More Than Gratitude: How a Thankful Mindset Improves Your Mental Health

As the gateway to the holiday season, November is traditionally a time of reflection and thanksgiving. But if you’re dealing with feelings of stress, depression, or anxiety, feeling thankful doesn’t always come easily. 

But while it might seem challenging — or even pointless — to spend time being grateful for the positive aspects of your life, an “attitude of gratitude” can offer significant and proven benefits for your mental health.

Sarah Wilczewski, CRNA, APNP, has extensive experience helping women and men at Revival Infusion Madison deal with the stresses of life and their emotional and physiological impacts. In this post, she reviews the surprising benefits of staying mentally positive and how ketamine infusion therapy can help improve your mindset during the holidays and far beyond.

The science behind gratitude and mood

Improving your mental health simply by maintaining a positive attitude may sound like hocus pocus, but there’s real science behind it. In fact, research shows that staying positive can benefit not only your mental health but also your physical health.

That’s because thinking positively literally activates the areas of your brain that are associated with rewards and feel-good chemicals, like dopamine and serotonin. These chemicals help relieve stress and improve overall emotional balance and stability. 

When you practice gratitude, you repeatedly strengthen these areas, promoting a greater sense of calm and optimism that persists long afterward. In fact, research shows positive thinking is associated with a surprising array of benefits, like:

• Reduced depression and anxiety
• Improved social and emotional well-being
• Better cardiovascular health

A grateful mindset offers many physical and emotional benefits; research has even linked the practice with greater longevity.

Practicing gratitude doesn’t mean ignoring challenges or pretending everything is fine when you’re dealing with those challenges. It simply means refocusing your attention toward experiences that enrich your life in profound or straightforward ways — experiences that can be easy to overlook when you’re consumed by stress, anxiety, and frustration. 

Developing a grateful mindset

Practicing gratitude doesn’t have to be complicated: Simple daily habits like journaling three things you’re thankful for, expressing appreciation to someone you care about, or reflecting on the positive aspects of your life every evening before bed are powerful yet simple techniques that can make a big difference. 

In fact, one study showed that a daily, 15-minute intervention showed major results after just six weeks. The key is to be consistent, establishing and maintaining a pattern that helps review your brain’s responses so that you can tap into all the benefits.

Being grateful helps you focus on the present moment instead of dwelling on regrets or future worries. This simple shift can decrease the emotional intensity of stress or sadness, helping you manage feelings of anxiety and depression more effectively. 

Professional help is important, too

Adopting a more positive mindset can definitely be beneficial for your health, but it’s not a cure-all. Many people benefit from medical intervention, like psychological counseling, medication, or advanced therapies like ketamine infusion.

In fact, ketamine infusion helps reset neural pathways in your brain, too, by regulating chemicals associated with mood and emotional stability. Combined with a daily program of simple gratitude practices, like journaling, ketamine infusion therapy could help calm persistent feelings of depression and anxiety, so you can finally feel more centered.

Find your balance

A grateful attitude can offer significant benefits for your mental and physical wellness, but it’s not uncommon to need additional help and support. To learn more about ketamine infusion therapy and how it can help balance your emotions and support a better quality of life, request an appointment online or over the phone with the team at Revival Infusion Madison in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, today.