Finding Gratitude During Hard Times (Thanksgiving 2025)

Finding Gratitude During Hard Times 

(Thanksgiving 2025)

Written by Narcissistic Abuse Expert and Recovery Coach Randi Fine

Narcissistic Abuse Awareness and Guidance with Randi Fine

Thanksgiving is often portrayed as a time of warmth, celebration, and connection. But for so many people, this season can feel heavy rather than joyful. Financial pressures, personal losses, strained relationships, or painful world events can make gratitude feel distant and out of reach. If you’re finding it hard to feel thankful right now, you’re not alone. This guide offers a gentle, trauma-informed approach to cultivating gratitude during hard times, especially as we enter Thanksgiving 2025.

Why Gratitude Feels Difficult When Life Is Hard

The holidays come with expectations—smile, celebrate, be grateful—regardless of what’s happening in your life. That cultural pressure can be overwhelming. And if you’re healing from trauma, chronic stress, or narcissistic abuse, forcing gratitude can feel like emotional silencing.

It’s important to remember this truth:

Gratitude during hard times does not require you to ignore pain, pretend everything is okay, or suppress your emotions.

You can recognize your struggles and still find moments of appreciation. These two experiences can coexist without canceling each other out.

Allowing Yourself to Feel What You Feel

A foundational step toward gratitude during hard times is emotional validation. Give yourself permission to feel sad, frustrated, anxious, or exhausted. These emotions are not signs of weakness—they are reflections of a human being carrying a heavy load.

When you stop pushing away your feelings, you create space for healing. And within that space, gratitude can grow naturally. Your negative emotions do not diminish the gratitude you can experience; they simply make it more meaningful.

Re-framing Your Struggles: How Hardship Shapes Strength

One of the most powerful ways to find gratitude during hard times is through a subtle shift in perspective. Hardship doesn’t just test us—it transforms us.

Instead of viewing challenges as barriers, try seeing them as teachers.

Ask yourself:

• How has this difficulty strengthened me?

• What changes am I making because of what I’ve lived through?

  
  

Tough seasons often bring powerful growth: clearer boundaries, healthier priorities, deeper self-respect, or new paths you never would have considered before. Even in the hardest moments, something within you is expanding.

Daily Practices to Nurture Gratitude During Hard Times

You don’t need to overhaul your life or force yourself into positivity. Small, consistent practices can gently shift your mindset and help build gratitude day by day.

Gratitude Jar

Write one thing you're grateful for each day and place it in a jar. When your heart feels heavy, these notes become tangible reminders of your resilience and blessings.

Mindfulness Moments

Step outside, breathe deeply, and connect with your senses. Notice the sound of rain, a comforting scent, or a warm cup in your hands. Mindfulness grounds you and helps you rediscover gratitude in simple, healing moments.

Journaling for Appreciation

Record small successes, moments of kindness, or anything that brought peace that day.

Journaling shifts your focus from what’s missing to what’s still supporting you.

These small practices make gratitude during hard times more accessible and authentic.

Resilience Grows Through Supportive Connections

Resilience doesn’t develop in isolation—it grows through relationships and community.

Surround yourself with people who respect your boundaries, validate your experiences, and uplift your spirit.

Limit contact with those who drain you or create anxiety. Protecting your emotional space is not selfish; it’s necessary.

And when life becomes overwhelming, seek support—from trusted friends, support groups, spiritual communities, or mental health professionals. Being heard and understood strengthens your ability to find gratitude even during your hardest days.

Re-imagining Thanksgiving in a Way That Serves Your Healing

Traditional Thanksgiving celebrations can feel stressful, triggering, or emotionally demanding. You’re allowed to recreate the holiday in a way that supports your well-being.

Keep It Small

Spend Thanksgiving with a few close, supportive people, or even just one person who brings you peace. Intimate gatherings create space for meaningful conversation and authentic connection.

Acts of Kindness

Shift your focus from consumption to contribution. Small acts of kindness—writing thank-you notes, donating supplies, or creating care packages—can help you reconnect with purpose and perspective.

Volunteer

Helping others can gently reorient your heart toward gratitude. Seeing the impact of your kindness reminds you of the strength and compassion that still exist within you.

Gratitude is a Journey, Not a Holiday Requirement

Finding gratitude during hard times is not about perfection. Some days you’ll feel thankful; other days you’ll feel exhausted. Both are part of the journey.

As Thanksgiving 2025 approaches, honor your resilience. Recognize how far you’ve come.

Celebrate:

• the boundaries you’ve learned to set,

• the progress you’ve made in your healing,

• and the strength it has taken to keep moving forward.

  
  

These victories are worth acknowledging.

Embracing What’s Ahead

Choosing gratitude is an ongoing practice—one that supports your emotional well-being long after the holiday season ends. Keep honoring your growth, trusting your inner strength, and nurturing the parts of you that are learning to feel safe and hopeful again.

Even in your hardest seasons, you are still evolving. You are still growing.And you are still capable of discovering meaningful, authentic gratitude during hard times.

Randi Fine is a globally renowned narcissistic abuse expert and recovery coach, and the originator of the term Post-Narcissistic Reality Hangover™—a phrase she coined to describe the disorienting psychological aftermath survivors experience after leaving a narcissist. She is also the creator of the Emotional Hostage Loop™, a groundbreaking trauma-recovery framework that identifies the cyclical pattern of psychological conditioning used to keep survivors emotionally trapped. She is the author of the best-selling, groundbreaking book Close Encounters of the Worst Kind: The Narcissistic Abuse Survivor’s Guide to Healing and Recovery, Second Edition—the most comprehensive, well-researched, and up-to-date book on this subject. In addition to helping survivors recognize and heal from abuse, this book also guides mental health professionals in identifying and properly treating narcissistic abuse syndrome. Randi is the author of the official companion workbook Close Encounters of the Worst Kind: A Comprehensive Workbook for Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse, and the powerful memoir Cliffedge Road: A Memoir, the first and only book to illustrate the lifelong impact of narcissistic child abuse.