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 feel of the breeze against your skin? 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.
Key Takeaways
- Glimmers are small moments of joy or peace that arise from appreciating simple things like the colors of a rainbow, the scent of a flower, or the sound of the rain.
- Glimmers and triggers are opposites in that glimmers spark positive feelings while triggers spark negative ones.
- The practice of noticing and appreciating glimmers can cue your nervous system to relax and have a positive effect on your mental health.
- To increase the odds of noticing glimmers, spend time in places that nourish you, connect with people you enjoy, limit screen time, and practice mindfulness.
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 specializesin 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.”
The term “glimmers” has gone viral on TikTok. Some TikTok users are teaching viewers how to notice those special moments. Others are documenting their own glimmers.
One Tik Tok video has gained more than 85,000 likes and hundreds of positive comments about the value of noticing these nanoseconds of bliss.
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.
What’s the Difference Between Glimmers and Triggers?
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.
Triggers, on the other hand, 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.
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.
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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, or the driver who slows down to let you cross the street
- 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.
It's almost as if this micro-moment—this glimmer—is the beginning of what can become a really big change.
Deb Dana
Polyvagal researcher and author who coined the term glimmer
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 or 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 plummets. To spot glimmers, limit screen time. You might even 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, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or another chronic mental health issue. Our team of expert clinicians is well-equipped to help you heal underlying issues so you can start living a satisfying and inspiring life.
Our integrated and evidence-based approach addresses thechildhood trauma that can keep your nervous system in a chronic state of high alert. We also help young people heal fractured relationships and attachment wounds through individual therapy,group therapy, and family therapy. And we offer experiential modalities like cognitive reframing exercises, meditation, yoga, group Adventure Therapy, and gratitude practices that provide young people with an array of healthy coping mechanisms. As a result, you gain self-awareness and develop more fulfilling relationships with friends and family.
Contact us todayto find out about our specialized approach to young adult treatment at ourresidential and outpatient treatment programs around the country.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are glimmers in mental health?
What is a glimmer vs. a trigger?
What are examples of glimmers?
What is a glimmer in trauma?
Sources
Am Psychol. 2001 Mar; 56(3): 218–226.
Mental Health / December 29, 2023 / by Newport Institute