Toxic Positivity

My life is amazing. I have a job that I love, I’m surrounded by friends and family, have successfully completed Psychotherapy, am going to interesting places, making ends meet, have just been promoted and am learning all the time!

My life is also quite difficult. I deal with Social Anxiety and C-PTSD, have just recently finished a round of Psychotherapy, constantly question my worth, skill, and likability, have stayed too long in more toxic situations than I can count, rarely have any free time to do what I want to do, am only just making ends meet, and am being forced to learn harsh lessons all the time.

Both of the above descriptions are true to my life at any given time. Sometimes I might tune into more of the positive feelings of gratitude described above, but some days I can’t help but lean more towards the negative feelings swirling around my head. This could be for a number of reasons. My anxiety could be acting up, I may have a lot of stress or worries in my life at that moment, I could be reacting to poor treatment of myself from myself or others, or it could be lots of little annoyances baring a bigger and bigger load on me until it takes just a straw to break the camel’s back.

Both of the experiences in the first two paragraphs are valid states of mind. While we should aim not to stay in a negative mindset forever (as to avoid finding ourselves on a slippery slope of bad mental health) and try to find the silver linings to push us towards feeling happier or more motivated, it is crucial that we don’t ignore our negative feelings altogether.

Negative feelings are important as they are the little alarm bells which tell us that something is wrong. When we experience negative emotions, it is a chance to assess the way our life is in that current moment and ask ourselves if it is working for us. If not, we can ask why and we can attempt to do something about it. For that reason, it is imperative that we allow ourselves to be honest and feel what we feel.

Toxic positivity can come in many forms. Some examples could include:

• Telling somebody that ‘everything happens for a reason’ after a catastrophe.
• Asserting that people who are always positive despite the circumstances are stronger or more likable than everyone else.
• Feeling as if you have to be a ‘fair-weather friend’ or that you can only show surface-level positive emotions around your inner group for fear that they’ll cease contact with you if you ever show your real emotions.
• Staying in a physically or emotionally abusive relationship because ‘they used to be so nice, maybe if I try extra hard and give them a lot of love, they’ll start treating me well again’.
• Judging people if they aren’t always making the most efficient/hyper-productive decisions they can despite the circumstances or the adversity they may be facing at that moment.
• Brushing off worries, bad experiences, or in some cases, traumatic events, with the phrase ‘it could be worse’.
• Telling somebody to get over their grief or trauma and focus on either the good things in life, or the good aspects of that grief/trauma.

Rather than making a loved one feel better, any one of the above actions can have the opposite effect, making the person feel judged, silenced, or not good enough. Toxic positivity can contribute to low self-esteem when a person consistently buries their negative emotions, it can make them feel isolated, ignore real danger as they’re too focused on keeping a sunny outlook, feel invalidated or demeaned when something tragic has occurred, and can deter them from speaking up when something is wrong for fear that they won’t be listened to or understood.

‘Toxic positivity imposes positive thinking as the only solution to problems, demanding that a person avoid negative thinking or expressing negative emotions.

The research around positive thinking generally focuses on the benefits of having an optimistic outlook when experiencing a problem. Toxic positivity, by contrast, demands positivity from people regardless of the challenges that they face, potentially silencing their emotions and deterring them from seeking social support.’ (Medical News Today)

I’ve thought long and hard about writing this next part. TW Emotional Abuse:

When I was in my early 20s, I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. It didn’t matter that he didn’t hit me, what mattered was that the fear was there. The relationship started off quite well, almost too well, and very quickly seemed to go downhill. Nothing I ever did, no matter how hard I tried, was good enough. I had to be available 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week. I spent all my time trying to manage the feelings of this person, but my feelings didn’t seem to matter. I was constantly, guilt-tripped, coerced and pushed to breaking point. The level of possessive behaviour made me feel as if I was walking on eggshells. I would spend half an hour in the bathroom trying to think of how to say something and I would still end up doing what he wanted the way he wanted it in the end.

He was very outwardly charming, and we had a lot of mutual friends, even my parents loved him. This made me feel isolated and unable to confide in anyone. If I ever stepped out of line, the smear campaign would have already begun. This kept me dancing on my toes and reminded me that no one would be there to catch me if I didn’t maintain the status quo; if I did anything less than give my entire life; mind, body, and soul. But I kept on going, kept an outwardly positive façade while crying inside, hoping that his behaviour was just a blip… That if I tried hard enough to ease his worries and make sure that everything was perfect for him, all of this pain would go away.

Spoiler Alert: it didn’t. All I was continuing to do was to enable his behaviour and add more fuel to his fire. Toxic positivity was keeping me static.

There were three incidences in my life that worked to change my mindset and helped me break out of stasis. The first was in my first year of university, within the first few weeks when I met a girl (that I’m still good friends with today) who confessed to me about an emotionally abusive partner she had been with for a few years. The behaviours this partner exhibited were strikingly similar to the ones I had been living with. Having this conversation helped me start to come around to the idea that I wasn’t totally insane or unreasonable and that there was something seriously wrong with the dynamic I was in.

The second incident came when I was on a trip with some friends and my partner at the time. They hadn’t shared their thoughts on the matter with me for the majority of the trip and so I was unaware that they had even taken notice of what was going on. One day, on the way out of a hotel, on a rare occasion that my ex-partner was not at my side they asked me some questions.

“Are you aware of the way you’re being treated?” and “Do you like being treated that way?”

I’d had people indirectly say things to me before and I hadn’t gotten the message. I’d also had those who watched and said nothing. This was the first time anybody had directly acknowledged what was going on. I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

The third incident came near the end of our trip when I was under considerable emotional stress. I’ve always thought of myself as relatively resilient. At that point I think I was probably so comfortable with the familiarity of the awful dynamic I was in that it seemed a massive task to step away from that environment. But then I started thinking about my life, about the trajectory it would be sent on if I kept things the same. I would probably end up marrying this guy eventually and maybe even having kids. It was this final realisation that made me realise I had to leave. It was the realisation that I would never willingly want to put a child into the kind of environment that I was in back then.

At that moment, my self-esteem was so low that I was willing to continue to throw myself under the bus, but I was not willing to throw somebody I imagined loving, caring for and cherishing under there too. It was this thought that led to me thinking of myself as that child, and wondering why, if I wouldn’t do it to a child, I would continuously put myself in that situation. It was one of the first incidences in a long while that the thought ‘I matter too’ had begun to flicker through my mind. It was letting go of toxic positivity and beginning to acknowledge the full scope of my own feelings that pushed me to make positive changes in my life.

End of TW.

Every day we walk a tightrope between positive and negative emotions. Each day we have to make a judgement call… Is this really what I want? Am I really this upset about a situation or am I also feeling stress in other areas of my life that could be adding to my hurt? Why has something touched a nerve, is there an area of my life that I need to process or change, or has some other person genuinely overstepped the mark and do I need to say something about it? This is what life is about, with all of its ups and downs.

A lot of bad experiences lumped together can encourage us to become cynical and negative about everything around us. This is a protective mechanism which might make us feel safer from harm at first but will ultimately keep us in a paranoid, unhappy and demotivated state. What you should never feel forced to do, is to ignore the negative instances in your life and become a beacon of positivity. Toxic positivity will cause you to abandon yourself in more ways than one. Most importantly, toxic positivity not only doesn’t allow you to acknowledge what is wrong and plant the seeds of change for a better lived experience, but also says to yourself and others that your feelings are not valid or worth it; that you must live a performative existence for the benefit of others.

In case it hasn’t been said enough, your duty, first and foremost, is to your own wellbeing. This doesn’t mean you can’t compromise or look after others. It is simply an acknowledgment that you matter and you can’t be your best self for others if you aren’t also looking out for yourself.

Now read that again.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you did, feel free to like and subscribe.

If you related to this, you might like to read about load-bearing and why it has the ability to make or break us.

If you want to continue the conversation, you can find me over on @OptimismWrites