GUEST POST: What Is Toxic Positivity and How to Navigate It
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been told to “just get on with it”, “just stay positive”, or my ultimate favourite “it could be worse”. If you eye rolled and raised your hand, then welcome to the world of toxic positivity. I’m Laura, I’m 26, a Coeliac, and a Positive Psychological Life Coach. It is my mission to empower and coach women around the world to create a balanced lifestyle that makes you your happiest and healthiest self, without buying into the #goodvibesonly trend.
The main assumption around the work that I and other coaches do is that it’s easy - you just need to think positive thoughts, ban negative emotions, and that’s the algorithm to ultimate happiness. The thing is that couldn’t be further from the truth, and that right there is the concept of toxic positivity.
Toxic positivity is the idea that you need to force positivity and avoid negativity in all aspects of your life to feel good. It’s very common in the online wellness space, particularly thanks to books such as “the secret” which claim negative thoughts can be the reason for our struggles, chronic illnesses, and more. If you’re not familiar with the term, here are a few ways that it can show up that you may recognise…
“Don’t focus on the negative” or “everything will be okay”– both often shared with us when we have gone through something unpleasant or have had what we consider bad news
“Just don’t worry” – often a well-meaning yet extremely unhelpful point of view when you’ve shared a concern, anxiety or worry
“Just look on the bright side”
The thing with toxic positivity is that it is often well-meaning, yet can be truly damaging. Being told that your negative experiences, emotions or thoughts at the end of the day “aren’t valid” and that you should be doing differently can cause shame, guilt, embarrassment, as well as physical things such as fatigue. They start to make you doubt yourself, your gut instinct, your intuition, which when you’re in your own world of thoughts can be a scary place – not knowing what or who to trust.
It often gets caught up in the world optimism, and whilst there is nothing wrong with being an optimistic person at all, it’s important that you aren’t actively cancelling the alternative reality. Feeling negative emotions or going through bad times is all part of our journeys and our growth. Although no one wants to feel anger, fear, or sadness, they are all critical to our experience as humans. They help us understand where we stand on issues or how we want to fight against problems. They encourage us do things that bring us joy, or create networks around us to feel safe. Without negative emotions, we wouldn’t really appreciate the positive ones.
Right now, we as a chronic illness community more so than ever are finding feelings of anxiety, fear, loneliness as we navigate not only a pandemic but a pandemic as someone with chronic illness. If there has ever been a time that it’s okay not to be okay it’s now. It’s essential to feel all the feels, process what’s coming up for you, rather than bottling it down because the online world tells us there are people having it worse than you, and to just stay positive.
If you are finding that toxic positivity is coming into your world, I wanted to share my top tips on how to navigate it and help you say goodbye to “#goodvibesonly” for good.
Journal. Writing down in your phone, on your laptop, or in a physical journal how you are feeling, what emotions are coming up for you, is a great way to acknowledge those things.
Understand that emotions aren’t exclusive. You can be sad and grateful at the same time, but its also okay to just feel one.
Allow yourself to process what’s coming up for you. When you’re going through something “negative”, allow yourself to process the energy rather than bottle it up. Whether that’s physically sitting and noticing what’s going on, going for a walk, having a good cry, or putting on some music and dancing. Processing and releasing enegy from
Set your boundaries. Communicate with those that you are spotting toxic positivity come from. Share where you’re prepared to have a conversation and what’s not okay to be shared with you. If it helps, prepare some responses to it, such as “Thank you for your suggestion but I need to process this in my own way and ignoring feelings that are arising for me isn’t helpful”. You don’t owe anyone an explanation, but it can help if you’re anxious about the conversation!
Protect your online space. It’s the one place that you have complete control over. If there are accounts or people who are promoting the message of toxic positivity which you find hard to consume, it’s okay mute them or unfollow.
Work with a professional mindset or psychological coach. We are trained to help you navigate limiting beliefs, understand thought patterns, and can support you on your journey.
I hope you found these tips helpful in spotting and saying goodbye to toxic positivity in your own life. If you would like to ask any questions, feel free to reach out to my DMs, my Instagram is @LiveWell.WithLaura. Also thank you so much Nat for having me here on the blog, and holding this wonderful space for our community! Xx