The Psychology of Gift Giving
It’s the time of year when many people consider buying and receiving gifts. Shops and online ads lure us to consider what present we might purchase for loved ones at Christmas. Many of us find ourselves invited into Secret Santa gift exchanges with family and friends and, whilst not a festival traditionally associated with gift giving, the December Jewish celebration of Hannukah sometimes also includes the exchange of presents. Sure, gift giving and present receiving can feel heart-warming. Yet it can also stir up difficult feelings and tensions both within and between people – often prompting people to consider counselling as a way to make meaning of these complex feelings. Perhaps you’ve asked yourself “why do I find shopping for Christmas presents so stressful?” or “why am I so irritated by Secret Santas?” Mabey you’ve even wondered whether your feelings of envy evoked by gift giving are okay? The answers to these questions are likely to draw upon psychological factors. Here we consider some of the psychological factors at play when gift buying, giving and receiving is involved.
The Benefits of Gift Giving
Gift giving is one of many ways we communicate our care, interest, love and connection with others. Gift giving can be an expression of our thoughtfulness and kindness – we are likely to have invested either time, thought, creativity and / or money into the gift we give. That can serve the purpose of strengthening relationships and the bonds of connection between people.
Gift giving is a way we can express our own empathy and attunement towards important people in our lives. When it comes to choosing a gift, most people aim to match the gift to the recipients’ interests, preferences, and lifestyle. They put some thought into the process of choosing a gift. In doing so – they communicate that they are making efforts to understand the other person and have noticed and paid attention to them. That feels good! Perhaps you can remember getting a gift that gave you a sense you’d been understood and were known by the gift giver? How did that feel for you? Giving and receiving such empathic understanding, when the gift is good match, can feel positive for both the gift giver and the receiver.
Gift giving has also been shown to be a boost to physical wellbeing and overall health. Research from by Random Acts of Kindness Foundation shows that acts of giving (of time, money or care) can result in an increase in energy and can even help relieve pain and lower blood pressure.
A well-chosen gift can convey how much you understand and appreciate a person.
Gift Giving as a Source of Pain
Whilst there can be plenty of benefits to giving gifts, presenting or receiving a present from someone can also be a source of pain, anxiety and difficulty. There are many different emotions and responses that you may feel when it comes to giving and receiving gifts, that mean gift exchanges feel complicated and confusing. Different expectations about gifts can cause all manner of relational difficulties between people. People can and do feel under pressure to give gifts and may feel burdened by financial challenges. Gifts also have the potential to expose the different ways we use as humans to express love and, as a result, it’s possible to begin to feel unloved, taken for granted and unwanted as a result of gift giving.
Disappointment, anger, and envy are just some of the many “messy feelings” that gift giving and receiving can evoke.
Expectations around Gift Giving
“What are you getting for Christmas” is the familiar question throughout classrooms across the country. Children often express a sense of excitement around Christmas that includes an easiness with expectation. Yet, as we age, expectations can begin to prove more challenging. The exchanging of gifts at Christmas can come with a whole host of expectations. For example, one way of understanding gift giving is that the present is gifted without any expectation of return. However, there may well be a firm expectation that if you prepare and present a present to someone, you do expect a gift in return.
“How much should I spend on a gift?” is one question that may be going through your mind when you consider your Christmas shopping list. “How much are other people spending on me?” may also be a question swirling around for you as part of this process as you grapple with trying to make sense of any expectations around the financial cost of gifts. It’s hard to navigate what would be classed at “too much” or “too little” to spend on a gift.
Sometimes such expectations are acknowledged communicated clearly and openly between people. Other times expectations may remain unvoiced, sitting silently and unexpressed between people. Either way, when expectations exist – so does the possibility of disappointment. That can take the form of present disappointments, and memories from pasts disappointments which surface at this time of year. Having felt the edge of disappointment – for those of us who’ve been raised in families where we were expected to show gratitude and hide any disappointment, it may feel difficult and even shameful to experience feelings around unmet expectations. You may find you feel under pressure to smile sweetly and disguise how you feel. That in itself is a form of pressure.
Different Love Languages
Gift giving is a way to express love for some people
We can think of gift giving as a “love language”, and the preferred language of love for some people.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the idea of “love languages”, made popular through Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages books? What are love languages and what do love language have to do with Christmas gifts? Chapman makes the case for different ways and preferences around communicating love and affection within relationships, which he calls Love Langaues. The giving of gifts is one of the 5 Love Languages. He identifies the 5 Love Languages as:
Words of affirmation
Quality time
Physical touch
Acts of service
Receiving gifts
Chapman argues that we tend to have one or two primary ways we prefer to receive love – ways that we can most easily understand another’s communication towards us. These preferred love languages about how we like to receive love are often the same ways we tend to show and communicate our affection, fondness, and love for others. So – for example, for people whose primary love language is acts of service, a homemade meal prepared and served for them may mean far more than an expensive gift. Whereas, if someone has a primary love language of receiving gifts, an offer or help or a greetings card with carefully chosen words may feel paltry and measly in comparison to the investment in a gift of value.
Love Languages are inevitably involved when it comes to Christmas gift lists and present exchanges. And that also means there is the possibility of misunderstanding and complicated feelings. Of languages getting lost in translation. A person may feel rejected or let down by others who speak different love languages to them. Perhaps they may have the awareness to notice and name these feelings of rejection or feeling let down. Sadly, for many people, such feelings can be a trigger to old wounds relating to rejection and abandonment, meaning that past emotional hurts now mingle alongside current feelings. This can lead to feelings of shame, anger, resentment amongst others. Each person’s response to feeling misunderstood around love languages connected to gift exchanges will be unique and very much informed by past experiences.
The Impact of Grief
Gift giving also impinges on feelings of grief and loss. Death does not erase memories and times of gift giving such as Christmas and birthdays, and other celebrations can be really challenging if you are bereaved and grieving the loss of someomne. For those of us impacted by grief (as we all are in our lives) seasonal and festive gift giving can remind us of feelings of loss and bereftness as we recall gifts we exchanged with loved ones no longer here with us. We might recall with sadness Festive celebrations with people we loved and have lost. We might be conscious there’s one less gift to place under the tree this year because someone important is no longer in our lives. Gift giving and gift receiving can be a trigger to grief and loss, made all the more challenging when we see other people’s hapiness, joy and closeness. That can evoke feelings of resentment and envy.
The excitement around gift giving can feel hollow and empty when you are grieving someone you love.
Feeling Under Pressure to Gift
It’s important to also acknowledge the pressure people can feel under when it comes to gift buying and giving. Tight budgets may mean little in the way of money to spend of gifts. The cost-of-living crisis means many households are working hard to save money. Yet, advertising continues relentlessly, aiming to encourage us to part with cash. The messages from media can lead to feelings of guilt and shame if we acknowledge we just can’t afford to buy gifts this year. Feeling under pressure from family and friends to enter shared gift exchanges can leave people worried and anxious and taking on debt.
If you are someone who has a tendency to “people please” and find it hard to say “no”, then you may find these patterns play out so that you end up buying gifts when you really don’t want to or can’t afford to. Difficulties in communicating our boundaries about what we want and can do, as well as what we don’t want and can’t commit to can feel difficult. It’s not uncommon for people to blame themselves and experience shame and self-loathing in response to gift giving pressure.
Receiving Gifts
One final psychological area related to gifting can be the difficulty some people experience in receiving gifts. An outward sign of someone else’s gratitude, or care and love for us can feel at odds if we view ourselves as being less than or unworthy or such care and thought. Perhaps you find it difficult to love yourself, or to see yourself as worthy of others love? Negative views of self and finding it hard to accept who we are can make the act of receiving a gift feel excruciatingly difficult. We may find ourselves telling other people they "really shouldn't have" or that they've "wasted their money" in getting you a gift. This can, inevitably feel difficult to hear for the person giving the gift.
And, sadly, some people know from experience how gifts can be used to manipulate or abuse another. Gifts can be used as a way of grooming others. Sometimes referred to as a form of “love bombing”, the extravagant lavishing of gifts in the early stages of a romantic relationship by someone intent on abusing another as a can feel destabilizing and disorientating for the person on the receiving end of such gifts.
Yet, as a culture, we are often expected to receive a gift graciously. There can be a lot of "shoulds" around gift giving and receiving that might feel at odds with how we actually feel or what we really want or need. It is noticing this incongruence and disconnect between inner feelings and outer expectations that prompts some people to seek out counselling or psychotherapy to talk through feelings and thoughts that emerge in relation to receiving gifts.
How Counselling Can Help
We’ve touched on a range of emotional and psychological responses connected with gift giving and gift receiving. Themes of communication, boundaries, expectations and shame are often implicated in gifting. These themes emerge in our relationships and can be triggered by gifting. Counselling offers a non-judgmental space to explore how you really feel underneath the gracious smile, or the false gratitude. Talking things through in counselling and connecting with your own feelings and the origins of relational patterns can feel liberating, and help you become clearer about what you want and need from your life.
Gifting can evoke difficult feelings and memories that you can work through and process in counselling.
This blog has, hopefully, helped to explore some of the complexity around the psychological processes involved in gift giving. If you are aware of emotional and relational difficulty connected to gift giving and gift receiving, then speaking about this with a counsellor or psychotherapy could be a helpful gift you can give to yourself. If you would like to chat through how counselling can help with any issues you experience in relation to the themes explored in this blog - please do get in touch. I’d be glad to hear from you.