There’s a word I stumbled across recently that resonated deeply: anthrodynia—a state of exhaustion with how cruel people can be, freely undercutting each other in ways that seem petty and gratuitous… which can sometimes trigger a countervailing sense of gratitude for things that are kind, sincere, forgiving, or unabashedly joyful.
Welcome to Thanksgiving in America.
We gather around tables overflowing with food, tradition, stories, and—if we’re honest—some landmines. On one hand, it is a gift to sit shoulder to shoulder with people we’re connected to, whether by blood or by choice. On the other hand, Thanksgiving often places us in mandatory close contact with relatives whose worldview clashes so violently with ours it feels like sharing a meal inside a cage match.
And in this moment in history, disagreement is ambient. The divide isn’t just visible—it’s everywhere, baked into the atmosphere like humidity. I’ve had to disconnect from cable news and step away from the social media doom-scroll because it’s too easy to absorb the venom. Despots, pundits, sound bites, and performative outrage seep into my psyche like secondhand smoke. It becomes harder and harder to locate the good when cruelty is louder, faster, and always trending.
Which brings me back to anthrodynia. This exhaustion is real—but so is the snap of gratitude that can come when we stumble across something decent and sincere. Maybe the antidote isn’t pretending the world isn’t filled with nonsense… maybe it’s deliberately searching for the moments that reveal humanity’s softer underbelly.
Because there is softness there. But it takes work to see it.
The Thanksgiving Paradox
Thanksgiving is an emotionally crowded holiday. The joy and gratitude coexist with tension, grief, and the ghosts of people who should be at the table but aren’t.
For me, that ache feels particularly sharp this year. My daughter, Bailey, is deployed to Kenya. My son-in-law, Finn, is also on deployment. Their seats will be empty because they’re serving their country on the other side of the world. We’ll set the table like always, but there will be a quiet space where they should be, and that space will speak.
And I know I’m not alone. Some people are missing because they’re serving overseas. Some because they’re working. Some because of distance, estrangement, or choice. And some because they’re simply no longer alive to take their place.
So if the holiday hits differently this year, let it. Sometimes gratitude isn’t loud and beaming—it’s quieter, more reverent, like visualizing the face of someone you miss and whispering, You’re still here, even if you’re not.
The Exhaustion Is Real
And yet, even in this softer space, anthrodynia creeps in—because people can be cruel. They can be petty, performative, antagonistic, and unnecessarily sharp. We’ve all watched a family member lob a verbal grenade across the table for sport.
No wonder holidays exhaust us.
But here’s the thing: if criticism erodes connection, then curiosity restores it.
The people you think you know? You don’t know the whole story. You know the version you’ve catalogued and placed in a labeled box on the highest shelf of your mind.
We all do it. We’re walking museums of our own assumptions.
But what would happen if you cracked the box open and looked again? What if you chose—deliberately, experimentally—to search for an admirable quality in someone you’ve written off as intolerable?
It sounds idealistic, maybe even naïve. But psychological research backs it. Positive psychology studies, especially those from Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, show that deliberately shifting your attention to someone’s strengths—even if you have to hunt for them—creates a measurable increase in empathy. Empathy lowers defensiveness. Lowered defensiveness increases connection. Connection increases goodwill. And goodwill is the gateway drug to gratitude.
This doesn’t mean pretending your uncle’s conspiracy theories aren’t unhinged. It means choosing not to let his nonsense take the wheel.
Find the Humor in the Madness
Sometimes the only way through the day is to acknowledge that you’re living in a bizarre alternate universe—one where your cousin believes Wi-Fi causes vertigo, your aunt is passionately upset about something she read on the internet that definitely didn’t happen, and someone at the table always has “just one more thing to say.”
Laughing at the absurdity isn’t dismissive. It’s survival.
Humor doesn’t minimize the dysfunction, but it creates just enough mental space to keep you from flipping the table.
Play the Long Game of Goodness
Even the people who drive you to the brink have scraps of goodness in them. It may be buried under years of habit, pain, fear, stubbornness, or ego, but it’s there. We all have the capacity for tenderness.
But tenderness doesn’t reveal itself to cynicism. It reveals itself to curiosity. To patience. To the willingness to look again.
You won’t change anyone at the table—not in one day, not with one conversation. But you can change the way you engage with them. And that shift, small as it might be, is a disruption.
This Thanksgiving, Let the Goodness Be the Disruption
Because in a world where cruelty is easy and outrage is automated, choosing to see the good is an act of rebellion. It is a refusal to be swept into the current of cynicism that threatens to drown us.
So this Thanksgiving, honor the people who are missing, appreciate the ones who are here, and look—really look—at the humans across from you. Hunt for the admirable. Notice the softness. Allow the absurdity. And choose the tiny flame of goodness over the wildfire of anthrodynia.
It won’t be perfect. It won’t be smooth. But it will be disruptive in the best possible way.
