Gratitude and Its Effects on Mental Health & Brain Health
- Nikta Niyazi
- Dec 25, 2025
- 3 min read
How Practicing Gratitude Rewires the Brain, Balances Hormones, and Increases Happiness
Gratitude is more than a feel-good habit—it is a scientifically supported mental wellness tool that strengthens brain health, regulates mood, reduces stress, and increases emotional resilience. Research shows that practicing gratitude can shift the body from a survival stress response into a state of emotional balance and expansion, directly impacting mental health and neurological functioning. Let's dive deeper into gratitude and its effects on mental health.
What Hormones Are Increased by Gratitude?
Gratitude stimulates the release of three major happiness-supporting hormones and neurochemicals:
1. Dopamine – The Reward & Motivation Hormone
Dopamine increases when you acknowledge positive experiences or emotional appreciation. It makes gratitude feel mentally “rewarding,” which reinforces the habit loop. Dopamine boosts energy, focus, and motivation. When dopamine rises, the brain associates grateful thinking with pleasure, making you want to repeat it more often.
2. Serotonin – The Mood-Stabilizing Hormone
Serotonin levels increase when you intentionally shift your thoughts toward appreciation, especially during meditation. This hormone supports emotional regulation, improves mood, and protects against anxiety and depressive symptoms. Serotonin gives the feeling of inner satisfaction and calm happiness.
3. Oxytocin – The Connection & Trust Hormone
Oxytocin rises when gratitude is felt in the body, not just thought in the mind. It is activated when you feel appreciation for people, moments, or yourself. Oxytocin increases feelings of love, safety, emotional bonding, and social trust—core components of lasting happiness.
How These Hormones Impact Happiness:
Hormone | Impact on Happiness | Effect on the Brain |
Dopamine | Increases pleasure, drive, excitement | Enhances motivation and reinforces positive behaviour |
Serotonin | Creates calm joy, emotional stability | Regulates mood and reduces stress-based thinking |
Oxytocin | Generates feelings of connection, love, and safety | Lowers anxiety and increases emotional well-being |
Gratitude’s Effects on Brain & Mental Health
Practicing gratitude consistently leads to measurable neurological and psychological benefits:
Neuroplasticity & Brain Rewiring
Gratitude activates the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for conscious decision-making, emotional regulation, and presence. Over time, gratitude strengthens neural pathways that support optimism, emotional balance, and self-awareness.
Reduces the Stress Response
Gratitude decreases activity in the amygdala, the brain’s fear and stress center. This reduces emotional overwhelm, anxious thinking, and fight-or-flight activation.
Increases Brain Coherence
According to Joe Dispenza’s teachings, when gratitude is practiced in meditation, the brain enters a state of heart-brain coherence, where emotional energy aligns with neurological frequency, thereby enhancing emotional healing and mental clarity.
Joe Dispenza’s Meditation Techniques for Gratitude
Joe Dispenza teaches that gratitude can be used to increase your personal energetic frequency, creating both biological and emotional shifts.
How His Gratitude Meditation Works
Relax the body into stillness (signal safety to the nervous system)
Close your eyes and slow your breathing (reduce analytical mind activity)
Bring awareness to your heart center
Feel gratitude in the body, not just think it
Visualize a future moment you are grateful for, as if it already happened
Elevate your emotional frequency beyond your current environment
Goal of this method
Instead of being grateful for what happened, you become grateful in advance for what is coming, which:
✨ shifts hormones✨ raises frequency✨ rewires identity and emotional expectation✨ conditions the brain to emotionally live in the future you desire.
Gratitude & Increasing Frequency
Dispenza often explains frequency as a combination of emotion + thought + energetic state. Gratitude is one of the highest emotional frequencies humans can generate without relying on external conditions.
Practicing gratitude in meditation can help increase personal emotional elevation, making the body release happiness hormones before anything changes physically in your life, which sends a new signal to the brain:
“I am already whole, already receiving, already safe, already abundant.”
This internal shift impacts:
Happiness levels, confidence and self-worth, emotional presence, nervous system regulation, ability to manifest from a regulated state instead of stress.
Gratitude shifts your brain and body into safety and emotional balance. In a hypnotic state, gratitude goes beyond thinking — it becomes a felt experience in the heart, helping the brain form new, happier neural and hormonal patterns.
Clinical hypnosis can support you in calming stress, increasing emotional clarity, and reconnecting with your inner frequency through heart-brain coherence and embodied gratitude.
You don’t have to do this alone!
If you’re ready to move from surviving to expanding, a guided hypnotherapy session can help you deeply connect with your heart energy and anchor gratitude in your nervous system.
Book a Session
Experience clinical hypnosis designed to help you feel gratitude, elevate your emotional frequency, and reconnect with yourself at a deeper level.
Book your session now at Neeyaz Counselling, and let your heart lead the change.
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