On an emotional map, stress and gratitude are distant neighbors. No wonder it’s hard to get there from here.
Spring has erupted. Green shoots, once countable, begin to carpet the ground in an unstoppable wave. My Google calendar mirrors this transformation, its blank spaces vanishing beneath a vibrant mosaic of commitments. Everywhere I look, life overflows.
I keep having the kind of days where good things stack up shoulder to shoulder from the moment I pull back the sheets in the morning to the instant my head hits the pillow at night. I should feel gratitude for this abundance. Instead, I feel guilty because I don’t.
What I feel instead is stuffed. Overwhelmed. Stressed.
To be clear, I practice gratitude every day. My family’s “Grateful For” dinner round robin has been a nightly feature since stay-at-home orders were issued in March 2020. But, lately, these recitations are cerebral, not visceral. When life is busy, I can touch gratitude with the tendrils of my thoughts, but can’t feel with the heft of my heart.
But maybe feeling grateful amid stress isn’t a realistic ask. Especially when you think of emotions like psychologists do.
Most emotion scientists subscribe to dimensional theories of emotion, according to the American Psychological Association. Under these frameworks, feelings have two main characteristics: pleasantness and intensity. Stress is unpleasant and intense; gratitude is pleasant and calm. On an emotional map, they’re distant neighbors.
Seeing this gulf, I can forgive myself. How could I easily feel gratitude while stressed? They’re physically distinct experiences – stress is tight and strained; gratitude is expansive and flowing.
As a mother, I feel constant pressure to be grateful: “Enjoy it! They’ll never be this little again!” It’s a fact and a threat. If you don’t appreciate what you have, you’ll be sorry someday.
You can think grateful thoughts and act accordingly, processes that have their own rewards. You can even use emotional regulation skills to eventually shift how you feel. But genuinely feeling gratitude at the same time you’re completely overwhelmed? A moment can only contain so much.
Perhaps the wiser path is acceptance and self-compassion — and releasing the pressure to appreciate it all, all the time. Just as a single blade of grass can only occupy one space at a time, our emotional landscape has its limitations. It’s not a failure. That’s just nature, and that’s ok.
My Latest Writing & Editing
Work is one of the domains that’s overflowing with goodness for me right now. I’ve got lots in the hopper to share with you next time.
For now, here’s a new article I wrote for bpHope on the latest research and developments in the world of bipolar disorder: Bipolar Research & Insights: Caregivers, PCOS, Metabolism, Mood Tools, and More | April 2025.
And here are two of the recent articles I edited for bpHope: Ask the Doctor: How Advocacy Can Improve Your Bipolar Treatment and Ask Dr. V: Bipolar or Borderline Personality Disorder — How Can You Tell?
And now a small win I wanted to share: I’m dedicated to improving my craft, but as a freelance science and health writer balancing motherhood, it’s not always easy to take time away from working as a professional to develop professionally. That’s part of why I’m proud to share that I completed all seven of the Science Journalism Master Classes from The Open Notebook. (If you’re interested in science journalism, I recommend them all, and lucky for us, they’re available for free thanks to a grant.)
- How to Spot Scientific Hype and Misinformation
- How to Find an Angle for Any Science Story
- How to Excel at Interviewing
- How to Ace the Study Story
- How to Own a Science Beat
- How to Pitch Science Stories that Sell
- How to Center People in Science Stories
Book Recommendations
Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
This book is nestled in a genre that lies somewhere between The Great American Novel and prestige television. The super rich family members of Long Island Compromise behave so badly you can’t quite look. With an audiobook you don’t have to. Over earbuds was, legitimately, the only way I could read this book — and it made for excellent company on our long haul flight to Lisbon over spring break. It’s not a political moment where I feel particularly keen on the 1 percent, and this book doesn’t exactly challenge that notion. Plus, it’ll make you feel like being born to an incredibly loaded family isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
Recommended for readers who want entertainment, a send-up of the super rich, or who enjoy family novels.
The Friend: A Novel, by Sigrid Nunez
Does the titular friend refer to the protagonist’s best friend, who died by suicide? Or does it refer to his dog, whom she inherited? Yes. The death and the dog propel the action, but this is a book almost without plot. The National Book Award-winner is a meditation on writing, grief, connection. It’s literary. Short, but not easy. If you enjoyed The Vulnerables, as I did, you’ll like this too.
Recommended for readers who want to read about writers, grief, pets, and friendships.
Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, by Laura Delano
Laura Delano is a force in the psychiatric deprescribing space, and this is her story.
There’s a growing subgenre of memoir and reportage occupied by those who say psychiatry has harmed them. Unshrunk is arguably the highest profile example yet published (The New York Times reviewed it). Each story in the space is unique, but you can hear a similar message humming underneath the personal details: Psychiatric meds, mental health labels – these things have ultimately done some former patients more harm than good. Their general take is that human connection and healthy habits are far more redemptive and healing. Other examples include Everything/Nothing/Someone: A Memoir by Alice Carrière and The Pulse’s podcast episode (Mis)Diagnosis: Bipolar Disorder.
Unshrunk will ruffle feathers, but I think it’s important testimony. Even if you don’t buy everything Delano is selling, it can be useful to take a clear-eyed view of the state of psychiatric prescribing through the lens of her lived experience.
I remember being shocked when I learned in grad school that roughly 30 to 40 percent of people don’t respond to antidepressant medications, per UCSF. Meanwhile, psychiatric medications don’t dial in just on one aspect of mood – when you accept taking a medication, you sign up for its impact on your entire body and mind. People with more expertise than me, including former director of the National Institute of Mental Health Thomas Insel, MD in his book, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health have considered these and other facts and concluded that we need to majorly rethink our approach to mental healthcare.
So, that’s what Unshrunk does, with its unflinching look at one woman’s experience as a treatment-resistant patient who walked away from psychiatric treatment and found a whole life waiting for her.
Recommended for those interested in mental health, psychiatry, social justice, healthcare, class, and memoir.
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