“Good vibes only…”
“Think happy thoughts!”
“Don’t be a downer.”
Having an optimistic outlook on life can serve us really well, but when does positivity turn toxic? The short answer lies in how we relate to and understand our emotions. It seems these days we can find no shortage of ways to diminish, dismiss, or even deny what we’re feeling at the expense of “being positive.”
This month, we teamed up with our friends at StyleBlueprint to explore the concept of “toxic positivity,” identify ways to recognize it in ourselves and others, and what we can do to strike a better balance and learn to fully embrace wholehearted living.
You can read the full article here.
With so much societal emphasis on putting a positive spin on challenges that come our way, we might find ourselves glossing over our emotions in the name of peacemaking or people-pleasing.
It’s all about finding balance — a happy medium where you don’t fall into a pattern of negativity or hide behind a facade of positivity. A space where you embrace your truth while remaining hopeful. Mickenzie Vought, Onsite’s Editorial and Community Director, says, “Positivity is only toxic when it causes us to deny, dismiss, disengage, or diminish our reality and true emotions.”
Where does toxic positivity come from?
Believe it or not, toxic positivity is often rooted in how emotions are handled during childhood. Many of us grew up in homes that placed rules on managing our emotions. For example, you may have been told, “That’s not something to cry about,” or it may have been made clear that anger was a “bad” emotion, while joy and happiness are “good” ones.
“Many of us grew up in homes that taught us very clear (whether explicit or not) rules or narratives about our emotions,” says Laurel Powell, Clinical Coordinator Manager at Onsite. “If you were not taught to fully embrace our wide breadth of emotions — or worse, you were taught to dismiss or diminish certain emotions — you might have grown up with the inability to express and interrupt what you’re actually feeling. When that is the case, it can feel easier to dismiss what you’re feeling and lean into toxic positivity.”
Those early narratives become an integral part of our psychological fabric, making it tougher to recognize when there’s an emotional disconnect in adulthood. “Many of us are extremely disconnected from our internal worlds,” Laurel tells us. “When this happens, we become disengaged from our emotions. If you didn’t learn to connect to your internal world in your early years, it’s hard to know where to start when it comes to connecting with what’s going on inside your heart and mind. It takes intentional effort and often the unraveling of narratives and false beliefs you hold around emotions. Additionally, you can only offer to others what you offer to yourself. If you are more comfortable denying your own emotions, you will not be capable of holding space for the people in your life when they share something hard. Toxic positivity is often more harmful when we use it to manage our discomfort and disengage from our loved ones when they are struggling.”