Image by John Hain from Pixabay ​

I've been interested in a notion called "toxic positivity" lately. It's a rather simply concept -- attempting to demand another person to think more positively about any myriad of negative situations or attempting, at all costs, to only see the positive in any situation that results in ignoring true feelings/underlying issues. I absolutely know that I have been guilty of doing this to people. I certainly know what it is like to receive this kind of feedback as well. Toxic positivity makes me feel judged, invalidated, or that I am overreacting. When someone tries to tell me to just be more positive, my mind envisions me throwing a temper tantrum ala three-year old, stomping up and down saying, "you aren't listening to me!"

Part of my interest in this topic is because some of my own coping skills in tough situations is to insert some positive thoughts. There is a skill in the DBT world called "Comparison". When I would share information about this skill, I would start with a disclaimer that this skill should be used carefully. The idea is to look at your life circumstances in context of someone who is not as fortunate. Also, I could use comparison to look at my current feelings/circumstance to another time when I was experiencing something similar and had reacted in a way that was not as effective. Lastly, I could compare myself to others who are reacting  the same as me or less effectively than me. OK, what's all this mean. Here are some examples:

1. I stopped to get gas the other day. It was after work, I was tired and a bit cranky. I started to go through the 100 screens to start pumping gas and my rewards number failed. This started all the screens over again. I tried to enter it again, same thing. Fine, I didn't have a lot of points anyway so I make it through all the screens and my card gets declined. I know I have money in there. What the *(O&CD*(S?? So, I am now extremely annoyed. I reminded myself, at least I have another form of payment I can provide instead of having to go get cash or go home to find an alternative. So, this scenario is by no means a disaster. I used comparison to settle myself done a bit and not to let it effect my day. 

2. I was feeling some grief about a lost friend over the past two weeks. Whenever I think about this person, I have significant regrets about how I treated this person and often wonder what our friendship would have been like today if he were still here. I compared how I was coping with these feelings versus ten years ago when I just tried to push these feelings aside. I am coping better now because I can talk myself through the process of what I am feeling and what I can do when these feeling arise. I have compared the situations and I am doing better now.

3. A friend had reached out to be about a classmate/friend of hers who lost a child at age 13. We were discussing what it is like to lose people from our younger years and neither of us could image the devastating pain of losing a child. In this moment, I was comparing how we were both feeling and I felt validated that I was feeling similarly to her. 

As with positivity in general, there are times when this intervention works well. I do like to remind people of their positive nature when they are being hard on themselves. I like to remind myself that I have made it through difficult things before and I will again. I have suggested both professionally and personally to make a gratitude list every day even if the day is bad. In my mind, I figure even if this day is the worse day in a long time, there are still things that I can remind myself that are good -- my family rocks, my cat is my buddy, I have a roof over my head, etc. The question for me is when does positivity or other interventions become toxic?

With the comparison skills, it is really easy to fall over into toxic territory. When I lost Daisy (my girl kitty of 13 years), I could have compared some things: Well, at least I am not starving on the streets. Or other people don't see cats as much more than a pet, so get over it already. That skill would be absolutely wrong for that moment. Also, requiring myself to find something positive out of this situation. Well, at least it wasn't your CHILD, "just" a pet. I can always get another cat. There are worse things going on in the world, ya know. Examples of toxic positivity that could come my way in that situation - at least you have another cat. It could be worse. You'll be fine. Everything happens for a reason. Ouch. I know I have done this to other people and for that, I am truly sorry because I am now seeing how dismissive and minimizing those catch phrases tend to be. 

I think I have used toxic positivity as a way to avoid my personal discomfort with being around grief. I am certainly understanding grief more and I am not as afraid of it as I used to be. One of the hardest things about being a counselor for me was not being able to fix things. In nursing, we fix things. In therapy-land, it is a process completely driven by the client to get through life and not necessarily to a destination. Toxic positivity is something easy to fall back upon to make me think I made the situation better. In reality, I made that situation a lot worse. I have invalided that person's emotional state. I have given directives/advice that I couldn't do in a similar situation. I am trying to gloss over a huge change in their lives and missed an opportunity to offer acceptance and support to them. 

Most people, I believe, don't mean to be toxic. It's easy to fall back on cliché sayings when we don't know what to say or how to express ourselves in the midst of intense emotion. Life is about learning and changing. I will always say one of my favorite exercises in early recovery was exploring my values. Since I had lost touch with them during my active years, it was nice to see I hadn't lost them entirely. Since then, I have wanted and worked to change my behaviors that reflect who I would like to be. Having come across toxic positivity, I realized offering this "support" is not in alignment with how I want to be a friend. Since I was made aware of this concept, I have been attempting to observe what I am saying and when with the idea of raising my awareness to at least avoid saying something invalidating. Silence would be infinitely preferable to that. 

So, all, thanks for reading! I am on a bit of kick these days and hope to stay writing for a while!
​Julie 

Let me preface this entry with a few things:
      1. I do not disagree with inspirational memes.
      2. Little inspirational quips can be great.
      3. You do you. 

I despise this meme with 100% of my being. I have seen this floating around for quite a few years and have found it on some of my recovery pages. My emotional response to this particular meme is starting to mirror some of my responses to "positivity" memes floating around the internet. Now, if you are friends with me on Facebook, you know that I post at least one meme a day, so the irony of this entry does not escape me. I have, however, specifically avoided "life memes" as I call them - inspirational one liners that should change your outlook on today and forever! Those 10 word memes that will remind you that you just need to change you outlook to change your life! I post nonsense memes because I like to laugh and I hope people enjoy it. 

I wrote an entry a few years ago about my annoyance with some memes. When this one started rolling around to me, my annoyance started to turn into anger. It is 100% too simple. This meme casts aside several factors that contribute to these situations. Yes, marriage is hard. My ex-husband got married to an out of control alcoholic that was pretty stealthy about hiding the extent of it. Divorce was hard for me because I had to admit that I chose alcohol over a person and that us together was a total disaster. So, did we both "choose" our misery? Did I choose to be an alcoholic? Sobriety is hard and so is alcoholism. Is there a way that I could have NOT chosen to be an alcoholic and then select a relationship that wouldn't fail? Please tell me, oh wise-meme writer, because being addicted sucked. 

Debt is a choice? Well maybe, but what about my friends who have been taken advantage of in relationships and had no control over finances? What about the people who struggled to make ends meet to feed their children and were offered cheap credit as a way to survive? What about the 18 year old kid that wants to have a chance at college, takes out a loan to realize this dream and hits a horrible? This meme to me tends to suggest that I am stupid. I cannot manage money appropriately and poverty simply shouldn't exist because people "choose" to be poor. This statement just reminds me of the old adage "Pick yourself by your boot straps, you lazy bum." I was in debt coming out of my marriage because we didn't understand credit. I was living in a home that I owed 96,000 on and was worth less than 40,000. Did I choose the latter? Did I choose an economic meltdown that resulted in job loss, foreclosure, and using a credit card to simply be able to eat? 

Obesity and diet are hard. Yet, this statement is an oversimplification of what contributes to obesity and how to maintain a healthy diet. Does who ever wrote this have access to fresh food? Does this person live in a food desert where the only store that sells food in a reasonable distance carries shelf foods that are highly processed? Poverty contributes to obesity. Did that child "choose" that? Unrelenting marketing and advertising has people convinced that one thing is better over another, only to find out later that this was incorrect. (Think about the war against fat and how sugar intake dramatically increased with a correlated rise in obesity.) According to this meme, I guess people are just generally stupid and make bad choices. 

Communication - ok. So, I didn't communicate in some relationships because I didn't know how. So, I learned more about what I needed to contribute to be a successful communicator. Yet, I landed in a job that no matter how much I communicated, I was berated, belittled, and often left feeling less than worthwhile. Yes, I chose that job, but I was choosing to communicate and it didn't work. So, did I actively seek out a position where my communication skills would be rejected? How in the hell would have I have known that going in? As a response to trauma I experienced there, I choose to limit my communication with others regarding some aspects of my life. Right or wrong, I am following my heart and my instincts to protect myself from further harm. Are you judging the way I have chosen to protect myself from those who don't have my best interested at heart? 

Basically, this meme makes me feel judged. One of the areas that I have worked on in therapy is my defense reaction. I am epically defensive. It does not take a whole lot of me feeling threatened on some level to start shooting off my mouth. I can be mean. I can be outright vicious depending on the topic. While I have great empathy and sympathy for my fellow human beings, if you make a comment about how I have constructed my life over time, I will have some very choice words for you. Have you lived my life? Do you understand the root of why I do things the way I do? Do you have any understanding for me that there are things I need and have to do to protect myself, including my sobriety? When I see others reacting to situations in a way that is different from how I would, I take a second to think about what they have been through or learned in their lives about communication, relationships, and money. Maybe their form of coping works for them or they simply don't know any different. 

In the world of social media, memes like this float around all the time and I have certainly seen a number of responses to them both positive and negative. I don't tend to spend much time commenting on memes I find annoying or inaccurate. It is not worth the effort or the argument which is never resolved on social media anyway. I have tried to increase my awareness, however, of the number of these memes that are simply dismissive of the broader human experience. 

I learned very quickly in recovery that there are different way to get to recovery. Heck, the definition of "recovery" is still under debate these days. It used to be that being abstinent from drugs/alcohol was sufficient to be "in recovery". Then, people realized that not using didn't always equate into a happy life so maybe there were more steps to be taken to be in recovery. The discussion started to shift towards allowing the individual to decide what recovery is for them. At first, I wasn't 100% on board with this idea. I remembered very quickly, however, that my way is not the "right" way. My recovery is not your recovery. My mental health recovery ebbs and flows regularly, though, I would not say I have had a full relapse into mental health crisis. I had to think to myself: "What's the point of hammering down one black and white definition of recovery? Isn't that what got us into trouble in the first place? Trying to make things concrete when they are not?" 

I keep in mind that when people are sharing inspirational memes, generally they are not out to save the world. They have found something that worked for them and they want to share it in the event that someone else can be spared the pain they experienced. Heck, that was the reason I went into counseling in the beginning. To me, recovery is a gift and if I could help anyone start their journey in a different direction, I would be so honored and humbled. I become more frustrated when an message becomes over simplified and judgmental. If you have ever experienced depression and someone tells you "just think more positively", the instinct is to roll the eyes. What if my brain doesn't allow me to do that right now? Mental illness, including addiction, are far more complex than a 10 word solution. Now, I have benefited from some positive thinking measures, however, I have had to work to find when that is a solution for me and when I need something more. It's a process and it's a long one to find the combination of things that work (therapy, medications, DBT skills, AA meetings, talking with friends/family, taking a shower, letting myself sleep, etc.) 

I had this blog post on my heart for a while. I felt like I needed to be able to say my peace about it. I hope to get back to writing a bit more. I've always got something to talk about :) 

​Julie