Toxic Positivity: It’s Okay To Not Be Okay

“Constant Positivity is a form of avoidance. It is okay to have negative emotions.”

What Is Toxic Positivity?

Toxic positivity refers to a pattern of behavior wherein a person adopts a lifestyle that engages in being positive at all points of time no matter what, because ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. It involves rejecting the negative triggers of your life, thus investing all your attention and energy into the positive stimulants. How come a lifestyle that sounds like a mental detox, be labeled as toxic? Well, first up, detoxification is usually a temporary routine that we all follow to cleanse our system, while this is more like a permanent lifestyle that people tend to adopt or condition themselves into!

The Web of Occurrence and Progression

Overindulgence does result in a gradual downfall. The addiction shows a constant and an excessive amount of positivity isn’t immune to this pattern. After all, there is only a limit to which you can be happy in the real world!

Excessive exposure to social media has led to a hike in the number of people with this psychological condition today. People keep portraying the perfect life that they are leading with utmost positivity and productivity, driving others to join the herd too. The pressure to appear ‘OK’ invalidates the range of emotions we all experience. It can give the impression that you are defective when you feel distressed, which can be internalized to become a core belief that you are inadequate or weak.

Overlooking one’s problems won’t result in them getting solved!  It only results in the problem getting magnified over time, until one day it blasts out in the open.

It becomes a cycle that you eventually find yourself trapped in, reducing your status to an incompetent weakling with each passing day. We as humans have evolved in a certain way and that doesn’t include being happy at all times.

The Spiral of the Built Web

So is this the first time that this trait has manifested itself? No, it is something people have been engaging in for a long time. Feeling anxious, lonely, burnt out and the like are all but obvious. On the other hand, watching our friends passing through this phase with much ease indulging in constructive activities like cooking, picking up hobbies, working out, and so on does put a certain level of pressure on us, making us apprehensive and unsure about our capabilities.

This is where the concepts of ‘comparison’ and ‘jealousy’ crawl in to interfere with our mental peace. What we miss out on here is to understand that not everyone can deal with stress by being productive.

One should acknowledge the way they are and cut themselves some slack. Being ‘OK’ at all times isn’t and shouldn’t be an absolute necessity! We all need a break to rejuvenate ourselves and get back in the groove. What is much needed at such times is to be realistic and understand your own self instead of looking for validation from the rest of the world.

The one thing that differentiates human beings from all other creatures on Earth is their heightened ability to feel and think. That covers a wide spectrum of emotions!  Suppressing them is denying your basic status as a human being. You deserve feeling them all because that is what being normal feels like!

What to Do Instead

Accepting difficult emotions helps with coping and decreasing the intensity of those very emotions. Emotions are not "good" or "bad," all positive or all negative. Instead, think of them as guidance. Emotions help us make sense of things!  If you are sad about leaving a job, it probably means that experience was meaningful. If you feel anxious about a presentation, it probably means you care about how you are perceived.

Emotions are not only a way for our mind to clue us in to what’s happening; they do convey information to the people around us. If we are sad, it pulls for comfort. If we communicate guilt, it pulls for forgiveness.  

While it may be beneficial to try to look on the bright side of things and find the silver lining in all life experiences, it’s important to also acknowledge and listen to our emotions when they aren’t as pleasant!  No one can be a ray of sunshine 24/7; humans just don’t work that way. In fact, paying attention and processing your emotions as they come and go may help you better understand yourself, and those around you.

What's wrong with being positive all the time?

It is not that being cheerful is a bad thing. A positive attitude can be a gift to those around you, but it should not take the place of listening thoughtfully to others' experiences. When you are choosing to look at situations from one perspective in this case a positive perspective you are very likely to dismiss or minimize an authentic experience.  Even if you're trying to cheer up someone, diminishing someone's difficult experiences can leave them feeling they can hide negative feelings in the future. We have that disconnection between who we really are, and the mask that we are putting on for the world, in that gap, there is a shame.

What if feeling bad is sometimes good?

In the field of positive psychology, we can look into the potential upsides of feeling down. Since the late 1990s, practitioners of positive psychology have studied the keys to how humans thrive, learning from our joys and pleasures rather than depression or other mental illness. While many think of sadness or anger as unpleasant experiences to be endured as a key part of flourishing!

It's all about balance

The positive benefits of negative emotions may be best experienced in relatively small doses. The value of difficult feelings is all about finding balance. Any negative emotion can go too far, become maladaptive or turn into a clinical or psychiatric issue. The benefits of positivity are enormous, and we're not denying that. When you do so to an extreme, when you dismiss authenticity, that's where problems arise.

It’s okay to have a positive and optimistic outlook and feel sad at the same time. We can feel sad and be grieving and still look forward to the future. Both of those are necessary for a healthy outlook and sense of well-being.

Optimism vs toxic positivity

Optimism is when a person remains positive about the core outcome of a situation. Optimistic people are likely to know that their failure is not permanent and there is scope for change. Over time, the benefits of a positive mindset and how it reduces your risk of heart diseases improve immunity and gives you several other health benefits.

However, there is a difference between having a positive outlook on life and being happy. You can be sad about a situation and still have a positive feeling about the future.

We have confused being happy with the ability to apply a positive mindset. The concept is everywhere in popular culture that you won’t even realize you are looking at it until you become aware of the issue. Remember those happy looking people on social media platforms and the many positivity quotes subtly pushing you to chase happiness? When you run after happiness and ignore all your negative feelings, you set yourself up for failure by default.

There is no denying that each person has a different way of coping with their negative emotions but a haunting sense of despair is a common denominator for all unless they are in complete denial of their conscious feelings. And it is usually these people that belong to the latter category, who seem to have an air of positivity no matter what they happen to go through.

While being optimistic is definitely a good thing, its utility in the long run. And it does seem that an extreme expression of constant positivity in life eventually starts leaning more towards the ‘toxic’ reading of the meter, thus proving to be rather harmful!

We are so wrapped up in a world of ‘staying positive’ that we are ashamed to actually feel anything else.

**** Written for Meridian Counseling by Trishna Patnaik, a BSc (in Life Sciences) and MBA (in Marketing) by qualification but an artist by choice. A self-taught artist based in Mumbai, Trishna has been practicing art for over 14 years. After she had a professional stint in various reputed corporates, she realized that she wanted to do something more meaningful. She found her true calling in her passion that is painting. Trishna is now a full-time professional painter pursuing her passion to create and explore to the fullest. She says, “It’s a road less traveled but a journey that I look forward to every day.” Trishna also conducts painting workshops across Mumbai and other metropolitan cities of India. Trishna is an art therapist and healer. She works with clients on a one on one basis in Mumbai. Trishna fancies the art of creative writing and is dappling her hands in that too, to soak in the experience and have an engagement with readers, wanderers, and thinkers.