief beginning with contrasting two visual metaphors:

Single neat path: Clear points of progression on a single forward-moving journey “as if you would go step by step.”
Multiple messy lines: Intersecting up-and-down lines that illustrate how people “often cross back and forth into different emotional grief ‘phases.’”

Michele explained “you may have gone through healing—maybe a lot of healing—and then something happens, and you feel like you’re right back in the acute, deep grief stage.”

She shared the story of a woman she spoke with recently whose abortion was over 30 years ago and who had been through healing decades ago. She’s a long-time abortion healing facilitator. She was triggered by a grandchild’s recent birth and found herself back in deep grief.

Others, Michele explained, may have bottled up emotions for years and suddenly face acute grief.

She stressed that support needs and gratitude openness change depending on the grief stage, rather than the passage of time. She explained, “That’s why we intentionally avoided fixed timelines such as ‘zero to six months,’ ‘two years,’ or ‘ten years’ after abortion.”

Michele then described how people may feel overall, how gratitude may feel to them, and what their support needs are in three stages:

Acute / Deep Grief / Emotional Shock: Clients may feel numb, overwhelmed, or shut down. Gratitude can feel irrelevant, inaccessible, or even offensive. Key support needs: safety, validation, and permission to not be okay.
Integration / Active Processing / Meaning-Making: Clients may begin naming emotions, telling their story, or asking “why?” Conflicting feelings about gratitude are common — wanting to be thankful but feeling guilt or shame. Key support needs: empathy, reflection, practical tools, and space for grief and gratitude to coexist.
Ongoing Healing and Growth: Clients may experience new insights, reconciliation, or connection to purpose. Gratitude is often more integrated but still coexists with pain. Key support needs: encouragement to keep growing without pressure to arrive at gratitude.

Michele highlighted the benefits of this non-linear reframe: it removes pressure to feel better immediately, aligns with the ups and downs of healing, and encourages providers to meet clients emotionally rather than chronologically. This approach also “fits naturally with compassionate, options-based” care.

Reflection: Considering Client Readiness

Michele invited participants to pause and reflect on how each client’s stage of healing might influence their relationship with gratitude. She encouraged providers to consider what it would look like to give permission for honest feelings before expecting gratitude. This reflective moment emphasized that readiness for gratitude is highly individual, and honoring where someone is emotionally is key to supporting authentic healing.

TOOLS FOR HEALTHY GRATITUDE

Michele then introduced practical tools for fostering healthy gratitude.

🔗Handout 1: When Gratitude Feels Fake: My Space for What’s Real

This two-page journaling and reflection tool offers five questions with examples and encourages participants to use the prompts however they like, noting that some days, just naming what hurts is enough.

What feels heavy? Name what feels hard, heavy, or unresolved.
What I wish were different: Name what you long for, what still hurts, or what you wish had gone another way.
What still feels true? Without denying what’s hard, name something—however small—that feels real, grounding, or good. It’s okay if nothing comes to mind.
What I need right now: Even on rough days, some things can offer a small anchor. What’s something that helps you come back to yourself when things are hard?
What can I offer myself today? What’s one small thing you can do to support or care for yourself today?
What doesn’t fit neatly in a box? If something is stirring that doesn’t fit into a tidy list, give it a word, phrase, or picture.

A note at the bottom reminds participants to pause if they notice phrases like “I should be grateful” or “At least it wasn’t worse,” and to practice self-compassion rather than forcing gratitude.

🔗Handout 2: Eight Signs That Gratitude May Be Forced

This self-awareness tool is structured as a table with columns for:

What it sounds like
I say this to myself
I say this to others
Others say this to me

It encourages the individual to consider “How might pressured gratitude be showing up in your life?” The listed signs of forced, rushed, or avoidance gratitude include at least statement, feeling guilty for struggling, minimizing or rushing past pain, uneasiness with silence or reflection, using gratitude to avoid or end hard conversations, shifting to gratitude when emotions get intense, feeling tense or shut down when gratitude is mentioned, and avoiding people who are hurting.

A note at the bottom encourages participants to notice patterns and check in with themselves or a trusted person. And a QR code links to a related blog: Gratitude And Abortion Healing At Thanksgiving: Finding Light During Difficult Seasons. The blog addresses:

Why gratitude can feel impossible after abortion
Why gratitude timing matters
Practical tips for navigating Thanksgiving & holiday triggers
Signs you may or may not be ready for gratitude after abortion…yet
How to make gratitude feel safe after abortion
How gratitude can grow over time

Michele highlighted the word “yet” in the blog, encouraging providers to click on the hyperlink in the blog to an article on the power of the word “yet.”

🔗Handout 3: Supportive Language Swap Sheet

This handout offers guidance for validating others without bypassing emotions. The left column lists gratitude bypassing “instead of” and the right column provides “Try Saying This” compassionate alternatives.

Examples:

“At least you still have… / at least you weren’t further along” ➝ “That sounds painful to carry. I’m here if you want to talk or be grateful.”
“Be grateful—it could be worse” ➝ “You’ve been through a lot. It’s okay to name that. Pain isn’t a competition.”
“Gratitude really does help” ➝ “Sounds like you’re feeling unheard. Would you like to talk more? I’m here to listen.”

The second page includes pro tips for providers: hold space before offering hope, notice timing, validate before reframing, remain curious and invite, and support their processing.

Michele emphasized that these tools are designed to help both clients and providers practice gratitude authentically, without bypassing real pain or emotional complexity.

MESSY, TANGLED-UP PAIN CAN MAKE IT HARD TO HOLD SPACE

Kylee acknowledged the reality that grief, shame, and emotional complexity can be messy, tangled, and overwhelming. In moments of high emotion, “it’s tempting to reach for anything that feels like relief or order—even if it isn’t what the moment actually calls for.”

She shared personal examples to illustrate this: with her mom’s difficult medical journey, she sometimes found herself saying things like, “Mom, you survived a major heart surgery. You should feel grateful,” trying to control the moment out of her own overwhelm. She shared, “Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t helping her feel seen.” Kylee also told how she’s been on the receiving end of gratitude bypassing. After her dad passed away, someone told her she “ should be grateful he was in a better place.” Even with good intentions, it didn’t comfort her—”it tangled my grief even more.”

“This is exactly what happens for so many people after abortion,” Kylee explained. People often tell themselves things like, “I made this choice so I don’t deserve to feel sad,” or “Other people have it worse; I should just be grateful,” or “I don’t deserve compassion,” or “I don’t get to grieve.” These statements are survival strategies, they attempt to regulate unbearable emotions by shutting them down rather than processing them. “They sound like logic, spiritual clarity, or gratitude… but underneath, they are tangled pain,” she said.

She emphasized that the role of abortion healing providers is not to push gratitude or hope prematurely. Healing begins when we honor what is actually there—the raw, complex emotions. “Our role is to sit with them in the mess so they don’t have to sit in it alone.”

Michele reflected on her own experiences navigating this tension. After her twins were stillborn after a pregnancy complicated by hyperemesis gravidarum, she heard, “Well, at least you’re not sick anymore.” Her children had died, yet the focus on gratitude bypassed the grief she was carrying. On a lighter note, she shared that recently she caught herself saying “well, at least—” to her husband in response to a challenge he shared, realizing later that she had bypassed his concerns and feelings, which shut down the conversation.

“So, know that we’re right here in it with you,” she said, “learning fresh insights and learning how to listen better, try again, and keep showing up with care.”

Q&A

Q&A: HOW CAN I GENTLY REDIRECT A WELL-MEANING GROUP MEMBER WHO KEEPS USING GRATITUDE STATEMENTS TO OTHER PARTICIPANTS THAT MINIMIZE THEIR PAIN?

Karin noted that group guidelines create a safe space for participants to share appropriately, emphasizing the importance of having no crosstalk and using “I” statements. If a participant says something like, “At least you already have children,” Karin said she would address it immediately but in a way that reminds the whole group of the guidelines, rather than singling out the individual. This approach reinforces safety and modeling rather than shaming.

Q&A: HOW ABOUT SUGGESTIONS FOR WHEN SOME PEOPLE IN THE GROUP ARE STILL IN A HARD PLACE AND OTHERS WANT TO SHARE WHAT THEY’RE GRATEFUL FOR?

Karin shared that a similar situation arose recently in a group when a participant felt triggered by what others were sharing and wanted the facilitator to censor them. Karin explained why facilitators can’t do that: “As long as we’re sticking to “I” statements, we’re sharing from our personal experience, then we gotta allow people to share what’s on their heart.” Some participants may feel triggered when others share gratitude, but as long as everyone sticks to “I” statements and follows the guidelines, sharing can continue. For someone who is struggling with what others say, she recommends connecting with them privately afterward to explore their experience and support them in processing what came up, rather than trying to restrict others’ voices during the group.

Q&A: DO YOU HAVE TIPS FOR INTRODUCING THE JOURNALING HANDOUT TO CLIENTS WHO DON’T USUALLY WRITE OR ARE RESISTANT TO JOURNALING?

Nyles spoke from personal experience. He described how journaling felt awkward at first—like dumping thoughts onto a page without direction. What helped him was starting small, such as writing down what he can control versus what he cannot. Journaling provides him a way to organize emotions and create something to return to for reflection. His advice for clients: begin with whatever feels comfortable, no pressure, no “right” way to do it.

Q&A: HOW CAN WE HELP THOSE WHO BYPASS THEIR OWN EMOTIONS WITH PLATITUDES AND HELP THEM KNOW THAT WE ARE A SAFE PLACE TO SHARE HOW THEY REALLY FEEL?

Karin emphasized curiosity as the key tool. When someone defaults to platitudes, she might acknowledge what was said and then gently invite them to stay in the moment: “I’m curious—can I stay here with you for a minute? What might that positive thinking be covering up?” This approach allows the person to explore their emotions safely, without judgment, and signals that the space is trustworthy. The team laughed when Karin said “can I stay with you,” noting it’s a phrase she uses often, highlighting the gentle way to makes space for honesty.

Q&A: IS IT EVER OKAY TO SAY “AT LEAST?” I’VE HAD TIMES WHERE I WAS REALLY THANKFUL SOMETHING WASN’T WORSE.

Michele acknowledged that many of us have moments when we genuinely feel thankful things aren’t worse. She shared a conversation with her teen, who said that if she lost one leg, she’d be grateful she didn’t lose both. Michele highlighted that the key is if the person was really thankful, because then it’s genuine and authentic. She described other scenarios to illustrate that the problem is when you feel like you must show gratitude instead of your real emotions or when someone tells you to be grateful. Either of those situations “bypass emotions instead of validating and dealing with them.”

Q&A: SOME PEOPLE JUST CAN’T GET PAST THE PAIN. HOW LONG DO WE SIT IN THE DARK WITH THEM BEFORE WE START POKING HOLES TO BRING IN SOME LIGHT?

Karin said she’s encountered people who are stuck in circular negative thinking and can’t seem to interrupt it. Her starting point is always compassion—being with them in their pain without judgment to create a space where they can be honest. From there, she leans into curiosity and open-ended questions, using language like “Can I sit with you in that? Tell me more about that. What’s the part of you that’s still holding the pain so tightly? What are you getting out of holding this so tightly?” Rather than telling someone what they should feel, facilitation is about nurturing them toward their own insight—helping them express where they are now and where they eventually want to be.

CLOSING

Michele and Karin thanked everyone for attending and encouraged them to attend next month’s trainings.

LINKS

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