The Science of Gratitude

How Your Nervous System Learns to Receive

The Question Your Body Is Always Asking

Your nervous system is always asking one question: Am I safe? Every moment of every day, it’s scanning. Your environment, your body, the people around you. Searching for the answer. When the answer is yes, your body can rest, digest, heal, connect. When the answer is no, everything gets redirected toward survival. Gratitude, it turns out, is one of the fastest ways to answer yes.

What the Science Tells Us

Here’s what the research shows: gratitude activates your vagus nerve. That long, wandering nerve that connects your brain to your heart, lungs, and gut. Researchers at UC Berkeley call gratitude one of the quickest ways to increase “vagal tone,” which is basically your nervous system’s ability to shift from stress to calm. When you feel grateful, your body gets a signal: things are okay. I have enough. I am supported.

Where Most of Us Get It Twisted

But here’s the thing. We think of gratitude as something we give. Saying thank you, counting blessings, making lists. And yes, that matters. But the deeper medicine of gratitude isn’t in the giving. It’s in the receiving. It’s in letting the good actually land in your body long enough to register as safety. Most of us struggle with this.

Why Receiving Feels Dangerous

Think about it: when someone gives you a compliment, do you deflect? When something good happens, do you immediately brace for the other shoe to drop? When you have a moment of peace, does your brain start scanning for what’s wrong? This is how our brains are designed. Through consistent exposure of stressful situations where the other shoe DID drop or you forgot a crucial task that led to consequences, your nervous system learned that it cannot let up. It must stay hypervigilant and activated in order to ensure all the spinning plates stay upright. This constant tension, this survival mode doesn’t trust the good stuff. It can’t afford to. And so we normalize our baseline of constant stress even though this state of being is unsustainable for our bodies and our minds.

The Spark That Changes Everything

Here’s something that can profoundly shift our understanding of what it means to be in a resting state. When you practice letting gratitude in, really letting it land, something starts to change from within us. Your vagus nerve fires signals to your brain, actively redirecting those pathways toward regulation rather than stress and anxiety. Your heart rate settles. Your body starts to record a new message: I can soften. I can trust. Good things are allowed here.

And this creates what researchers call an “upward spiral.” More safety leads to more tolerance of all emotions, which leads to more vagal activation, which leads to more capacity to receive. Gratitude isn’t passive. It’s a spark that reignites your system and allows change to occur from within.

A Note for the Caretakers

This is especially important for those of us who are natural caretakers. The ones that experience deep empathy and are easily concerned for the well-being of others. Always giving, always holding it together, always making sure everyone else is okay. Receiving can feel selfish. Dangerous, even. But your nervous system needs you to take in the good. Not just for warm fuzzy feelings, but for actual physiological regulation. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and you cannot fill the cup if there are holes on the bottom. So allow this practice to patch the holes and fill up your cup, let others benefit from your overflow.

Gratitude as a Body Practice

So what does this look like in practice? It’s learning how to pause when something good happens and allowing yourself to celebrate it. At first you may tolerate it for 10 seconds, then 20 seconds, then 30 seconds. It looks like noticing the warmth in your chest when someone is kind to you. It’s saying “thank you” when receiving a compliment and taking the moment to appreciate how someone else sees you through their eyes. This is an active skill that requires practice just like going to the gym to build muscle. Not always intuitive or easy to execute, but the more consistent you show up, the easier it becomes over time.

Holding gratitude in our bodies is not some luxury we don’t have access to. It’s an unlearning of all the ways society teaches us to judge and criticize ourselves all in the name of humility. In my experience, learning to receive is just as challenging and important as giving. It is how we learn to flow in the collective and in our communities rather than constantly running ourselves ragged always doing things for others.

Beyond the Performance

And here’s the thing about the holiday season. It’s easy to perform gratitude. To say the words, go around the table, repeat a generic line that you saw on TikTok that morning. But your nervous system doesn’t care about performance. It cares about what you actually let in. It cares about how it’s making you feel in that moment. One genuine moment of received goodness does more for your regulation than a hundred items on a gratitude list you rushed through.

The Invitation

So this holiday season, I’m inviting you to practice differently. Not just what are you grateful for, but can you attach the feeling of gratitude to the words spoken? Can you receive the warmth of a room, the laughter that bubbles up, the meal that becomes part of you, the people who showed up? Each moment you let goodness register, your nervous system learns something vital: I am safe enough to rest. I am supported enough to soften. I am allowed to receive the good. My desire for you is to rewire your nervous system to learn how to find the good in your life. You and everyone around you will benefit from this active practice. That is my hope to you and your loved ones this holiday season.

That’s the real science of gratitude. That’s the spark.

​​Learn to slow down and pause.

Take a moment.

Respira.

Always remember: Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana.

(If it doesn’t heal today, it will heal tomorrow.)

Con amor,
Hanna

P.S. While I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor, this space isn’t professional advice or therapy. This is me sharing my personal journey, my mess, my learning. Take what resonates with you and leave the rest. And if something I share sparks curiosity or brings something up for you? Bring it to your own therapy sessions. That’s where the real work happens.