Has a beautiful sunset ever taken your breath away? Are there moments when you stop what you’re doing to delight in a child’s smile, the taste of your favorite fruit, or the brilliance of sunshine glinting on fresh snow? If so, you’ve experienced glimmers.
If you paused to notice the pleasure you were experiencing and to savor the moment, then your mental health and nervous system automatically benefited. Learning to find glimmers helps to enhance well-being and reduce stress.
Read on to learn more about why glimmers are good for you and how to bring more of them into your life.
What You’ll Learn
- What are glimmers?
- How are glimmers and triggers different?
- How do glimmers impact your nervous system and mental health?
- How do you strengthen your ability to notice glimmers?
Quick Read
Glimmers are small moments of joy and peace that arise from appreciating everyday experiences, such as enjoying a sunset or a child’s laughter. By recognizing and savoring glimmers, individuals can cultivate a more positive outlook and reduce stress.
Unlike triggers, which evoke negative emotions and activate the body’s stress response, glimmers stimulate feelings of calm and safety. This mindfulness practice encourages individuals to focus on the present and appreciate the beauty around them, leading to improved mental health and emotional resilience.
To incorporate more glimmers into daily life, set intentions, engage your senses, and limit screen time. Spending time in nurturing environments and connecting with others can also enhance the likelihood of encountering these joyful moments.
What Are Glimmers?
Glimmers are those tiny, seemingly insignificant moments when you feel a sense of joy, pleasure, peace, and gratitude. They’re often catalyzed by simple, daily things like petting an animal, taking a hot shower, or listening to the rain outside your window.
The term “glimmers” was coined by Deb Dana, a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in complex trauma. In her 2018 book, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Dana notes that glimmers aren’t grand experiences. On the contrary, she says, “They’re micro moments that begin to shape our system in very gentle ways.”
What’s the Difference Between Glimmers and Triggers?
If we pay attention, we’ll see that glimmers are everywhere. Everyone experiences them differently, however. What might spark feelings of calm or happiness in one person may be negative triggers for someone else.
The main difference between glimmers and triggers is that the former evokes positive feelings while the latter typically evokes negative ones. Glimmers stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which produces sensations of calm and relaxation.
What Triggers Do to the Nervous System
Triggers activate the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” response that occurs in the face of a potential threat. In this sense, glimmers and triggers are opposites.
Triggers can rapidly spark agitation, anxiety, fear, sadness, or anger. In most cases, the physiological or emotional response to a trigger is out of proportion to the event. That’s because triggers are reactions to memories, situations, or people associated with unresolved trauma.
How Glimmers Work
Glimmers, on the other hand, are internal or external cues that elevate your mood or make you feel safe and happy. Looking for glimmers is a mindfulness practice that encourages you to notice the good all around you.
Keeping your eyes and mind open to find glimmers also helps you to stay in the present moment rather than worrying about the future or fretting over the past.
Some Common Glimmers
Glimmers come in all shapes, but not in all sizes. Glimmers aren’t monumental experiences like graduating from college, falling in love for the first time, getting married, buying your first house, or having a baby. Those are major milestones that produce intense feelings, but they’re in a different category than glimmers. Glimmers are tiny micro moments of joy—fleeting, everyday moments that elicit a rush of happiness, gratitude, calm, peace, safety, or goodwill.
Some examples of glimmers include:
- Spotting a rainbow
- Hearing your favorite song in the grocery store
- Feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin
- Getting a hug just when you need it
- Delighting in an out-of-the-blue phone call from a friend you were just thinking about
- Stopping to smell flowers in bloom
- Enjoying the feel of the sand between your toes while walking along a beach
- Relishing the taste of your morning coffee or afternoon tea
- Listening to the birds chirp in a nearby tree
- Looking at a photograph of someone you love
- Watching a child laugh or a puppy frolic
- Appreciating the barista who smiles at you while handing over your coffee
- Enjoying a compliment on your new haircut or outfit
- Gazing at the stars on a clear night or snow falling on a quiet winter day
Why Glimmers Are Good for Mental Health
When you make a practice of noticing the expected and unexpected small gifts in your own life, you begin noticing the good more and more. Rather than being on the lookout for danger (the way your hunter-gatherer ancestors were), you’re on the lookout for beauty and ease. Over time, this shift can have a positive effect on your mental health.
Glimmers can counteract the effects of stress and bring your attention into the present. They also improve your mood. When you’re more focused on noticing and appreciating glimmers, you feel less anxious. You might even feel more motivated to accomplish your goals because you have less emotional distress. For people who suffer from depression, glimmers can shine a light in the darkness, helping them see the good things in their lives.
While relishing glimmers isn’t a substitute for therapy or other mental health treatment, the practice can have far-reaching cumulative effects on your mental health. Research indicates that even fleeting positive emotions can have long-lasting, supportive consequences on personal growth and social connection.
Glimmers and the Nervous System
Glimmers are related to polyvagal theory. This theory describes how the autonomic nervous system (which controls involuntary actions such as breathing and digestion) searches for and interprets things, people, and environments to determine whether they’re a threat.
For example, if a relative who was mean to you when you were a child always smelled like cigars, your fight-or-flight response might ignite when you smell cigar smoke. You might start sweating, or your heart might start beating faster.
Glimmers, on the other hand, help your nervous system relax. Over the long term, noticing and appreciating glimmers can help you build emotional resilience and develop a less overactive nervous system. You’ll find yourself in a state of regulation, connection, and safety more often, because you have more neural connections that are programmed for ease and rest.
That’s why glimmers can be especially helpful for trauma survivors who are struggling with a dysregulated nervous system. But they’re beneficial for everyone. In an overstimulated world, glimmers can bring your nervous system back into balance when you feel off-kilter.
How to Find and Make the Most of Glimmers
Glimmers are everywhere. You can spot them when you’re out for a walk, talking to a colleague, grocery shopping, or spending time with friends or family.
You don’t have to chase them. Looking for and savoring moments of pleasure is enough. To increase your chances of finding glimmers in everyday life, however, try these strategies:
Set a Glimmer Intention
If you want to become aware of more glimmers, set an intention to allow them to come into your life. This might be challenging if you suffer from mental health challenges or the effects of trauma, or if you tend to worry or have negative thoughts.
If that’s the case, start small. Try spotting one glimmer a day. Open yourself up to the notion that glimmers exist, and invite yourself to begin noticing them as you go about your day.
Go Where the Glimmers Are
Think about a place where you consistently feel relaxed, happy, or at ease. It might be someplace in nature, like a beautiful trail in the woods or a quiet cove on the beach.
Maybe there’s a rose garden in your favorite park that delights you each spring or a cozy corner of your home that gets great sunlight. Identify those places where you’re most likely to notice glimmers, and be sure to spend time there.
Engage Your Senses
Sometimes glimmers arise from thoughts and intuitions—sensing that you did well on an exam, for instance, or that you’ve just met someone special. However, we usually perceive glimmers with our five senses.
To notice glimmers, bring your attention to your vision, hearing, taste, and senses of smell and touch. This is a form of mindfulness. Visual glimmers (like spotting a deer) may seem the easiest to notice. But remember that your other senses are also primed to take in moments of wonder, beauty, connection, peace, and well-being.
Jot Them Down
If you want to train your brain to notice the good, identify those tiny moments of pleasure you notice in a notebook or journal. You might write them down as they occur or at the end of each day.
Not unlike a gratitude journal, a glimmer journal helps you focus your attention on what’s good in your life. As you do, you’ll notice the good more and more.
Limit Screen Time
If your face is buried behind a computer screen or locked on your smartphone most of the day and night, the chances of noticing glimmers plummet. To spot glimmers, limit screen time. You can do a digital detox for a whole weekend to jumpstart the process. When you’re not glued to a screen, you’re much more likely to venture out into nature, where glimmers abound. You’re also more likely to spend time with others, which leads to relishing the glimmers that arise in human relationships.
Connect with Others
It’s well-known that nourishing authentic connections with others improves both mental and physical health. When you’re in the presence of people you enjoy, you’re much more likely to notice glimmers.
It might be the laughter you share with a special friend, the delight you experience brainstorming ideas with a favorite colleague, or the calmness you feel around a particular family member. You might even create a glimmer group in which you text each other the glimmers you notice each day.
What to Do When You Need Mental Health Support
Having a mental health condition can make it harder to notice and appreciate positive things like glimmers. If you struggle to access joy, you might be suffering from anxiety, depression, or another mental health challenge. Our team of expert clinicians can help you heal underlying issues so you can thrive in life.
PrairieCare has a full continuum of care options throughout the Twin Cities, Mankato, and Rochester. We offer support for individuals of all ages and their families to address mental health disorders with compassion and evidence-based approaches. Together, we build a treatment plan that builds resilience, strengthens relationships, and helps to heal.
Contact us today at 952-826-8475 to find out about our specialized services and programs that can help you or a loved one’s mental health journey.
FAQs
What are glimmers in mental health?
- Glimmers are small moments of pleasure that arise from the experience of simple things. The ability to notice and appreciate glimmers can enhance your mental health by counteracting the effects of stress, reducing anxiety, and improving your mood.
What is a glimmer vs. a trigger?
- Triggers activate the “fight or flight” response, which triggers feelings of agitation, anxiety, fear, sadness, or anger. Glimmers, on the other hand, produce sensations that make you feel calm, joyful, and grateful.
What are examples of glimmers?
- Feeling the warmth of the sun against your skin, hearing your favorite song play while out shopping, and appreciating your best friend’s laugh are examples of glimmers.
What is a glimmer in trauma?
- Glimmers are sometimes referenced in the context of acute or complex trauma because they can help the nervous system move out of the “fight or flight” mode that trauma survivors experience. These micro moments of well-being induce the nervous system’s relaxation response.
Sources
- Am Psychol. 2001 Mar; 56(3): 218–226.