Every year around Thanksgiving, we’re reminded to be grateful. We write lists, share reflections, and pause to notice what’s good in our lives.
Gratitude is an important practice. It helps us slow down, shift perspective, and strengthen our sense of connection.
But there’s another side to gratitude we rarely talk about: what happens when it feels out of reach.
When Gratitude Feels Out of Reach
Sometimes, gratitude feels like something we’re supposed to feel but can’t quite touch.
In my work, I’ve heard people say, “I know I should be thankful. My life is good. Other people have it worse.”
It sounds reasonable, even mature. Yet underneath those words is often something else—a quiet ache that says, I shouldn’t be struggling.
That’s when gratitude starts to feel like pressure instead of peace…and when that pressure builds, shame is often waiting just beneath it.
I’ve heard this called “gratitude shaming.” It happens when we push ourselves to feel grateful instead of allowing what’s real. We tell ourselves, “It could be worse” or “I should be thankful for what I have,” but that kind of gratitude bypasses pain instead of tending to it. Over time, it can leave us feeling smaller, unworthy, or disconnected from our own experience.
Sometimes this sounds like, “I have a good life and I still can’t cope.” For some, that spirals into shame: the belief that something must be wrong with me. Gratitude, meant to bring perspective, turns into a measure of worth.
Compassion is the Missing Piece
There’s no doubt that gratitude supports emotional well-being. It helps us notice what’s good and shift our focus toward what sustains us. But when gratitude feels out of reach, compassion becomes even more essential.
Juliane Taylor Shore, who spoke at our Rooted conference, describes compassion as “the distance at which I can love both you and me simultaneously.” It’s what allows us to hold suffering, our own or another’s, without getting lost in it.
Compassion begins with empathy but doesn’t end there. Empathy helps us feel with someone else, yet without movement, it can overwhelm the body. Julianne calls this “empathetic distress.” When we only feel but cannot act, our limbic system floods with emotion, and the body’s fight, flight, or freeze response takes over. Compassion is what completes that movement. It transforms empathy into care, helping the nervous system settle rather than store pain.
Biologically, empathy activates stress centers in the brain, while compassion calms them. It releases oxytocin, serotonin, and GABA—neurochemicals that bring balance, connection, and a sense of safety. Both gratitude and compassion soothe the brain, but compassion reaches further. It engages reward centers that generate satisfaction and well-being, while quieting the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear and threat detection. Compassion literally reshapes the brain from a state of threat to a state of calm and connection.
The Three Parts of Compassion
Compassion may sound like a soft idea, but it is something we can practice and grow. It lives in the choices we make when things feel hard, in how we stay present, how we remind ourselves we are not alone, and how we offer kindness instead of judgment. These three parts work together to bring balance back to the body and to the heart:
Mindfulness is the ability to stay with what’s real, what’s true – what is – even when it’s uncomfortable. It sounds like, “This is hard, and I can be with this feeling.”
It invites us to be with what is: to sense our bodies, notice our breath, and acknowledge both the pain and the beauty in the moment. “This is a moment of suffering,” we might say, “and the ground is still holding me.”
Common Humanity is a reminder that we are not alone. Every person reaches moments of pain, confusion, or exhaustion. Remembering that softens isolation.
It’s the deep knowing that being human means having limits and vulnerabilities. As one of our trainers, Kathleen Choe, once said, “That’s a lot to hold. I’m glad you could make space for her grief and your humanity, which by definition gives us limited capacity to hold all the things.” Remembering this truth helps us meet ourselves and others with gentleness.
Kindness. This pertains to the choice to respond gently instead of critically. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a breath and saying to yourself, “You’re doing your best right now.”
Compassion isn’t only a feeling; it’s movement. It might look like placing a hand on your chest and saying, “You are human. Of course, you are overwhelmed.”
Or my personal favorite, “Bettina, you are human so OF COURSE you can’t do all the things. Even so, you are a total badass!”(while striking an absolutely amazing power pose) 🙂
These gestures ground compassion in the body and remind us we are capable of offering care, even to ourselves.
Each of these small shifts begins to change what’s happening inside the body. They create the space needed for healing to take root.
Compassion in Practice
In our work at Natural Lifemanship, we talk often about co-regulation, the way nervous systems learn balance through relationship. Empathy and compassion are part of that same rhythm.
Empathy is the activation. Compassion is the soothing. When empathy rises and compassion follows, the nervous system learns what completion feels like. This is the same rhythm that builds secure attachment: activation followed by comfort, rupture followed by repair, need followed by response. Over and over, these cycles of empathy and compassion teach the body that safety is possible.
You can feel this rhythm in therapy sessions, in parenting moments, or even in how you speak to yourself. It’s the pattern of being human: tension met with care, struggle met with support, pain met with presence.
This is how safety is learned, again and again.
A Thanksgiving Reflection
If gratitude feels far away this season, you do not have to force thankfulness or measure your pain against anyone else’s.
Start with compassion and begin with what’s real. Offer yourself the same warmth you would offer someone you love. Remember that being human means feeling the full range of emotions, not just the ones that look good on paper.
And if you find yourself returning to gratitude later, let it come naturally, not as a demand but as a response to being understood and cared for.
As part of our Thanksgiving reflection, we’re sharing a special keynote from Rooted 2025: “Growing Your Relationship with Self-Compassion” with researcher, therapist, and author Julianne Taylor Shore.
Her talk explores how compassion reshapes the brain, supports healing, and helps us connect more deeply with ourselves and others.
If you are a Natural Lifemanship Member, click here (make sure you are logged into the site) to watch the keynote presentation and earn 1.5 CE credits by completing the course in Thinkific.
Not yet an NL Member? Now is a great time to join us! Learn more about Membership today.
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