Don’t Be That Friend Who Always Says “Just Be Positive!”

It’s a lot more toxic than you think.

“Want me to tell you a joke to make you feel better?”

“It’ll be okay — just be positive!”

“Well, yeah that sucked…but you could just see it as a learning opportunity.”

“I mean, look at it this way — there’s always a bright side.”

Have you ever had a friend or family member say something along those lines to you when you’re feeling down? That used to be me, spouting phrases of positivity, pretty much no matter what the problem was.

And even now, I cringe knowing that although I meant well, many times I was actually invalidating other people’s emotion and pain.

Growing up, I was taught the power of mindset and thinking positively. My parents always stressed that there was a better way to look at something, if you looked hard enough. If something bad happened, there was a reason. You could learn from it. You could get better. How you reacted to the world was on you. Hardship might be abundant and life might give you lemons, but as long as you stayed positive, things would work out in the end.

That’s what I was told, and I believed it.

Mental health wasn’t something we really talked about, all the way until I was a young adult. Positive thinking and silver linings were almost always the answer — and since I was surrounded by that mentality, for many years that’s how I tended to view other people, too.

But unfortunately, that’s not how human beings work.

One time in eighth grade, we were on an overnight school trip to a National Park with a dozen of my classmates. I was friends with several of them, so I’d been hanging out mostly with those few. But I was definitely aware of some tension between certain people. One of my friends in particular had become the subject of a lot of unfair gossip, and was not having a good time.

In fact she cried several times over what the other girls were saying and ended up complaining to the teacher, who basically told her she was bringing down the group with her “attitude”. Ouch.

At the time, I didn’t know how to help or what to do. I was still pretty timid at that age. So I bought her a t-shirt from the gift shop that had a bear on it and said “just be paw-sitive”. To thirteen-year-old me, it was perfect. My friend gave a little laugh when she saw it, teared up again, and mumbled a thank-you.

But after that she didn’t confide in me anymore. Not on that trip, and not really afterwards, either. Our friendship changed. And at the time, I didn’t know why. I had had good intentions, but somehow made her feel even more alone.

Looking back, I absolutely know why. Instead of actually listening to my friend and acknowledging that how the girls and teacher had acted was totally unfair, I basically told her (in not so many words) to snap out of it.

Unfortunately, I did that more than I’d like to admit. I was so set in my thinking that if you just switch your attitude then you’ll feel better, that I alienated people in the process.

And even though I didn’t mean to, I also realized that for a long time I did the same thing to myself.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There’s actually a dark side to being positive

This is where toxic positivity comes in. There is definitely something to be said for having a glass-half-full mindset — but there is also absolutely a point at which you can go too far.

Toxic positivity is defined as “the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.” — Samara Quintero, LMFT, CHT and Jamie Long, PsyD

There is absolutely power in being positive and uplifting — but it becomes unhealthy if in the process you’re discounting and minimizing other people’s feelings (or your own).

Humans are emotional creatures, and we need to be able to experience those emotions — good or bad — in a healthy manner. If you or someone else is constantly trying to suppress those emotions, it can actually have a pretty negative effect on your body and your life.

In the case of the school field trip, my intense positivity caused my friend (and a few others, I’m sad to say) to pull away and isolate themselves rather than open up and express what they were feeling. Instead of making them feel heard and validated, my reaction was to simply tell them things like, “it can always get better” — and because of this I gave the unintentional message that they should feel shame for having negative feelings at all. And as a result, they no longer felt comfortable enough to confide in me.

This is more common than you might imagine. And particularly now, in a time when so many people are under constant pressure to stay afloat and be okay adapting to changes brought on by quarantine, being overly positive can be especially harmful.

“The pressure to appear ‘OK’ invalidates the range of emotions we all experience…It can give the impression that you are defective when you feel distress, which can be internalized in a core belief that you are inadequate or weak.” — Carolyn Karoll, psychotherapist

Bottom line — we’re all under a lot of stress, and we’re allowed to feel a range of emotions about it. We need to allow each other to do that.

How to recognize it and what you can do instead

Toxic positivity isn’t only in the form of messages like telling someone to “just be positive”. Another example is the pressure to be incredibly productive during this time.

You probably saw a lot of this at the beginning of lockdown — I did, and I’ll admit I engaged in some of it.

Feeling sorry for yourself? Make a list of the things you have to be grateful for. Stressed and stuck at home because you lost your job? Reorganize the kitchen and learn to bake something new. Create a home gym and get in shape. Start a side hustle. Write a book. For a while, like many others I was so overwhelmed with my lack of control that I felt I needed to fill my time with something — anything — to make it seem like I was still getting things done.

I wanted so badly to avoid the negative feelings, that I filled my time and my mind with whatever I possibly could. And social media only reinforced the idea that I wasn’t coping well enough if I wasn’t using my newfound “free time” to be productive.

But as you can probably guess, it caught up to me. Suppressing emotion just makes it worse.

Sometimes, you need to feel all the feels. Cry it out. Scream into your pillow or the silence of your car. If you’re overwhelmed, turn off social media and focus on your own life for a while, not what other people are bragging about accomplishing during this time.

Everyone deals with stress in different ways. Trying to push aside your own uncertainty and compete with other people will, in the long run, only make you feel more insecure and hopeless.

If you’re someone who has been guilty of being “too positive”, think about what you could say to someone that makes them feel heard, instead of minimizing their feelings.

Instead of saying, “Just be positive,” tell them their feelings are valid and they’re allowed to be sad and angry and scared. Try listening to listen, instead of listening to come up with an immediate response on how to turn it around. Sometimes people just need to let it out, and sit with how they feel for a while.

We’re all human. And humans feel.

While a positive mindset can be awesome, you also need to be thoughtful, and understand that not everyone processes things the way you do. A gentle nudge is one thing; telling someone to snap out of it and simply look at the bright side is another.

It’s important to recognize the difference.

Your friend might not necessarily be turning into a negative person — she’s just got a lot on her plate right now and is stressed as hell. Your brother might seem like a “downer” right now, but maybe he lost his job and has the right to feel like crap about it. Forcing positivity on someone who doesn’t need or want it at that moment, isn’t helpful or kind.

And last but not least, don’t forget to be kind to yourself. As someone who used to give herself (rather harsh) pep talks in the mirror about looking at the bright side and focusing only on gratitude to avoid negative emotions, I know it can be hard to let go.

It’s not a pleasant feeling to be overwhelmed, scared, angry, or sad. But it is natural — especially right now.

Do yourself and others a favor, and allow yourself to feel. Cry, journal, vent to a friend — let it out and know that the world is still pretty tough for everyone right now.

And whatever you do, learn to listen. Please don’t be that friend who no matter what, always tells you to “just be positive”.

Because sometimes, no matter your intentions, it can actually do more harm than good.