Feeling pressured to be grateful? Don’t force it

It’s that time of year when gratitude seems to be everywhere: at work, around the dinner table and at holiday gatherings. But with so much pressure to feel thankful, gratitude can start to feel like one more thing on the holiday to-do list.

Matthew Higgins learned that firsthand when he set out to write a gratitude letter to a different person every day for 23 days. What began as a personal project became a study exploring not just the benefits of gratitude, but why expressing it can sometimes be difficult.

Matthew Higgins

“Gratitude is good for us, but it isn’t always easy,” said Higgins, an assistant teaching professor of professional effectiveness at the Leeds School of Business who studies resilience and well-being. “It requires vulnerability, and sometimes it can be emotionally exhausting. And it’s OK to struggle with it.”

When gratitude gets difficult

During the first five days of Higgins’ project, writing and sending letters to friends, family and people from different periods of his life felt good. He noted improvements in his mood after sending them, consistent with previous research showing the benefits of gratitude for well-being and relationships.

Then things got harder. Higgins found himself struggling to write to men he knew from his years coaching basketball. Expressing gratitude meant being vulnerable in a way that went against some of the ideas about masculinity he’d encountered. Other letters brought up complicated feelings about people who positively influenced his life, even when the relationships themselves weren’t always positive.

For the study, Higgins analyzed his own experience writing 23 gratitude letters, using audio recordings he made before and after each letter to document how he felt. 

By day 11, it was wearing on him.

“I just don't feel like being vulnerable and sharing my emotions, even gratitude,” he recorded at the time.

He kept going but said the exercise began to feel like an obligation. 

Higgins analyzed the experience in a study published in 2024 in the International Journal of Wellbeing. Looking back, he described reaching a kind of “gratitude fatigue.”

“I was just tired of expressing emotion,” he said. “We feel pressure to express gratitude to everybody for everything. It's like, no, protect your emotional availability a bit.”

A different way to find gratitude

What pulled Higgins out of his gratitude slump was his houseplants.

Looking around his apartment one day, he thought about the friend who had given him plants and cuttings years earlier. He appreciated having the plants and wanted to thank her.

That changed his approach. Instead of starting with a person and trying to think of something to thank them for, Higgins started with something good in his life and worked backward to the person who helped make it possible. His paper describes this as “triggered gratitude.”

That could mean noticing the neighbor who shoveled your sidewalk or the friend who remembered something you forgot. Gratitude doesn't have to mean telling someone they've changed your life, Higgins said.

“You can actually just say, ‘Hey, I appreciate you getting the door for me this morning. That was cool. Thank you,’” he said.

How you say it can vary, too. Research has found benefits from writing and sharing gratitude with another person, including through letters read face-to-face, but Higgins said he finds that level of vulnerability uncomfortable. Sometimes he writes a note by hand and mails it; other times, he sends an email.

Gratitude and grief

Later in the project, Higgins wrote letters connected to the death of his father several years earlier, including one to his father and one to himself.

But he said writing them didn't provide the emotional breakthrough he'd imagined. Instead, it helped him focus on good memories while still acknowledging his grief. 

“There's nothing that we can do to get rid of the grief,” Higgins said. “The gratitude part helps you also elevate the good parts.”

How to practice gratitude without forcing it

Higgins’ experience offers a reassuring lesson heading into the holidays: You don't have to manufacture gratitude. And when you do feel it, a small thank you can be more meaningful than a grand gesture. His advice is to take some of the pressure off:

Start with what's good, not who you “should” thank. Notice something that makes your life better, then consider whether another person helped make it happen. 

Keep it small and specific. Thank someone for one concrete thing they did. Higgins said an expression of gratitude can be an email with just a few sentences.

Don't turn gratitude into a quota. Higgins' advice around Thanksgiving: Don’t feel obligated to thank everyone for everything.

Give yourself permission to keep it private. If expressing gratitude feels forced or uncomfortable, Higgins advises reflecting on what's going well. That can help you notice the good in your life, even if you don't share it with anyone else.

Remember yourself, too. One of the letters Higgins wrote was to himself, acknowledging his own role in coping with grief. Gratitude can include recognizing what you've done for your own well-being.