Gratitude Isn’t Denial: Feeling Thankful & Honest at the Same Time

In today’s episode, Jacquelynn dives into the messy middle where gratitude and honesty coexist. As women, we’re often taught to be endlessly grateful — even when we’re exhausted, overwhelmed, or hurting. But real emotional wellness requires both truth and thankfulness.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The myth that gratitude “fixes” everything
• Why women are conditioned to downplay our feelings
• How toxic positivity shows up in everyday life
• The difference between real gratitude and emotional denial
• How to practice gratitude without ignoring your reality
• Why holding dual emotions leads to better mental health
• Tools for emotional regulation & self-awareness
• How gratitude and honesty support healing & personal growth

If you’ve ever said “I’m grateful… but something still feels off,” this episode gives you permission to feel both — without guilt, shame, or self-silencing.

Listen now for a grounded, compassionate conversation about emotional maturity, womanhood, and the freedom that comes from being fully honest with yourself.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Gratitude Isn’t Denial
• 2:27 The Myth That Gratitude Cures All
• 5:02 Women, Conditioning, And Minimizing Feelings
• 6:57 Real Gratitude Versus Toxic Positivity
• 8:52 Share The Message Of Personal Evolution
• 9:57 Why Gratitude Plus Honesty Heals
• 12:32 Practical Ways To Hold Both
• 15:42 Jaclyn’s Story Of Resentment And Repair

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

Welcome back to Just Women Talking Shit, where we have real conversations about life, mental health, and womanhood. I'm your host, Jaclyn Cotton, and today we're diving into something that I think every woman wrestles with at some point. Gratitude isn't denial. This episode is for you. If you've ever been told to just be grateful, look on the bright side. At least it's not worse. Or my personal favorite, other people have it harder. Because yes, gratitude is powerful, but it's not a spiritual bypass. It is not an emotional off-switch, and it's definitely not a tool for gaslighting yourself out of your own reality. So let's talk about how you can be deeply grateful and deeply honest at the same time. All right, let's get into it. Let's start with the myth that gratitude cures everything. Okay, so I feel like this is stating the obvious, but gratitude is great. It's great for grounding. Um, it rewires your brain, it helps you feel connected instead of chaotic, right? But somewhere along the line, gratitude became this emotional duct tape. Something women especially get handed anytime we express frustration, exhaustion, or uh disappointment. So you might say, I'm overwhelmed. I get overwhelmed easily, if I'm being honest. Uh, but people around you might say, but you should be grateful for your job. So we're talking about work, right? You might say, when it comes to relationship that you're in, this relationship is draining me. But the people around you might go, but at least you're not single. You might say and express, I am feeling burnt out. But the people around you, you know, find that silver lining and they're like, Yeah, you have so much going on. You're so lucky. Like, no, hang on. I can be grateful, you can be grateful for the life that you've built and still feel like you're drowning in it sometimes because that that happens, it's very common. I mean, we all deal with it. Gratitude does not cancel out, however, your humanity. Okay. And I think as women, society conditions us to be thankful for literally anything we're given to the point where we start believing we should never even ask for more. You should never question anything, never admit when uh you're struggling, right? But here's the truth: you can indeed be grateful and tired, you can be grateful and frustrated, you can be grateful and still desire something different or better. Gratitude is not denial, it is clarity, it helps you see what's good so you have the strength to deal with what's hard. So, why? Why are women taught to downplay their feelings? Let's go deeper into that. Why is this topic hitting so hard for women? Why does it hit so hard for me? I think it's because from a very young age, we are taught that emotional discomfort is impolite. We're supposed to be nice, we're supposed to be grateful, we're supposed to be agreeable, be easy. So when we express any real emotion, like something messy or unfiltered, there's often this immediate impulse to sugarcoat it. I mean, I'm I'm stressed, but I'm grateful. I'm not complaining, but I shouldn't feel this way because I know I'm lucky. No. Like we don't have to minimize our feelings. Let's rewrite this instead. Your gratitude does not make your pain invalid. Well, that makes sense. Quit making sense, Jaclyn. Your pain does not make your gratitude disappear. Quit making sense, Jaclyn. You're allowed to hold both. Like two things can be true at the same time. You're allowed to be a whole ass human being. Okay, with all the emotions. Gratitude versus toxic positivity. Let's talk a little bit about that. There is a difference between real gratitude and toxic positivity. Real gratitude sounds like I'm grateful for my home, but maintaining it alone is hard. I love my kids and motherhood is overwhelming today. I appreciate my partner, but we need to communicate better. I'm thankful for my job, but it's burning me out. And then toxic positivity sounds like be grateful, it could be worse. Um, you're lucky, you don't need to complain. Another one is like, just stay positive. Well, sometimes the world is burning around me, Karen. Okay, stop being negative. I'm guilty of that one for sure. I say that to my kids. One allows space for full emotional experience, and then the other completely shuts it down. And real gratitude expands your emotional life. Toxic positivity shrinks it. Real gratitude makes room for growth while toxic positivity demands silence. Stop and think about that for a second. Somebody comes to mind. Why don't you take a moment to send this their way? This comes from love. This comes from, hey, I was thinking about you. I think this could, you know, help you personally evolve. That's like my big thing is personal evolution. I want everybody around me to have the tools to personally evolve because getting to know yourself is the spiritual experience of being a human. It's the human experience. So if anybody comes to mind um that could benefit from this, or you just want to say, hey, I love you and I'm thinking of you, send this their way. Okay, let's get back to it. If you've ever felt guilty for having needs, um, for having desires, for you know, limits, emotions, or frustrations, that's not gratitude. That's conditioning. Why gratitude plus honesty is honestly the healthiest combination. Living in the middle where you can feel thankful and honest is one of the most emotionally mature places you can be. And here's why. One, it helps regulate your nervous system. Being honest about your feelings signals safety to your body, and gratitude adds calm and grounding on top of that. So both of them together equals emotional integration. Two, it keeps you out of burnout. If you pretend everything is fine, your body will eventually scream louder. Honesty prevents emotional overload. Gratitude prevents emotional collapse. Three, it strengthens your relationships. People connect with your truth, not your performance. Gratitude keeps you appreciative. Honesty keeps you authentic. Number four, it supports mental clarity. Gratitude helps you see what you want to protect or keep. Honesty helps you see what needs to change. So when you combine the two, you get direction instead of all that just constant chaos. All right, let's talk about the practice of you know how to actually hold gratitude and truth together because it is kind of an art, and you need to be a little practical. Here's some ways that you can practice gratitude without denying reality. Practice number one, replace but with and. So instead of I'm grateful for my job, but I'm exhausted, try this instead. I'm grateful for my job and I'm exhausted. Remember, two things can be true at the same time. That tiny shift communicates both things are true. Both things matter. Practice number two that I have for you would be to expand your gratitude. Don't weaponize it. And what I mean by that is that gratitude should empower you, it should not shame you into silence ever. So ask yourself: does my gratitude help me feel more whole? Or does it make me feel like I shouldn't speak up? And sit with that. Practice number three, let gratitude be present, not performative. Gratitude isn't a checklist. Okay, it's an awareness, it's a noticing. So I'm noticing what's good and I'm noticing what's hard, and I'm allowed to notice both without guilt. And that's the trick there is without guilt, without judgment. Practice number four: give language to your duality. So try statements like, I'm thankful for what I have and still want more for myself. Two things can be true at the same time. I can appreciate this while being honest about what's not working. Another example would be I'm allowed to outgrow things I once prayed for. That one. I know that one hit kind of hard for me, too. Right there is emotional adulthood. It's emotional awareness, it's emotional intelligence. So there there was a time in my life, and I'm still pretty guilty of this, actually. So I'm not gonna act like this is, you know, oh, one of my pastimes, but there was a time in my life where I kept telling myself, like, I should be grateful, you know, and this this really landed this past year, year and a half. I should be grateful. Other people have it worse. I have no right to complain. Every time I feel, you know, overwhelmed or disappointed, that's how I would feel, and that's what I would tell myself. And you know what? It honestly didn't make me more grateful, it made me resentful, resentful. And then I would make poor choices to try to feel, feel uh ways that I should feel, if that makes sense. And this was around when I figured out um through some therapy and talking to some professionals that you know, Jacqueline, you're pretty, you've got bipolar tendencies, and so started taking it a little bit more seriously and reminding myself that two things can be true at once, right? So that's that's how I was feeling. It's like I it wasn't making me feel more grateful. I was starting to resent the things and people around me, to be honest. I was starting to resent my business, resent my partner, resent my kids if I'm being a million percent honest. Um, and it made me more disconnected from myself. And when you're disconnected from yourself, you are way disconnected from everybody else around you. It made me feel afraid to admit when something wasn't working. Um, and it really wasn't until I started, you know, saying things like I'm grateful and I'm struggling, um, that my body started to feel like it it could excel, you know, because I was actually being honest with myself. Like I had permission to be human instead of this motivational poster, which is, you know, what I ultimately want to be for everybody, is even when things get rough, like you just you can figure out a way and you can be motivational as fuck, because motivation is garbage, as Mel Robbins would say. Um, and it just I couldn't be both at the same time as what it felt like. So disconnecting from myself just made the entire situation worse. Um, but once I started, you know, letting two things be true at once, I could finally like let my tummy out a little bit and get a good strong XL. So life is gonna throw you some curves, but you have complete permission to just be human um and not try to be this motivational poster child all the time or super mom, right? Um, and so that's what I also want this episode to offer you is that that exhale and that permission to let two things be true at the same time. So let's reframe gratitude as a tool and not a muzzle, because gratitude is a tool, it's a freaking powerful one, right? But a tool can be used to build something, or it can be used to suppress something. You are allowed to be grateful and still seek some support. You're allowed to be grateful and still want growth, um, change. You're allowed to be grateful and still want healing, right? You're allowed to be grateful and still feel disappointed or sad. Gratitude is supposed to lighten you, not silence you. So let's end with some affirmations, ones that honor both your truth and your thankfulness. You can feel free to repeat them out loud or just say them quietly in your mind. I can be grateful and still have feelings that need attention. Both my gratitude and my pain deserve space. I'm allowed to want more for myself. I don't have to pretend everything is perfect to honor what is good. Gratitude adds to my truth, it doesn't replace it. And the last one, I trust myself to feel deeply and honestly. All right. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Just Women Talking Shit, where we have real conversations about life, mental health, and womanhood. If today's episode resonated with you, please send it to a friend who needs the reminder that gratitude isn't denial. It's just one piece of the emotional puzzle. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify for more conversations about mental health, womanhood, relationships, healing, and everything messy in between. I love you. I see you, and I'll talk to you in the next one.