The Psychology of your 20s – Episode 351: How Gratitude Changes Your Brain

Host: Jemma Sbeg
Date: November 6, 2025
Podcast: The Psychology of your 20s by iHeartPodcasts

Episode Overview

In this thoughtful episode, host Jemma Sbeg dives deep into the science and nuance behind gratitude—particularly its impact on the brain and our well-being in our 20s. As the year winds down and the holiday season approaches, Jemma explores how gratitude is more layered than the “magic cure-all” it's often touted as on social media. She discusses both the neuroscience and the potential pitfalls of gratitude, including concepts like “toxic gratitude,” and provides alternative ways to cultivate meaning and emotional processing when gratitude feels out of reach.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Gratitude (03:20 – 07:30)

• Complexity of Definition: Gratitude isn't straightforward to define; it operates as both a trait (an intrinsic tendency for some) and as an elicitable emotion or attitude.
• Psychologists' Views:
  • Robert Emmons & Michael McCullough describe gratitude as a two-step process: recognizing something good has happened and acknowledging an outside source for it.
• Jemma’s Favored Definition:
  “In the broader sense, [gratitude] is an appreciation of what is valuable and meaningful to oneself... just an appreciation.” (04:47)

2. The Psychological Superpower of Gratitude (07:31 – 12:10)

• Positivity Amidst Negativity Bias:

  • Our brains are “wired by default to have a negativity bias”—a tendency to notice threats and negatives first, left over from evolutionary survival mechanisms. (09:15)
  • “Gratitude...is the counterbalance to this that allows us to really zoom out and see the full picture, not just the negative or shadowy parts.” (09:48)

• Cognitive Benefits:

  • Attention: Gratitude actively directs our brain to notice positive aspects of our experience.
  • Memory Encoding: “When we focus on positive experiences and repeat them through those common exercises of a gratitude journal or reflection...those memories get encoded more deeply.” (11:08)
    • Grateful memories fade less over time, even in dementia patients, because they are encoded as highly meaningful. (11:38)
  • Emotional Regulation: Activates the prefrontal cortex, offering balance during challenging emotions. Allows holding two truths: “This moment is hard, but it's not always going to be hard. There is more than this.” (12:00)

3. Societal and Relational Benefits (12:11 – 13:35)

• “Gratitude has been proven to increase pro-social behavior... Kindness, empathy, generosity, they all increase. When people have a higher level of personal gratitude, we are more likely to act in favorable ways to others and to be acting positively and strengthening relationships.” (12:20)
• On a wider scale, gratitude helps mend fractured communities and societies.

4. The Neuroscience: Gratitude’s Impact on the Brain (13:36 – 16:46)

• 2015 Indiana University fMRI Study:
  • Participants wrote (unsent) letters of gratitude.
  • Three months later, their brain scans showed increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex—a region central to emotional regulation and decision-making. (14:45)
  • Repeated gratitude practice created a “long-lasting neural footprint.”
• Gratitude as Vicarious Experience:
  • A study using stories of Holocaust survivors found that imagining gratitude, even without personal experience, activated the brain’s reward circuitry (ventral striatum, nucleus accumbens). (15:45)
• Notable Quote:
  “What’s so beautiful about this study is that it shows that gratitude isn’t just...something that’s nice. It’s not just surface level. It’s like viscerally rewarding. Like the reward is something that we can literally see.” (16:18)

5. The Limitations and Dangers: Toxic Gratitude (21:13 – 28:40)

• When Gratitude Backfires:

  • “The moment that gratitude becomes something we’re told to feel or something that we owe because of our circumstances, it shifts from being an emotion to being a performance.” (21:22)
  • This leads to “toxic gratitude” or “toxic positivity,” suppressing valid emotions and emotional processing.
  • “You might have heard this yourself. It sounds like, ‘Ah, could have been worse.’ ...Having that kind of awareness and perspective is important. It also doesn’t undercut the fact that if something is painful and sucky for you, it’s still painful and sucky for you.” (22:42)

• Emotional Repression & Guilt:

  • Citing Whitney Goodman from “Live Happy Now”:
    “Toxic positivity denies an emotion...and so not only are we feeling the feeling, we’re also feeling shame about the feeling.” (24:05)
  • “Refusing an emotion or not feeling it doesn’t make you more healed...if you actually let yourself just not be grateful for a little while...that’s honestly totally fine.” (25:13)

• Gratitude and Safety:

  • “Gratitude requires a certain baseline level of safety...When your nervous system is dysregulated...the body can’t access gratitude if it doesn’t believe the world is safe enough to let its guard down.” (26:10)

• Cultural Obsession with Good Vibes:

  • Refers to Dr. Susan David on the risk of “emotional fragility” when pain can’t be openly acknowledged.
  • “Unprocessed pain...just hides behind all the gratitude bandages...” (27:09)

6. Alternatives When Gratitude Feels Inaccessible (28:41 – 32:53)

• Lowering the Bar:
  “...just look for niceness instead. Looking for something nice feels a lot more neutral, feels way less intimidating than being like, you have to find something that you are grateful for 100%.” (29:09)
• Embracing Novelty:
  When life feels too difficult for gratitude, pursue new experiences: “Pursue novelty over gratitude.” (30:06)
  • Try new routines, explore your city, cook new meals, or try activities like a trampoline park.
  • “Having novel experiences has been evidenced time and time again to be essential for adaptability and for your overall well-being.” (31:03)
• Creating Gratitude for Others:
  “Maybe you just need to create more of it for other people and it will come back to you in time.” (31:31)
• Staying Curious:
  “When you can’t access these absolute positive emotions, just try and explore. Just try and be interested in life.” (31:46)
• Reflective Questions:
  • When judging an experience, ask:
    • “What is the gray area? What actually might this experience be teaching me that I don’t have to be grateful for?”
    • “If this was a chapter of my life in a movie...what's the purpose of this moment?...What should my character do next?” (32:20)

7. Final Reflections & Takeaway (33:00 – 35:56)

• “Gratitude is, like, fabulous. It’s like...honestly, I think it’s a human gift. It’s a miracle in many ways that we can, like, appreciate things so deeply...” (33:00)
• “That doesn’t mean it’s a moral test. You don’t have to be relentlessly positive. You don’t have to be grateful all the time just because it’s a beautiful feeling. You don’t have to pretend everything’s fine.” (33:54)
• Gratitude is not a quick fix, but it can be a “superpower” and “a nice place to lay your head when everything else feels terrible.”
• Jemma’s Own Gratitude:
  “Something I’m grateful for right now is air conditioner. It’s like genuinely like 40 degrees in Sydney right now...so grateful for air conditioner. I’m so grateful for the people who discovered how to make air cold.” (35:30)

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Gratitude is both a trait...and also an attitude or an emotion. It’s also something that we can elicit for ourselves and kind of force into occurring.” – Jemma Sbeg (05:12)

• “Gratitude allows you to retrain your mind to notice what’s still working.” (09:41)

• “You can’t appreciate good things if you don’t look for them, right. And if you don’t direct yourself to notice them, gratitude builds that skill.” (10:14)

• “Our brains are actually wired by default to have a Negativity bias…” (09:15)

• “The moment that gratitude becomes something we’re told to feel or something that we owe… it shifts from being an emotion to being a performance...” (21:22)

• “Sometimes, like, the kindest thing you can do for yourself is just be like, yeah, this just really sucks.” (25:46)

• “Having novel experiences has been evidenced time and time again to be essential for adaptability and for your overall well-being.” (31:03)

• “You’re allowed to have a diversity of emotions. But if you can access gratitude… it might make life just feel a little bit better, that might be able to hold your hand through grief and through exhaustion and through hard times...” (34:02)

Suggested Actions for Listeners

• Try lowering the pressure: If gratitude feels inaccessible, simply look for things that are “nice.”
• Embrace novelty: Change your routine, try new experiences, or simply explore your environment.
• Do acts of kindness: Consider creating moments of gratitude for others.
• Practice curiosity: Stay open-minded and reflective, especially during tough times.
• Allow yourself a range of emotions: It's okay to feel and process pain before reaching for gratitude.

Episode’s Tone

• Warm, reassuring, and deeply honest. Jemma strikes a balance between loving encouragement for self-growth and pushing back against the “toxic positivity” trends common in wellness circles, making this episode especially validating and practical for listeners navigating the tumultuous “growing pains” of their 20s.

For further engagement:

• Leave a comment about what you’re grateful for.
• Follow the podcast on Instagram or Substack.
• Read the episode transcript or view the video on YouTube.