Gratitude

Hal Stone, Ph.D., and Sidra Stone, Ph.D.

Hal Stone, Ph.D., and Sidra Stone, Ph.D., both clinical psychologists, are the authors of EMBRACING OUR SELVES, EMBRACING EACH OTHER, and EMBRACING YOUR INNER CRITIC. Hal founded the Center for the Healing Arts in Los Angeles in the early ’70s, one of the first holistic health facilities in the country. Sidra directed Hamburger in Los Angeles, a residential treatment center for adolescent girls. Since 1982, they have been traveling and teaching in the U.S. and abroad, in addition to their training and writing activities, which take place at their home on California’s north coast in Mendocino County.

There is no human emotion, no matter how positive it may appear, that is inherently good or bad. Everything depends on how we use or channel these emotions and feelings. It is our ability to be aware of a particular energy, as well as to make appropriate choices in regard to how this energy manifests in the world, which determines how we use any idea or feeling or experience. It is only in this way that we can judge whether or not a particular emotion or idea is manifesting in a way that is a force for good or evil in the world. Gratitude is no exception to this kind of rule.

Gratitude and love, so often experienced together, are both relational in nature. That is to say, it requires someone to feel the gratitude, and it requires someone or some group of persons to be doing something that produces the gratitude. The issue of gratitude is also very basic in transformational work because it is generally a core feeling found in individuals who are helped by a consciousness teacher of any kind, Used in this way, it is a part of the transference relationship that exists between the student, on the one hand, and the teacher, on the other hand, in any teaching, training, or therapeutic relationship. For the purposes of this essay, the word teacher will include any therapeutic modality such as therapist, healer, or writer. Student will include any recipient of help, whether it is a client, subject, patient, or seeker.

One of the confusing things about gratitude is that it can be experienced by an individual in a number of different ways. How it is experienced and how it manifests over time has a strong effect on how someone’s process goes. We want to focus on how gratitude manifests with and without awareness and what the consequences are of each condition. We also plan to focus on the issue as it specifically applies to the teacher/student relationship in therapy, healing, and small and large group work with individuals who are seeking a greater consciousness.

Without awareness, gratitude tends to manifest through the child side of a person. What we mean by the child side is that there is a parent/child interaction between the teacher and student and that the student is in the role of son or daughter to the teacher. The feelings that occur here can be very strong, but they occur within the parameters of the parent/child interaction. We refer to this parent/child interaction as a bonding pattern.

For example, someone who is helped by a spiritual teacher tends to fall into a particular kind of emotional relationship with the teacher. The student is filled with gratitude and love, and truly his or her cup runneth over. This is a natural, organic part of the teacher/student relationship and the love and gratitude that are a part of spiritual initiation in general. It is not meant, however, to remain in this form forever.

What are the consequences of such a parent/child interaction? How could something so beautiful possibly become something negative? If there is too much gratitude from a child space, empowerment becomes much more difficult to attain because the underlying vulnerability remains unconscious. What happens then is that the Inner Child (vulnerability) of the student is cared for by the teacher. In such a situation, the student may continue to grow on a spiritual level, but there will be fostered a dependency on the teacher and a tendency to keep the relationship too positive. The student will be fearful of reacting to the therapist teacher, of bringing in any kind of negativity because there will be a deep fear of losing the love and intimate connection that the Inner Child so desperately craves.

As we have pointed out, this is a very natural part of the consciousness process. If it is understood by the teacher, the student is helped to become aware of his or her vulnerability and is trained to recognize that the ultimate responsibility for one’s Inner Child belongs to oneself. Once the seeker is able to begin to move in this direction, then we have a condition of awareness beginning to develop, and the person begins to be able to embrace both power and vulnerability.

As this process develops, the nature of the gratitude begins to go through a major shift. The seeker is still grateful for the help, love, good feeling, and everything else that was given to him or her. In addition, however, there is a development of personal power, a willingness to take risks in showing feelings and having reactions that might rock the boat. It is safer now to take such risks because the outer teacher is no longer the parent of the Inner Child. It is ourselves now with our own awareness who is parent to our own child.

Gratitude is an emotion that generally opens up the pores of love and compassion. In the healing arts, it is basic to the emotional bonding of the teacher/student interaction. Without awareness, it can lead to an excessive emphasis on positive feeling, with a resulting dependency and overemphasis on love and gratitude and compassion.

With awareness, these emotions can be fully experienced and appreciated without interfering with the ultimate empowerment process of the student, which should properly be our ultimate goal as teachers.