Toxic positivity is the assumption that despite a person’s emotional pain and turmoil, they should only have a positive mindset.
When we pretend that emotional pain doesn’t exist, we send a message to our brain that whatever the emotion is, it is in some way bad or dangerous. If our brain believes we are in a dangerous situation, our body will respond as such.
By overdoing positive affirmations, we may be invalidating our or others’ feelings and harming them when they are already in a vulnerable state.
The best way to deal with negative emotions is to let yourself feel the emotions you’re feeling and let them pass, not push them under the rug.
Toxic positivity not only invalidates your emotional state, but also increases secondary emotions.
According to Dr Zuckerman, “The inherent problem with this concept is that we assume that if a person is not in a positive mood (or whatever we think a positive person should look or act like), then they are somehow wrong, bad, or inadequate. The problem is that, when we invalidate someone else’s emotional state — or in this case, when we tell someone that feeling sad, angry, or any emotion that we consider ‘negative’ is bad — we end up eliciting secondary emotions inside of them like shame, guilt, and embarrassment.”
In so many words, we are saying to them that they should feel ashamed of being sad or that they should feel embarrassed for being afraid. “Efforts to avoid, ignore or suppress emotions that are appropriate to context can isolate someone in their time of need, thereby perpetuating the stigma that mental health issues equate to weak-mindedness,” Dr. Zuckerman explained.
It really is OKAY to not be okay.
“Not only is it okay to not feel ‘okay,’ it is essential. An abnormal emotional response to an abnormal situation IS normal. We cannot simply pick the emotions we want to have. It just does not work that way,” Dr. Zuckerman said. So feeling sad and scared about my parents after they contracted Covid was normal. Crying after you get into a fight with your partner is also normal, as is feeling anxious and scared about an uncertain future. When we think we might lose something we care about, that’s sad. When we don’t know what to expect next, that’s scary. We should let ourselves, and other people in our lives, feel these things as they come up — which may be more than usual right now.
Dr. Zuckerman noted, “Allowing yourself not to feel ok involves accepting all feelings, thoughts, or sensations, and sitting with them until they pass. If you try to avoid, suppress, or ignore them, they will only grow stronger and leave you overwhelmed and believing that you cannot cope.”
Remember that no emotion is permanent. Anger and sadness, just like happiness and joy, come and go. We need to let ourselves experience painful feelings if we ever want to truly let them pass through us.