There’s Nothing Toxic About Positivity

Don’t let “toxic positivity” turn you away from the power of optimism

In the past few years, especially with the pandemic, the term “toxic positivity” has entered media articles. The articles warn against positive thinking as something that can become unhealthy.

I have experienced the incredible benefits of positive thinking in my life and I’m here to say that you can benefit from positive thinking without it becoming toxic.

Studies have shown that optimists are less stressed, and have better health and well-being. Don’t let “toxic positivity” scare you off from the benefits of positive thinking.

What is toxic positivity?

Toxic positivity is the idea that no matter how bad you feel, you should maintain a positive mindset. You should reject negative emotions in favor of remaining upbeat and optimistic, even if that’s not how you feel on the inside.

What’s so toxic about that you might ask? If you think it’s important to avoid feeling negative emotions, you will judge yourself when you do feel sadness, pain, or disappointment. (And you will feel those emotions because that’s life.)

The feelings of shame, guilt, or unworthiness that result from your judgment are more damaging than the original negative emotions you were trying to avoid.

But just because you can be too positive, doesn’t mean you should let your negative thoughts get the best of you. Toxic positivity does not take away all the benefits of positive thinking and being optimistic.

Here are three ways to be positive without being toxic.

Allow yourself to feel negative emotions, and know that it’s temporary

The reason toxic positivity is bad is that it insists that you deny your negative feelings. That is not healthy. Authentic human experience includes a range of emotions. When you judge yourself for feeling negative, you can generate additional negative feelings of guilt or shame.

But here’s the thing about emotions. We make negative feelings last longer by denying them. We know this intuitively, and now science is starting to confirm it.

Feelings pass faster if you actually feel them instead of avoiding them. Say you are going through a break-up and you are sad. You’re supposed to feel sad when a relationship ends. But also, if you look at things rationally, you know you will not feel sad for the rest of your life.

Emotions come and go, even negative ones.

A few months ago, I was interviewing for my dream job. Everything seemed to be going well, but after several rounds of interviews, I learned someone else got the job. I was completely disappointed.

The toxic way to deal with my disappointment would have been to dismiss it and start thinking to myself that a better job would come along, or that everything happens for a reason.

Instead, I let myself truly feel the disappointment for a couple of days. And the feeling went away. Once you get used to experiencing your emotions, you will find they tend to pass more quickly.

The one thing I will caution you about is not to get stuck in a spiral of negative thinking. If you are feeling sad about something, try not to let your brain go back through time to find all the things you can be sad about. One sad thing at a time.

You can feel bad about something and still look for the silver lining

I think a source of toxic positivity is the notion that if you feel bad about something, you can’t also have a positive belief about it. Humans are emotionally complex beings who can feel bad about a circumstance and at the same time believe it will improve.

Accepting your mixed emotions can help avoid the tendency to dismiss negative feelings without processing them. Your negative emotions are not a threat to your identity as an optimist. And your positive feelings are not more valuable or acceptable than your negative feelings.

When I didn’t get the job I mentioned above, I wanted to believe that something better would come along. But I also needed to feel the disappointment of being rejected for the job. Keeping in mind that emotions are temporary also helped, because I knew that feeling sad in the present didn’t make me less of an optimist overall.

Don’t dismiss the negative feelings of others

So far, we’ve looked at how you might inflict toxic positivity on yourself. But toxic positivity can come from others too in the form of pressure to hold back negative feelings with optimism or gratitude.

Just as you shouldn’t force yourself to deny your own negative feelings, you shouldn’t expect others to deny theirs. When someone is experiencing disappointment or sadness, they don’t want to hear that they should look on the bright side.

You are pushing your positivity onto someone else, and that’s when it becomes toxic (I think this is where the “toxic positivity” term came from). The more supportive response is to acknowledge their negative emotion.

Listen and empathize. If you want to engage your friend in positive thinking later on, be sure to acknowledge the very real negative emotions they were having previously. And do so without shaming or guilt.

Positive thinking is a great way to face up to life’s obstacles. But we must remember to allow ourselves the full range of human emotions and support others as they have negative feelings.

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