What Is Toxic Positivity and How to Avoid It

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What Is Positivity?

We all have heard about being positive about a situation sometime in our life. To understand toxic positivity we first need to define what actual positivity means. The definition of positivity is as follows:

Positivity (noun)

The practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude.

Having learned that, we can compare it to the modern way of how we see the term positivity.

Nowadays we see it displayed in social media as something necessary to have in our daily lives. We see it as a motto to live by. In today’s life, we can observe in social media how it is used to justify every bad situation presented. We are supposed to stay happy and positive all the time.

I don’t judge you if you have ever told someone to stay positive about something sad going on in their lives or if you have told it to yourself. It is something that is really normalized right now.

What Is Toxic Positivity?

Toxic positivity is using a term that refers to being optimistic and always seeing a good outcome to completely erase the fact that people are allowed to be sad or mad about the circumstances in their lives.

It is telling people that everything is okay and that they should see the positive outcome or “what life is trying to teach us.”

What exactly does toxic positivity tell us? What goes through people’s minds when we do such comments? 

This is what is wrong about toxic positivity:

1.

The first thing that people think when they are told something like that could be that they don’t deserve to feel the way they do and that their pain in their position is not valid. For example; Let’s use a small situation, you have studied a lot for a math exam in which you really want to get a good grade on but you end up failing.

Your friend approaches you and tells you that there is no need to be sad and that at least now you know that you can exclude that from the things you thought you should major in at college.

They tell you that you should keep trying harder and that it eventually will get easier. What this is saying, is that your failure was not because of your effort, but because of your own intelligence and that this should open for you new ideas of what you can do.

You feel that they are right, that you shouldn’t worry about it and move on.

But you are more than allowed to feel sad or disappointed about something that you worked so hard for. 

2.

The next thing and probably one of the most important is that you start bottling up feelings and filing them like unnecessary or invalid to what is happening in your life.

Emotions are not meant to be repressed and hidden they are meant to be expressed. Not showing emotion could lead to some serious effects such as mental health issues and even physical presentation of stress. 

3.

Another thing that is wrong about toxic positivity that it makes everything happy in an excessive way. Lately, we are thought to show only the positive things that go on in our lives.

Thanks to social media, we can see what people who inspire us and celebrities are always doing. The “dark side” of their lives is never shown. We mostly can only see how they spend their glamorous lives with friends and partying and being successful.

We never see the downs of their life and what they had to go through to achieve that. This makes us feel like we are not capable of being successful. It also could make us feel like our situations are worse than they actually are which can lead to health issues. It makes us feel flawed.

“There’s an expression ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ and it means that when we bring the scary things into the light, whether they are memories, emotions, or fears about the future, we can really examine them and take away some of their power to infect us.”

– Licensed clinical social worker and author of Forward in Heels, Jenny Maenpaa, to Health

Things you can say to yourself to AVOID IT and some things to remember:

In order to avoid this type of negativity that is toxic positivity, you can unfollow certain people that make you feel like you are not enough.

Be true to yourself and remember we are human and emotions exist for something, use them. Call out people that tell you how you need to feel or what are you allowed to experience. Ignore them.

You don’t owe anything to anyone, don’t force yourself to be happy around people when you are not. Don’t get attached to the idea that everything needs to be happy. We all have our ups and downs and we are more than allowed to have them. 

Something that can help when the toxic positivity comes from the inside is trying to replace certain phrases you tell yourself when you don’t achieve something or when negative things happen with phrases that acknowledge and value your feelings but still push you forward to move on.

For example; When you are sad, allow yourself to feel it some time and don’t beat yourself up for not doing anything productive or outgoing that day. 

-Respect your boundaries and accept that you have limits. If everything were to be happy all the time you wouldn’t know what happiness is. Remember to always welcome your emotions.