The Dark Side of Optimism.
The toxic side of positivity.
Have you ever read a self-help book that gives you a flowery feeling about the world? The books that tell you about the power of being positive all the time. In the age of social media, we constantly see photos of people having a good time, their lives are so much better than ours.
The phrase toxic positivity deals with the concept of being positive all the time, that positivity is your only emotional state. These are the people who only see the bright side, sounds good doesn’t it? Hold on.
I was one of those people. Mr Brightside, the happy go lucky kid that lived life as if he had no problems. If someone was mean to me, I would behave as nothing happened, it was their problem, not mine. The silver lining was enlarged and elaborate in my life, I had zoomed in so much that I had forgotten about the dark clouds that loomed over me.
One day after school, I was waiting in the dining room, when a guy who was the school bully, bullied me, but I was Mr Brightside, how could he affect me?
I remember going to bed thinking about how much of a dick that dude was, but then it dawned on me if I’m Mr Brightside than I should pray that he improves, I should visualize happy times at school.
That’s when I could see the cracks in the philosophy of optimism.
Long story short, I beat the bully up, I beat him up badly and my parents were called.
There was nothing wrong in beating up that guy, he deserved it.
Where I went wrong was bottling up my emotions, taking his words and living inauthentically.
You can’t suppress emotions, Andrew Kirby talks about how suppression is walking across a crane on a rainy day without fear. You are supposed to be scared, if you fall, you die.
The negative emotion of fear keeps you alive.
When you deny certain emotions, you make your problems bigger. Avoiding negative emotions is a classic example of what I am on about. Since you avoid feeling them, you stop paying attention to them. While you are trapped in this cycle, these emotions become stronger and more significant, they start to “bottle” up. This approach lacks longevity, for how long can you avoid these emotions? We are not programmed to only be happy, we have other emotions too.
Avoiding difficult emotions means that you are missing out on valuable feedback. Pain gives you the best feedback. Let us say that you are running and you are afraid of dogs, whilst you are running you see a dog on the footpath, your emotions are telling you to be aware of your surroundings, they are giving you a heads up. You don’t have to cross the street, you can decide if you want to run towards the dog and face your fear or if you want to let the dog pass by.
When you live in this toxic bubble of positivity, you start to become less relatable and even less approachable. Toxic positive people act like they don’t have problems, trying to build a meaningful relationship with such a person will be difficult, how can you communicate problems with a person who does not see them at all?
The shadow of Toxic Positivity.
Carl Jung gave us the concept of shadows, that everyone has a dark side. Toxic positivity creates a dense shadow that gives way to all the emotions you are not supposed to have. The negative emotions get banished to the unconscious mind, over here they are left to cook up a storm, they start to show in the small things that you do.
Toxic positivity is forcing happiness by leaving no space for any negative emotions, true positivity is having a positive attitude whilst giving space to confront negative emotions, it is the middle ground of feeling good but also having the understanding that you feel like crap, that you are sad and hurt.
Stay away from people who force you to be positive all the time, those who enforce positivity on you are not willing to face their own shadow, so they decide to put a mask on you as well by telling you that you should focus on good vibes only.
What you should do instead.
Instead of: “you’ll get over it”, we could say: “I understand it’s a difficult situation. But you’ve coped in the past, you’ve always coped, and I’m certain that you will cope this time. If there’s something I can do for you, please let me know.”
Instead of: “just think happy thoughts!”, we could say: “I understand you feel like crap right now. If there’s anything I can do for you to make you feel better, let me know.”
Think about how good it feels when you can finally talk about how hard your day was with your partner, parent, or friend. Getting things off your chest, including negative things, is like lifting a weight from your shoulders, even if it’s more difficult than pretending everything is fine.
Emotions are not “good” or “bad,” all positive or all negative. Instead, think of them as guidance: Emotions help you make sense of things. If you’re sad about leaving a job, it probably means that experience was meaningful and that you should look for places with similar environments. If you feel anxious about a presentation, it probably means you care about how you are perceived and you care about giving a great presentation.
Emotions are not only a way for our mind to clue us in to what’s happening; they also convey information to the people around us. If we are sad, we call for comfort and empathy. If we communicate guilt, we call for forgiveness and understanding. If we communicate frustration, we call for a solution, sometimes, negatives lead to positives.
A story on how negatives can lead to positives.
I remember being fat-shamed a lot as a kid in middle school, it hurt a lot, I used to get into fights over my weight and life sucked. I used to feel like crap about my weight. I could not live like this, despite only being two kilos overweight, I used to feel like Homer Simpson.
The feelings of negativity and frustration spurred me onto losing weight, it is safe to say after six years I am fit and can run five kilometres in twenty-six minutes.
Had those feelings of guilt, fear and frustration been suppressed, I would have been fat and miserable, I needed to confront those feelings to motivate my self to lose weight and become healthier.
If you are fat-shamed, don’t sit around and accept your fate, exercise every day and change your fate, start small and build your way up. If possible, get a trainer to help you.
To conclude here are some takeaways from today’s article:
- The phrase toxic positivity deals with forcing positivity and suppressing negative emotions.
- Avoiding negative emotions only makes them bigger, confront them and try to understand them.
- True positivity is having a positive attitude which gives you space to face negative emotions.
- Think of emotions as guidance and feedback to your mind.
- Use negativity, guilt and frustration to motivate you, not to discourage you.
