Toxic Positivity

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