The Power of Narrative Gratitude: Huberman Lab
It’s Thanksgiving week in America, and one of the standard practices of the holiday is for people at gatherings to say what they are thankful for. This ritual is the act of ‘giving thanks’, and coincides with the general understanding of what constitutes a gratitude practice—a trending topic in health and wellbeing.
In a surprising twist on this cultural concept, Dr Andrew D Huberman of the Huberman Lab makes an opposing case, based in neuroscience, for how an effective gratitude practice should be performed. In a tweet earlier this month, Huberman re-upped his November 2021 podcast episode in which he explains the best ways to maximise the proven mental and physical health benefits of gratitude.
Huberman—whose podcast aims to ‘discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life’—explains gratitude as a ‘prosocial behaviour or mindset’ which ‘allow[s] us to be more effective in interactions with other people, including ourselves.’ In our brains, we have ‘appetitive’ neural circuits which, when stimulated, bring us closer to things; opposingly, we have ‘aversive’ or ‘defensive’ circuits which distance us, often through fear. Prosocial behaviours, such as gratitude, stimulate the appetitive circuits, encouraging us to lean into and engage with the details of sensory experiences—and repeating those practices can shift the neural balance in favour of the prosocial circuit.
According to Huberman, neural circuit studies show certain practices are more effective than others in strengthening the neurochemical effects of gratitude—these are ‘receiving’ and ‘perceiving’ genuine gratitude, both of which require the essential element of a ‘story, or narrative’. Contrary to the common practice of giving thanks, by speaking affirmations and writing lists, Huberman explains that the prefrontal cortex—responsible for deeper thinking, evaluation, and defining meaning—sets a stronger context for narrative instances in which we are thanked by someone else, or observe gratitude in stories of people helping others.
Stories of helping
While focusing on a story of receiving gratitude might seems selfish, the act inscribes us in a helping circumstance, reinforcing that core value and social interaction as a prosocial force. Certainly the power of observing helpful people recalls the famous words of comfort from Fred ‘Mister’ Rogers, whose mother once told him, in times of tragedy, to ‘Look for the helpers.’ According to science, doing so releases serotonin in the brain, shifting it away from fear and worry—making it, as Huberman suggests, ‘one of the most potent wedges by which we can insert our thinking and…physiology’ between the circuits of darkness and light.
The Huberman Gratitude Protocol
For a highly effective, practical, and scientifically-grounded gratitude practice, Huberman advises to:
Ground the practice in a narrative meaning—a story of receiving or perceiving genuine gratitude.
Write down three or four simple bullet points that can serve as salient reminders of that story—states of mind before and after the receiving of gratitude, and any other elements that lend emotional weight or tone to the story, so that it is embedded in your memory.
Read off these bullet points as a cue to your nervous system of this sense of gratitude.
Then, for 1-5 minutes feel into that genuine experience of having received gratitude or observed it.
In terms of frequency, a good rule of thumb is to practice this three times a week, at any time of day.