“You’ll be fine! Take a chill pill! Don’t be so negative about it!"
How many times have you heard this when you were feeling utterly low before it began invalidating your own feelings about the situation? If I had a dollar for every time that I’ve heard the phrase ‘be positive’, I’d be a millionaire by now.
Toxic positivity is the idea that one should only focus on happy or positive feelings and reject anything remotely negative, often labelling it as harmful or unproductive. It can be harmful to people as it invalidates their emotions and makes them feel guilty for not being able to “just be positive.”
Mariam Naeem, a 21-year-old media and culture student from Karachi, Pakistan, talks about how frequently she’s heard such phrases. “It’s wild how many times this has happened to me but I can't specifically remember any situation. It’s usually ‘Don’t worry, it’ll get better soon. It always does.’”
The problem with toxic positivity is that it doesn’t allow for the full range of human emotions. People are complex, and emotions are not always easy to control. Negative emotions like sadness, anger frustration is a natural part of the human experience, and it is important that we acknowledge and accept them. The reinforcement of “happy thoughts only” or “good vibes only” in a situation that does not guarantee any sort of happy thoughts or good vibes only leads to the suppression of the negative emotions that the individual is experiencing.
“While cultivating a positive mind-set is a powerful coping mechanism, toxic positivity stems from the idea that the best or only way to cope with a bad situation is to put a positive spin on it and not dwell on the negative,” said Natalie Dattilo, a clinical health psychologist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in an article titled “Time to ditch ‘toxic positivity,’ experts say: ‘It’s okay not to be okay’” in The Washington Post.
“‘It’s gonna be okay’, ‘You got this’ is not something I want to hear when it’s not really getting okay,” says Megha Mukundan, a 24-year-old journalism student, who is tired of being told that she’s going to be okay. She feels that feeling anxious or stressed is wrong. “When I hear phrases like that, I have this pressure to be okay when things are not actually going right. I feel if things aren't going fine, I should sit through that grief and work it out until I feel alright.” She expresses how she would rather be told something along the lines of “everything and everyone won't be fine all the time, and that is okay.” When it is the other way around, “I feel like I am the problem,” she says.
Sometimes, we don’t got this. And that is okay. "To just think positive despite being under terrible circumstances, is invalidating the things that I’ve been feeling,” says Gopika Shaji, 21-year-old cybersecurity student from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. “They say that there are so many things to be grateful about.” There is. But you don’t always have to feel that way. And that is okay.
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