Toxic Positivity: Why Always Being Positive Can Harm Your Mental Health

In today's society, we are constantly told to "stay positive" and "look on the bright side". Although these may seem like noble words, they can create a toxic environment for mental health. There is a term that is becoming popular today called toxic positivity where everyone wants to be happy all the time without considering what is happening around them. However, can positivity really be toxic? The answer is yes, when it distorts reality and prevents us from experiencing genuine feelings such as sadness, frustration or anger.

In this blog, we will discuss what toxic positivity is, what causes it, and its effects on mental health. We will also explore the reasons why it is harmful, how it is different from healthy optimism, and how it manifests in people’s lives.

What Causes Toxic Positivity?

The main cause of toxic positivity is the culture that insists that one must always be happy and have a positive outlook towards everything. In our culture, it is normal to suppress emotions like being sad or difficulty in facing problems. These emotions may be viewed as weak. Social media is also a significant factor that contributes to the problem. We are daily fed with other people’s highlight reels, be it vacations, achievements and happy faces. This makes people feel like everyone else is always happy, and that we should be happy as well.

There are also those who may use toxic positivity to have good intentions of helping other people. They believe that giving a “positive spin” to a difficult situation will make a person feel better. However, in practice, it results in the guilt or shame of feeling like an ordinary human being with normal emotions.

What Toxic Positivity Looks Like

Toxic positivity can manifest in various interactions, camouflaged as helpful advice. It might look like:

• When a friend or family member is struggling and telling them: “Just cheer up, be happy”.

• Saying, “It could be worse”, which tends to negate their genuine suffering.

• Telling the people around them to “think positive” when they are struggling to cope with negative feelings.

These comments can seem quite harmless, yet they deny actual emotions and do not let people cope with difficulties they encounter.

Signs of Toxic Positivity

What are the signs that you are receiving toxic positivity from others or even when you are practicing toxic positivity on yourself? Following are the some signs:

• Dismissing Emotions

Suppression of negative feelings by focusing on the positive outlook.

• Feeling Guilty

Feeling guilty for experiencing the pressure to feel sad, angry or frustrated.

• Minimizing Problems

Avoiding efforts to address problems and instead pretending they do not exist.

• Overgeneralized optimism

Expecting that positive thinking will automatically make things work as they should, when in fact, it cannot.

It is essential to recognize these signs for the sake of your mental health because you can accept emotions, without pressure to “stay positive” all the time.

The Root of Toxic Positivity

Where does toxic positivity come from? Many of the times, it is a kind of defense mechanism. Some people may propagate positivity because they are unable to handle with negative emotions. It takes little effort to share happy quote while it takes a lot of courage to just sit with someone’s suffering. This simply masks the problem and often appears to be constructive in the short term only. Real growth in mental health involves acknowledging and working through feelings, whereas toxic positivity simply tries to cover up the issues.

Why Toxic Positivity Is Harmful

Toxic positivity is harmful to your mental health in the following ways:

• Invalidates Your Emotions

When people tell you to be positive after loss or failure, it is like no one cares about your pain. Each feeling we experience is as genuine as the other whether negative or positive. One should never hide the sadness, anger, or grief they experience as it only suppresses the emotions. Later they may develop more severe mental health issues.

• Creates Unrealistic Expectations

It is not realistic to be happy always in life. There are always high and low moments in life. The problem with toxic positivity is that it makes people expect them to be happy all the time, and when they are not, it brings stress and anxiety. It is important to have realistic expectations about life and recognize that everyone has bad days.

• leads to Emotional Suppression

When you force yourself to suppress your emotions and appear positive, you might experience a negative outcome known as emotional suppression. Unexpressed emotions do not disappear over time but they accumulate and may lead to mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, or even fatigue.

• Strains Relationships

Toxic positivity harms not only the person who practices it but also their relationships with other people. It negates what a person is going through, or experiencing in their life, thus leaving them with the impression they are not being understood or their problems are being taken seriously. Real support

Toxic Positivity vs. Healthy Optimism

It’s important to understand the difference between poisonous positivity and realistic optimism or healthy positivity. Toxic positivity means encouraging positive thinking and not acknowledging negative feelings, while realistic optimism or healthy positivity means being positive but also taking into consideration negative emotions as well. Realistic optimism is the acceptance of the challenges we are likely to encounter while at the same time maintaining the belief that things will get better. It doesn’t demand positivity while enduring struggles, rather it promotes the strength and hope in a situation and still embraces the feelings of depression, anger, or frustration.

Healthy optimism makes mental health powerful because it allows for the acceptance of tough emotions and the search for outcomes. Healthy optimism focuses on overcoming negative feelings and making a positive change while toxic positivity simply ignores those feelings and does more damage than good.

Toxic Positivity in Different Fields of Life

It becomes critical to note that toxic positivity does not only affect general mental health but also spills over into various areas of life:

• At School

Students are often encouraged to “just stay positive” when dealing with academic pressure, bullying, or stress. This may result in burnout and mental exhaustion. Schools promote emotional well-being by allowing students to express all feelings they have and not only the positive ones.

• At the Workplace

In most organizations, employees are expected to be happy and cheerful regardless of the workload or personal challenges. This can lead to the creation of a toxic work environment, where employees feel as if they cannot express emotions that are natural to them thus impacting their efficiency and mental health.

• At Home

It also becomes evident that toxic positivity can influence the relationships within families. For example, parents may tell their children, to always be happy, unintentionally teaching them to suppress negative emotions. This may cause the development of unhealthy emotional habits during adulthood.

In this way, acknowledging emotions and fostering supportive environments in these areas can reduce the pressure of toxic positivity and promote mental well-being.

Embrace All Emotions for Better Mental Health

Being positive is not always possible in life, and it does not have to be okay all the time. Instead of giving a positive outcome, toxic positivity will make it worse because it enforces an environment where we are not allowed to express how we feel. Instead of constantly seeking happiness and avoiding negativity, it is better to allow oneself to experience all shades of emotions to be genuinely happy.

Real emotional health is the ability to be honest with ourselves and people. The meaning of life is not to be perfect as many people may think but it is alright not to be okay. In this way, practicing realistic optimism helps to recover and grow, which leads to the improvement of mental health in the long run.