Toxic Positivity

Last week, I hinted at an episode about toxic positivity so that’s what I’ll be talking about today.  Before I started my research online, I wrote down a few ideas of my own that I had on this topic.  My main theme in this discussion echoes much of my beliefs about self-responsibility, self-creation and self-actualization.  So it may come as no surprise that my ideas, my thoughts regarding toxic positivity is that it’s an inside job.  It’s an inside job in its creation and in the solutions for fixing it.

I’ll start with sharing my ideas with you then I’ll move to what I found online about toxic positivity .  Then we’ll get to the solutions and how to use this information for you instead of against you.

Toxic positivity comes from the inside to present outward to the world.  Toxic positivity does not come from outside of you to affect what’s on the inside.

Toxic positivity is when we feel obligated to be positive when we don’t want to be.  But this is always an inside job.  No one can force us to feel anything, positive or negative.

If you’ve got a deer in the headlights look on your face right now, not only are you in the right place but you might want to listen to some of my earlier podcast episodes about thoughts and emotions.

Toxic positivity is also an attempt to escape the discomfort of negative emotion but it has a compounding effect because of the lie we try to force ourselves to believe that life should be 100% positive all the time.

Psychology Today defines toxic positivity  as, “...the act of avoiding, suppressing, or rejecting negative emotions or experiences. This may take the form of denying your own emotions or someone else denying your emotions, insisting on positive thinking instead.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/toxic-positivity 

To me, what helps us understand if we are experiencing toxic positivity  or not is to ask ourselves how we truly feel when we turn down the external voices and find what resonates within us.  If we can do this, toxic positivity  will fade away and we will hear our inner voice so much more clear.

The Psychology Group defines toxic positivity  as, “...the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.”

https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/ 

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