The Optimized Cookie

Being in the middle of a pandemic and having problems prior to this, it’s more common than usual for us to be seeing people urging us to ‘be positive’ or ‘think of good thoughts’ to distract us from our troubled minds.

And that got me thinking, is this really positivity and if it is, how does it become toxic?

I have been reaching out to my family and friends a lot more seeing as I have decided not to go home to my province at the beginning of this quarantine to prevent spreading the virus to my hometown just in case I was a potential carrier. Being stuck in a unit alone in Metro Manila is something I acknowledge that I’m still lucky enough to be in yet cannot help having sad thoughts in the middle of the night regretting my decision, wishing I was at home with my family so bad.

It would be during these times that, not only from close friends and family, but from numerous posts on social media that I would receive and encounter words such as “think positive, this will all pass“, “focus on healing, you’ll be okay“, and “there’s a silver lining in all this“.

Now, in general, I assume that all of these are said with good intentions and these words are definitely appreciated. I mean, who wouldn’t like kind, positive words said to them, right?

So we then pose the question, when does positivity become toxic?

To ground this better, let’s compare definitions first.

Oxford Dictionary defines the word positivity as ‘the practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude’. While on the other hand, toxic positivity is defined by psychologytoday.com in this article as ‘the concept that keeping positive, and keeping positive only, is the right way to live your life. It means only focusing on positive things and rejecting anything that may trigger negative emotions.‘

From these definitions, we can assume positivity is ‘looking at the bright side despite negativity being present.’ It is a contrast, an antonym, an opposite. It acknowledges the existence of the other on the opposite side of the spectrum. Something that we do not see with toxic positivity in how its definition goes. Toxic positivity is making yourself blinded to the negative things. It refuses that negativity exists. It’s not even a matter of pushing down sad thoughts and emotions, it’s being happy because you cannot possibly be sad. You just can’t.

See the difference?

Now let’s look at the latter a bit more.

There’s a TedTalk I came across on YouTube that talked about toxic positivity. And from it, here are lines mentioned that I want to highlight in this post.

“During my most profound suffering, I was always instructed to be positive, to remember that there are kids back home who are starving to death and anything less than complete gratitude insinuated [at least to me] that I’m being ungrateful. Being positive meant completely avoiding the problem and focusing only on the good.”

Mahmoud Khedr, How Toxic Positivity Leads to More Suffering on Tedx Talks

And it honestly doesn’t take rocket science for you to see that something is wrong here and that this can be damaging. Some might argue that we should, in fact, be grateful of what we have be it possesions, privilege, or food, which I would agree with but only in the condition that we objectively say this and that one’s feelings are acknowledged as valid.

By this I mean that it’s healthier to let positivity and negativity co-exist in your life. It’s not as simple as black and white where you have the choice to either be extremely positive or be extremely negative. There are happy times, there are sad times and that is normal. You are not alone in feeling this way.

And on the other conditon, yes, there are people suffering out there and yes that is very unfortunate. But that does NOT invalidate what you are feeling. Emotions are not, and should never be a competition. It is valid that people are suffering. It is valid that you are suffering as well.

Now what is the point of me talking about all this? The reason why I wanted to talk about this in the first place is because I’ve had enough of hearing and seeing remarks along these lines everywhere I look. This type of thinking isn’t helpful at all for many reasons, one of it being that it hinders you to process your feelings properly. It takes your problem, makes you believe you shouldn’t have thought of them in the first place, makes you feel invalidated and gets back to you as if there wasn’t a problem to begin with. This can hurt a lot of people and may even lead to more people suffering from mental illnesses.

THIS NEEDS TO STOP.

I wrote about this in the hopes that people who read this may distinguish toxic positivity either when giving it or receiving it, and calling it out. Putting a foot down and not perpetuate this thinking any longer.

In this day and age, it’s absolutely high time we start paying more attention to the people who confide in us and who we confide to. Show them you care about their words or give caring words back. Listen to what they have to say intently and at the very least, try to be in their shoes as they tell you their problems. Don’t try to solve their problems for them. Just show them you’re there for them and help them feel they’re not alone.

More likely than we would admit, we ourselves already try to invalidate our thoughts while they’re still in our heads. With this, from here on out, I hope that we start to validate the emotions and feelings of others more whenever we possibly can. It’s really just all we need to hear at the end of the day.

Thank you for reading this. This subject encompasses one of the things I’m very much passionate about which is mental health. If there is any point you would like to discuss further or even question in my post, feel free to do so. I invite for a constructive discussion on this topic.

Til the next post and stay safe everyone.

Xo