Practicing gratitude in home care

When we decide to focus on good things in our lives, blood pressure lessens; heart rate slows; peace and well-being are ushered in, and resiliency is fortified. The tremendous healing power of a positive outlook has been discussed for centuries. 

There is robust literature documenting higher psychological characteristics conceptually related to gratitude among older adults compared to younger adults. These psychological characteristics include forgiveness, attachment security, optimism, and other interpersonal character strengths. For example, Socioemotional Selectivity Theory suggests that as people age, they become increasingly aware that time is limited. This perception of a finite time horizon leads individuals to prioritize personally meaningful events above motives for novelty, growth, and curiosity. One of the ways that older individuals express these preferences is by investing in social interactions with close, significant others and striving to maintain intimate, healthy relationships. Individuals with a limited time perspective choose to spend more time with close relationship partners and less time with acquaintances. The Socioemotional Selectivity Theory is often employed to explain why older adults tend to provide more positive evaluations of their lives and emotional states.

Positive psychology aims to broaden the focus of clinical psychology beyond suffering and its direct alleviation. Positive psychology is the scientific study of strengths, viewing even the most distressed persons as more than the sum of damaging habits. Positive psychology asks for more serious consideration of those persons’ intact faculties. Positive life experience, strengths of character, and how those buffer against disorder extends the concept of optimism as a strategy that mediates the impact of age-related decline on the threat to loss of subjective well-being as one encounters the inevitable challenges of functional and social loss in later life.

There are three ways to experience gratitude; as a trait, an emotion, and a practice. As an emotion, we reflect on the feelings of appreciation for something good that has happened. Gratitude as a trait can frame the way you look at the things that occur in your life. Gratitude as a practice is an activity or exercise of deliberately reflecting on what’s going well or what kind of positive attributes one’s life might be providing at the time. Over time you can strengthen this as a trait with the art of practice. Researchers have developed many scales to measure gratitude, such as the Gratitude Questionaire. People who are typically grateful tend to suffer less stress and be happier in general. 

Practicing gratitude not only benefits our body, mind, and spirit as we age, but it also benefits humans in all roles, whether it be a patient, family caregiver, or formal caregiver. Practice gratitude all month long with this calendar.