Detoxifying Toxic Positivity

I love being around people whose outlook in life is unshakably positive. Who wouldn’t, right?

It feels like they carry this certain charisma that is so infectious that when you start babbling about your deep seated grief or anger, they just know when, what and how to say certain words that can absolutely turn the table.

They just never fail to give the “life is always cupcakes and rainbows” vibe from the movie Trolls.

Positivity is being placed in a situation that is so difficultly hopeless and still manage to look at the bright side. This is such a hard task to do.

Our world changed and is still changing because of the virus outbreak that started late last year. Things were never the same from that point on, evidently, even to the subject of communication.

Communicating with people around has never been this difficult, atleast to what I have experienced in my not so long existence.

Eveyone is easily connected yet very disconnected at the same time.Technology has helped us a lot and has become the main channel of all sorts of media, yet making us realize the importance of face to face interactions and gravity of positive conversations in adult life.

The fact that everyone’s life has been affected by the pandemic and all of our conversations are based off social media, generalizing situations has been prevalent. People look at someone else’s situation from their very own situation, thus gave birth to Toxic Positivity.

According to Google, we define toxic positivity — as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations.

The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.

Thank you Google for putting that together, well, just like anything in excess, when positivity is used to silence or invalidate human’s emotion, it becomes TOXIC. It is like turning a blind eye to negativity to force a positive mind.

Grave as it sounds, pretending to be “positive” is both unhealthy for you and the person that you invalidate. It pays to check if you’re being one.

I did some research on the common signs of being a positively toxic person — which I will put at very last part of this article for your reference, some of these may be you or the people around you.

But, If I’ll give examples of toxic positivity that we often hear, I’d say it is when something really awful happened and people start saying “ you shouldn’t feel that way, you have so many blessings in your life to complain” or when you’re not feeling well, you suffer from stomachache for instance, they’ll say “that’s far from your intestine, you’re not gonna die yet” or worst “atleast it’s not the virus, you’re still good.”

When we feel that our situation or someone else’s situation is worst than who we impose positivity to, we become toxic. It may be true that your situation is the worst, but that doesn’t make the other individual’s emotions invalid. It makes your reasoning unsound.

If you find yourself guilty of these, check yourself. Keeping a facade of “Everything is Awesome!” is going to make it super hard connecting with people. It is more authentic and positive if you show you listen to listen and not to just respond.

Toxic positivity is human connection and relationship killer. Try to validate people more, in words and in action.

But just to be crystal clear, I don’t think that looking on the bright side is fatal. The world is made up of optimists and pessimists, a delicate balance of light and dark makes a better portrait.

Ultimately, the best way to spread positivity is by allowing people — and yourself — a certain amount of compassion, the world needs it now, more than ever! Your friends (and stomach) will thank you.

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Signs of Toxic Positivity

Hiding or masking your true feelings

Trying to “just get on with it” by stuffing or dismissing emotion(s)

Feeling guilty for feeling what you feel

Minimizing other people’s experiences with “feel good” quotes or statements

Trying to give someone perspective (e.g., “it could be worse”) instead of validating their emotional experience

Shaming or chastising others for expressing frustration or anything other than positivity

Brushing off things that are bothering you with a “It is what it is”