Why toxic positivity can adversely affect your life

A friend of mine was in an accident six months ago and has been in and out of the hospital the entire time. She and her family have experienced a huge financial, emotional and physical setback. We met for lunch, and the first words out of my mouth were assurances that she was making progress.

She exploded. “I’m so tired of everyone being so *&!@(#% positive!”

Not the response I expected, but it was a perfect example of how positivity can become toxic when people are so focused on being happy that they can no longer accept the difficult realities of life.

Positivity is part of the self-improvement industry that has become a booming business in the United States. The 2024 World Metrics estimates it is worth $11 billion annually. We’re told that happiness and positive thinking are the keys to a well-lived life, so no wonder people are shoveling out the bucks. Unfortunately, the incessant pursuit of happiness hasn’t paid off. The unhappy news is that the US is no longer among the 20 happiest countries in the world, according to the 2024 World Happiness Report. The US now ranks #23, compared to #15 last year.

The feel-good mindset that has infected modern society has produced nothing more than coddled, spoiled and entitled people who think the world owes them a living. Even worse, the world owes them happiness, success and admiration for being so special.

Erin Engle, a psychologist at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, explains that positivity becomes toxic when we avoid, suppress, minimize, or reject negative emotions.

Wow! That means we must acknowledge life will not always hand out blue ribbons for showing up or that parents may not always be able to buy their precious offspring out of adversity or a challenging life event.

As an example of how bad it’s become, some people in my California community started wearing safety pins on their shirts and blouses to indicate they were “safe” people to talk to. The idea was to assure folks that uncomfortable and inconvenient emotions were not real and would go away.

We’ve become a nation of ninnies. Sometimes we do need a swift kick in the butt to remind us we’ve been selfish jerks. Unless we join a religious cult or live with mommy and daddy the rest of our lives, we will brush up against reality:

Life is hard.

Pain is inevitable.

Growth is optional.

Here are reasons why toxic positivity can have a harmful impact on our lives:

1. Denial of real emotions

Positive thinking is one of the best ways to remain resilient in the face of adversity.  It helps keep our circumstances in perspective and maintain our confidence as we advance in business and life. So, when does helpful positivity tip over into the toxic kind?

Toxic positivity occurs when people force themselves to remain positive when it’s not natural. This can lead to a problem in acknowledging legitimate needs that we can’t address if we’re unable or unwilling to deal with the situation at hand.

When we feel forced to be happy and positive, it can affect our mental health because toxic positivity blinds us to real problems. When something is really getting us down, pretending to feel better than we do can prevent us from digging into our situation to find realistic solutions.

How to make it work for you: If you feel pressure to be endlessly optimistic, stop and acknowledge the pain and hardship for what they are. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl called this mindset “tragic optimism.” Stop trying to constantly stay positive and instead look for meaning and growth amid the darkness.

2. Invites delusional thinking

Our toxic focus on happiness and positivity requires that we never doubt ourselves, consider the negative repercussions of our actions and never acknowledge negative thoughts. It is the epitome of selfish living and shallow thinking.

When we are delusional about ourselves or our situation, we overlook or suppress red flags in many areas of our lives, whether it’s our love life or business. This hinders our ability to make good decisions. Research has shown that suppressing emotions, as toxic positivity does, makes them more intense and more challenging to manage.

Delusional thinking can make us complacent and lazy because we’re less motivated. We either delude ourselves into thinking that we’ve accomplished what we’ve set out to do or that there is no way to reach our goals and move forward.

How to make it work for you: Hope is stronger than optimism at predicting success. Rather than pursuing optimism, you should aim for hope instead. Optimism is just unquestioningly expecting the best. Hope is seeing the challenges but making plans for a better future anyway.

To change and improve your life, you will need to destroy those parts of yourself that are not based in reality with a newer and better part of yourself. It can be emotionally painful and full of anxiety, but remember that you can’t develop muscles without challenging them with a greater weight.

3. Loss of valuable emotions

We hear a lot about positivity’s power, and I’m a big proponent of positive thinking. But rarely do we hear of the power of negative thinking. The FBI never assumes that arrests will go according to plan. Instead, we planned arrests by identifying everything that could go wrong.

You want to do the same thing so you don’t end up flatfooted when confronted with an obstacle. In addition, negative emotions like anger and desperation can motivate you to move, inspire you to create and make change happen.

All emotions, even the uncomfortable or embarrassing ones, have something to teach us. Our brain is wired to pay more attention to negative emotions than positive ones for a very good reason: they alert us to danger in our environment. Getting our feelings under control, both positive and negative, is a sign of good mental health.

How to make it work for you: Negative emotions can rise within seconds. The key is to acknowledge them and then let them naturally dissipate.

Identify a negative emotion that has popped up within the past week. That negative emotion reminds you that either something ahead is worth paying attention to or something that has already happened is also something to examine.

Drill down until you identify the genesis of the emotion. What caused it? When did you experience it at other times in your life? Connect the dots and pinpoint what circumstances, events or people have produced it in the past.

If you quit because it makes you uncomfortable, you’ll never excavate the origin of your emotion.

It’s important to balance emotional awareness with the value of both positive and negative emotions in personal growth and decision-making.

Source: https://www.smartbrief.com/original/why-toxic-positivity-can-adversely-affect-your-life?utm_term=AEE6C64D-A551-4448-AC86-73E9EA97DDFE&lrh=286d9352d62fd57e4fed3250c88b0f8daf660a6cf28a1a542f1b6f7d4db58c17&utm_campaign=77F8DA5B-9982-431B-9E20-444163A3CF79&utm_content=086E2775-D7E8-4217-BD77-9E440242940E&utm_source=brief