Toxic Positivity - How to spot it in yourself and what to do about it!
I’ve spent most of my life trying to view the glass as half full. I believe in thinking that way. I believe that you can make the best out of almost any circumstance. It’s one of the reasons that I’m almost always genuinely happy!
But there are times when positivity is actually toxic. There are times when it’s inappropriate to immediately try and see the positive.
It can be hard for a lot of us to find that balance, but avoiding the hard stuff doesn’t help. It can, in fact, can be preventing you from fully healing.
This was a hard lesson for me to learn.
Being positive feels like a core part of my personality. It’s something I really like about myself. The Debbie Downer stereotype doesn’t apply to this Deborah.
So it was difficult for me to see how positivity could ever be inappropriate. But I’ve since learned that some of my positivity was preventing me from processing through difficult emotions. Not only that, it was keeping me sick and it was keeping me stuck.
And the hardest lesson for me to learn: I was at times using positivity as an avoidant coping mechanism.
So what is toxic positivity?
It’s when you attempt to see the positive in everything but also refuse to sit in the hard. You’re always looking for the silver lining. You don’t feel the “bad” emotions but put on a smile and go on with your day.
That might not sound like such a bad thing, but the reason it’s a problem is because not everything in life is positive. There are a lot of hard and even painful emotions. Some things in life are incredibly difficult! There is a time to cry, a time to weep, a time to wail.
Not only that, but it prevents you from being empathetic. Empathy is sitting in someone’s pain with them. But if we refuse to acknowledge that pain, then we likely make the person feel even more alone.
Toxic positivity makes you think that a hard day or hard emotions are “bad”. But there is no such thing as a “bad” emotion, those are just a part of life.
When we’re always trying to “look on the bright side”, what can happen is that we never learn how to work through those difficult emotions, which means they don’t go anywhere. Most often they stay buried and end up affecting us emotionally and even physically.
Here are a few examples of what this might look like:
Something bad happens and your automatic response is to make light of it, jump straight into the “positive” or try to “see the bright side”, all while not allowing yourself to sit in the discomfort of what just happened.
Using “everything happens for a reason” with everything in your life that goes wrong. Trying to spin every situation so it sounds positive can prevent you from processing through it.
Always trying to comfort others by finding a silver lining. “I’m so sorry your cat died, but at least you still have your puppy!” This was a hard one for me to break. It feels like it’s comfort but it ends up isolating the other person.
Always responding with a smile and saying, “I’m good!” When you’re really not.
Thinking that emotions like sadness, anger, or disappointment are bad or wrong somehow.
There are two main problems when you have toxic positivity:
You don’t allow yourself to feel through difficult emotions. When we don’t process through our emotions, they just fester as they’re buried down deep. And quite often they can be at the core of even physical symptoms.
This can be a protective mechanism for us. But too often when we try to numb specific emotions, we don’t realize that we’re actually numbing all of them. You cannot selectively numb.
Learning to process through your emotions is vital for your overall health. But first you need to understand that there are no bad emotions. It’s not wrong to feel anger. It’s not wrong to feel sadness. Processing through them is not the same as wallowing in them.
If you need help with how to do this, I wrote a previous blog post on exactly this: https://www.rootandbloomholistics.com/journal/feel-your-feelingsIt prevents you from being empathetic or comforting to others. When someone is going through a rough time and we immediately come in with a positive spin on their situation, it invalidates their feelings.
Some things are just hard. And a lot of the time, we don’t have the answers. But that’s okay. It’s okay to just sit with someone and listen and say, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”
Here is a great video where Brene Brown perfectly explains the difference between empathy and sympathy and why we don’t want to use “At least” or “It could have been worse” with our friends.
It’s okay to not be okay. That doesn’t mean you’re broken. That doesn’t mean somethings wrong with you. It doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful. It just means you’re human living in a very difficult world.
And I do still believe in optimism and being positive in my life. But since I’ve learned how to let myself feel anger or sadness or any other difficult emotion, I’ve felt more free. I’ve felt more genuine positivity. And I’ve felt less burdened.
Unprocessed emotions can be a big part of stress and anxiety. If you’re trying to stay positive all the time but are struggling with a lot of anxiety, this could be a major contributor.
One simple (but sometimes difficult) way you can practice this is by being honest when someone asks how you are. If you’re having a great day, then great! But if you’re having a hard day, then don’t be afraid to say so. You are not a burden, in fact, you sharing your feelings authentically usually makes the other person feel less alone.
Just be selective in the people you do this with. Start with a good friend or someone you know cares for you.
And if you don’t want to get into it, instead of responding with, “I’m good or fine”, respond with something like, “I’m here” or even “I’m okay”. Be more authentic with your response. You don’t need to get into the details but just being able to express yourself genuinely helps you to feel less alone.
Being positive is a beautiful quality, but not at the expense of your health and mental state. A lot of us move toward toxic positivity when we weren’t allowed to feel to our feelings, when we were punished for crying or being upset, or when we were modeled to put on a smile no matter what. This is very common behavior when there was addiction in the home.
If you discover these tendencies in yourself, give yourself some grace. Most likely you developed it as a coping strategy because it was exactly what you needed to survive at the time.
It’s acknowledging where we came from and what got us there that enables us to make changes moving forward. If you find it difficult to feel your feelings now, make it a practice starting today, but start small.
You are capable of change. You are capable of doing hard things. And you’re not alone. This is still something I need to constantly work on. But it’s a work worth doing ❤️
