Life is good! The glass is half-full! When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade! These are all examples of being an optimist. More often than not, being an optimist is a good thing.
However, it is possible for some people to cross an imaginary line and move into a mindset of “toxic positivity”.
What is Toxic Positivity?
Toxic positivity occurs when someone denies or hides their negative emotions rather than expressing them. It occurs when there is pressure to be, or appear to be, happy in all or most situations.
It is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult your situation might be, you must maintain a positive mindset that keeps you from truly seeing things as they are.
For most people the outward expression of their toxic positivity doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t match what they feel on the inside, resulting in feeling like a fraud or an imposter. This is because the faux positivity is coming from a place of avoidance, anxiety and fear. It doesn’t feel genuine or authentic.
Though toxic positivity comments are generally well-meaning, the receiver is put into the difficult position of feeling shut down or silenced. You might be the victim of gaslighting.
Recognizing Toxic Positivity in Yourself
Frequently people don’t even realize when they have crossed that line from being an optimist to someone emoting toxic positivity. Toxic positivity may have become your default, a way of protecting yourself from emotional harm.
If you say yes to at least four of the following, you may be falling into a pattern of toxic positivity:
- Do you hide your true feelings for fear of what others would say or do?
- Do you shame yourself for not being “happy enough” or “good enough”?
- Do you ignore feeling overwhelmed, just so you can get along in life?
- Do you silence others when someone has legitimate concerns?
- Do you use phrases like “Things could be worse” or “Whatever will be, will be”?
- Do you feel ashamed when you feel sadness, disappointment or betrayal?
- Do you ever force a smile when you are crying on the inside?
- Do you tell others if their life isn’t what they like, to just pick themselves up by their boot straps?
The Emotional Toll of Toxic Positivity
Toxic positivity hurts your soul. If someone is telling you, “Everything will be okay,” when you don’t feel it is true – right now – it implies whatever you are feeling is inappropriate or unacceptable. That there is something wrong with you and/or the way you think.
There are many ways toxic positivity can affect how you feel about yourself, your self-esteem:
- Triggers shame
- Causes guilt
- Shatters your connections with others
- Forces you to question if you are right, or if the other person is right
- Stimulates stress
- Increases avoidance of people and situations
- Stunts emotional growth
The Physiological Effects of Toxic Positivity
Withholding your feelings can lead you to experience compromised physical wellbeing. It is as if the emotional burden weighs down your heart physically.
Physiological effects of toxic positivity include:
- raising your blood pressure and heart rate
- increasing your risk of metabolic illness
- increasing the risk of obesity
If you pretend that a symptom or sign of a serious illness will “just go away” on its own, you may miss the opportunity for early treatment of a life-threatening illness, for example, cancer or diabetes.
Negative emotions seldom just “fade away”, either! They may lay dormant for a while, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t festering beneath the surface. Suppressed emotions will come out, often in inappropriate and inopportune settings.
Shifting your Thought Process
Making room for all of your feelings, even sadness or anxiety, can get you out of the toxic positivity cycle.
Look out for thoughts that include words like “should” or “must” because they can be an indication of an unhelpful expectation. The belief that “I should be happy” is setting an expectation that is extreme and unhelpful. Moving away from extreme positions to a place of balance improves our mental health and overall wellbeing.
Think about someone in your life who is compassionate and caring of others. Try to imagine how they would respond to a painful situation. Then, give that same message to yourself. Look for understanding about how even painful feelings make sense based on your experiences. Acknowledge that things can be both difficult and okay at the same time.
Identifying Toxic Positivity
Is toxic positivity happening in one of your relationships? Here are some signs:
- You feel pressure from a loved one to be happy or “just get over it”.
- You feel like there is something wrong with you for having your emotions.
- You find you need to hide any painful emotions.
- You find yourself saying, “Turn that frown upside down,” “Look on the bright side” or “Everything happens for a reason”
Relationships Relearned: Learn. Unlearn. Relearn
To be in a healthy, successful relationship, what you learned in childhood about relationships may need to be unlearned and relearned in a different way as an adult.
As a child your feelings may have been totally dismissed, for example, “Your life is great compared to my life at your age!”, “That didn’t hurt” or “You don’t have any problems, wait until you are an adult!” What you learned from these messages is that your perception of the problems in your life was inaccurate.
As the result of your feelings being dismissed, you learned to go in a completely different direction. Your mantra became everything is sunshine and unicorns. You would say, “Everything is wonderful!” or “Nothing is wrong!” This is not a healthy response, either! These philosophies need to be unlearned.
How you interact with others may require a different way of interacting with them. You must relearn how to interact with others. Life can be hard at any age, even for children. Validate your own feelings of how life is for you, not how others view your life.
You do not need to be smiling and upbeat all the time. It is okay to have minutes, hours or days when you feel down or are irritable. You can be honest with how you are feeling. You don’t have to maintain that toxic positivity.
Take Away Points
In relationships, if one person believes that they cannot voice how they feel in an authentic way for fear of being told to “keep their chin up”, feelings of anger can give way to conflict, isolation and/or withdrawal. Let’s face it, why would you want to keep talking to someone about how you feel when you are only given the message that you should feel better?
Similarly, you don’t have to give in to the toxic demands on yourself to “only focus on the positive”. This behavior will only create unrealistic expectations of how you should feel. If left unchecked, these thoughts fuel anxiety and depression.
With warmest regards,
Thank you so much for reading this blog. If you enjoyed the content, please check out other blogs at:
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