There’s no place for toxic positivity in 2022 and beyond

Toxic positivity entails that no matter how difficult a situation is, you should remain positive. But given the fraught times we live in, does this belief help or hurt?

Throughout the pandemic—as we contended with lockdowns, sickness, loneliness, death, uncertainty and stress—my entire Instagram feed was telling me to stay positive or be kind or keep smiling or be grateful. I got “stay positive and test negative!” texts on the regular; many will say that it was the pandemic’s most popular platitude. But honestly, I was struggling with it. It seemed like the world was falling apart and I just wanted to stay in bed and wallow instead of trying to seize each day. It turns out, all that positivity actually wasn’t doing anybody any good. Instead, it was just telling people that if they were home and safe and well, they didn’t have the license to be sad or upset or scared. They just had to be grateful even though life, as they knew it, had been turned on its head.

How can any kind of positivity be a bad thing?

Toxic positivity is an inclination to bypass and ignore uncomfortable feelings to attempt to uplift a mood or change one’s outlook towards a situation. “The effect ends up trivialising or minimising concerns although the intention might be to make someone feel better,” says Aanandita Vaghani, a mental health counsellor and founder of Unfix Your Feelings. “It is the pressure we put on ourselves or people around us to feel ‘good’ or ‘okay’ rather than allowing the authentic and true emotions to flow,” says Ruchi Shah Jhaveri, a mental health counsellor and dance/movement therapist. You may feel that being upset or down in the dumps is unnatural or wrong, forcing you to pretend or stifle what you’re really feeling.

You might spend some time distracting yourself by watching a funny show on Netflix or eating a big bowl of ice cream, but when you’re hurting, you’re hurting. “The easiest way to think about emotions is by using the metaphor of a fizzing soda bottle. The tighter you trap the bubbles in, the more forcefully they will pop when the bottle is opened. Emotions in the body are similar. Suppressed emotions find a way to surface in the physical and emotional body. They can show up as different emotions, maladaptive behaviours and even medical illnesses,” says Jhaveri.

Emotions that are suppressed in the short term find their own ways to show up in the long term. Vaghani cites a 2013 study at Harvard that portrayed that those who suppressed their emotions increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30 per cent, with their risk of being diagnosed with cancer increasing by a whopping 70 per cent. “Studies show that suppression literally puts a load on the brain and makes it run out of cognitive resources like attention which are needed in social interactions,” she says.

So it truly is okay to not be okay?

Yes, even though social media promotes a different story. Platforms such asInstagram and TikTok galvanise flexing, so you feel like you have to put your best life on display—one that is productive, happy and perfect at all times. This has come to a head with toxic positivity. People don’t want to follow influencers that may be perceived as pessimistic, so content creators and brands have to portray an optimistic outlook at all times, even though it is not always the case.

Vaghani likes to tell her clients to focus on the idea that emotions are just information providers—they tell us about how we are doing as people, at work or in our relationships. “For instance, when you’re about to cross the street and see a car coming fast, the emotion of fear keeps you safe from having an accident as it helps you move away to the curb,” she says. We often label feelings as strictly positive or negative, which only allows us to fully feel the former. “When we feel ‘negative’ we try to push these feelings away, often using Netflix or food or substances to numb the pain temporarily. However, when we feel our feelings both negative and positive, we can notice what behaviours make us feel better and worse, and make changes accordingly,” she says. Every single person is going to have a bad day (or more than just a day), says Jhaveri, because it is the beauty of the human experience. “It is now more important than ever before that we hold safe spaces for each other to experience our authentic emotions. It is our responsibility as a community to be accepting and compassionate towards our own feelings and of those around us,” she confirms.

How can you change the narrative?

Telling yourself that you’re ungrateful, ridiculous or silly for feeling the way you do can just make you feel more out of sorts than ever before. Jhaveri and Vaghani both say that you can’t choose the emotions you feel, but you can choose how to feel and treat them using coping techniques that help you navigate them best.

When someone you know is really going through a hard time, the same advice counts. Most often, telling someone to just get over something and feel better makes only the person doing the consoling to feel better. “Instead of telling someone to think positively, tell them that the way they are feeling is valid, and ask how you can help,” says Vaghani. “When we give others’ emotions room to breathe, we give them time to heal. By acknowledging pain, we give people room to express that their emotions are valid, and they don’t have to suffer alone through them,” she says.

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