The Vulnerability of Gratitude: Learning to Receive

The thing I found hardest wasn't being grateful. It was accepting that someone else could be grateful for me.

Which surprised me, because gratitude has always been one of my favourite strengths. I first discovered this during honours, when my thesis happened to focus on gratitude. At the time, I was moving through a difficult season and, somewhere along the way, gratitude became much more than an academic topic. It became an anchor.

Not because it made the difficult things disappear. It didn't. But it helped me notice that even in the hardest seasons, there were still moments worth paying attention to. Moments of learning, growth and reminders that life wasn't made up entirely of the hard things.

I thought I understood gratitude. Then, recently, it taught me something new.

Recently, I found myself writing to a friend to thank them for the doors they had opened for me this year. Doors to experiences I probably wouldn't have sought out on my own. Doors to challenge. Doors to connection. Doors that introduced me to parts of myself I hadn't really met before.

Their reply surprised me. They acknowledged the role they had played, but gently shifted some of the credit back towards me. They reminded me that while they may have been there at the beginning, I was the one who had made the decisions. The one who had said yes. The one who had kept showing up. The one who had done the hard work.

And then they said they were proud of me.

If I'm honest, I didn't quite know what to do with that. My instinct wasn't to let it land and instead I explained why they were underestimating the role they had played, because from where I was standing, none of this would have happened without them.

Looking back, one of my favourite parts of that conversation is that we were both trying to hand the credit back to each other. I was convinced they had changed my year. They were convinced I had done the work. Perhaps both things can be true. Perhaps people open doors, create opportunities and become catalysts for change. But we still have to choose whether we're going to walk through those doors.

A little while later, someone did something unexpectedly kind for me as a way of saying thank you. I was overwhelmed by the gesture and found myself getting teary, turning away so they didn't notice. Even now, I'm not entirely sure why I was so overwhelmed by it, and despite me being moved by it, my immediate instinct wasn't simply to say thank you.

It was to explain why they didn't need to. Why it wasn't necessary.

Looking back, I'm not sure trying to negotiate my way out of kindness was one of my finer moments! It did leave me wondering why I was so comfortable recognising the impact other people had on me, yet so uncomfortable believing I might have had an impact on them.

Perhaps gratitude is uncomfortable because it asks me to allow myself to be seen. To resist the urge to explain, minimise or hand the credit back. To simply let someone else's experience be true.

The juxtaposition wasn't lost on me.

I could so easily describe what they had given me. The things I had offered felt ordinary by comparison.
Showing up. Helping where I could. The practical things. The behind-the-scenes things. Researching things when it was useful.

The things that didn't feel remarkable because they came naturally to me and I wonder if that's where I had been getting stuck. I had mistaken the things that came naturally to me for things that carried little value. Perhaps the things that feel most ordinary to us are sometimes the very things another person remembers.

I've always known I don't particularly enjoy being the centre of attention. Being sung Happy Birthday to is enough to make me want to disappear into the floor. I'm happy to blend into a crowd and I don't particularly try to stand out but I hadn't realised how many other places that discomfort quietly showed up.

In compliments. In gratitude. In someone saying they were proud of me. In someone trying to thank me.

Perhaps receiving gratitude isn't uncomfortable because I don't value it. Perhaps it's uncomfortable because it asks me to accept that someone else's experience of me might be different from my own.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've realised I wasn't trying to make a difference. I was simply showing up in ways that felt natural to me and perhaps that was true for my friend too. They weren't setting out to change my life. They were simply being themselves and showing up in the ways that came naturally to them. Encouraging. Creating opportunities. Opening doors.

I was doing the same in my own way. Playing to my strengths by helping with practical things. Trying to make someone else's life a little easier where I could. I wasn't trying to change anyone's life. I was just being myself.

Perhaps that's why it was so difficult to believe those things could have mattered. Not because they were insignificant. But because they felt ordinary.

I'm still much better at writing thank you messages than receiving them. I'm not sure that will change overnight!

But I have become curious about gratitude moving in both directions. One direction is noticing the people who have shaped our lives. The other is quietly accepting that something we offered, however ordinary it felt to us, may have shaped someone else's.

Perhaps that's the part of gratitude I'm still learning.

Reflection questions

• What is easier for you: expressing gratitude or receiving it?

• How do you respond when someone tells you that you've made a difference to them?

• What might you notice if, instead of minimising someone's gratitude or handing the credit back, you simply let yourself receive it?

This reflection shares a personal experience and general observations about human behaviour. It is not intended as psychological advice.