Toxic Positivity: When Being too Positive Becomes Toxic
Toxic positivity occurs when you're not processing negative emotions as you should. While it keeps you at bay but it's not a healthy practice.
Have you ever met a friend or a family member who’s told you to stay positive when you’re feeling down? Is your family always telling you to look at the bright side when things get out of your hands? Do your friends not let you process sad emotions? Congratulations! You’ve had your fair share of toxic positivity.
What is Toxic Positivity?
Toxic positivity occurs when you’re not processing negative emotions as you should. You keep trying to stay positive and not letting yourself get closure or understanding what has happened.
“Toxic positivity is the assumption, either by one’s self or others, that despite a person’s emotional pain or difficult situation, they should only have a positive mindset or — my pet peeve term — ‘positive vibes,’” explains Dr. Jaime Zuckerman, a clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania.
This term also refers to the way to live; only feeling positive emotions and avoiding any negative feeling. While it’s an amazing tactic to adopt in order to keep yourself at bay but it’s not a healthy practice. You need to understand that feeling sad and not happy at times is a part of life. It’s totally normal to not feel okay and once you accept it, you can get over it and move on even quicker rather than completely ignoring that feeling.
“Avoidance or suppression of emotional discomfort leads to increased anxiety, depression, and overall worsening of mental health,” Zuckerman says.
When you avoid negative emotions, it keeps building up and gets bigger and bigger. You reinforce the idea that you shouldn’t pay attention to them. Hence, making the issue bigger than what it actually is. You’re filling your emotions in a bottle and putting a cork in it, but it’ll do more damage than good once it’s filled to the brim. It won’t overflow but shatter into bits and pieces, eventually doing more damage than anticipated.
We, humans, cannot only function by being happy and positive all the time. Once in a while, it’s okay to feel sad, it’s okay to cry, and it’s okay to not feel okay. But you need to feel all these emotions with the intention of reducing the intensity over time and moving on with it. If you keep staying positive all day every day, then you will end up poisoning yourself with toxic positivity.
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