What Is Toxic Positivity?
Posted on February 07, 2024 by Faith Feuer, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
This article explores the question of whether there can be such a thing as "too much" positivity.
Before delving into the topic of toxic positivity, I’d like to draw a distinction between happiness and positivity. Happiness, as I see it, is an emotion, a feeling, a state of mind. Positivity, on the other hand, is more of an attitude or an outlook. I believe that the two are compatible…happy people tend to embrace a positive outlook and people with a positive outlook on life tend to have such an outlook because they are happy. Not always true, granted, but there are similarities. So much so that we sometimes fail to distinguish between the two terms. The reason that I bring this up is because I was surprised when I recently came across the term “toxic positivity”. I asked myself, how can positivity ever be a bad thing? I ultimately found that I was defaulting to my feelings about happiness and wondering how too much happiness could be harmful. What I needed to do was separate positivity from happiness and start my investigation from there. Have you guys ever heard of anyone being “too happy”? We all know or have encountered at some point in our lives that incessantly chipper person who never seems to have a bad day and who, when we ourselves are not at our best, can seem downright annoying. But can an overabundance of happiness actually be detrimental? Speaking only for myself, I decided that I don’t think it can.
So what is toxic positivity? From what I understand, it is emanating so much positivity that we ignore or minimize the pain of others. The original use of this terms was in reference to the “toxic positivity of our culture”, think: don’t worry, be happy or keep calm and carry on. In other words, no matter what might be going on around you, in your own life or the lives of others, block out negativity at all costs and embrace positivity. If you ignore the bad for long enough, it’s sure to go away. Interestingly, the slogan “keep calm and carry on” dates back to 1939 Britain. The government commissioned an ad campaign to bolster public support for the imminent World War. Citizens were encouraged to forget about all that unpleasant “war stuff” and just believe everything was going to be alright. Fast forward to America in the 1970’s, two bookstore owners discovered a poster displaying the ”keep calm and carry on” slogan and decided to hang it up in their window. The rest is history, as we are all well aware of this theme’s popularity. The problem is, most of us can attest to the fact that ignoring the bad stuff doesn’t make it go away, it just temporarily buries it deeper. All positivity all the time, despite whatever is going on in our own lives or the lives of others, is no more a viable strategy than is constantly accentuating and living in the negative Like all facets of life, a balance must be struck.
This brings to me to my next point. In my quest to discover whether too much positivity could indeed be too much, I came across a podcast episode from The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos entitled “Don’t accentuate the positive”. Again, I was intrigued. Constantly exuding positivity to the extent that we invalidate or fail to recognize the pain of others is one thing, but could even THINKING positively too much be a thing? Well, it turns out that it just might be. Let’s say we have a goal in mind. According to the podcast, if we only entertain positive thoughts about it, such as how it would feel to achieve that goal, our brains are going to start imagining that we have indeed already achieved that goal. This is a tried and tested fact about our brains. Affirm something to yourself enough times, and your brain will start to believe it’s true, whether it is or it isn’t (think, brainwashing). If our brain believes we have already achieved our goal, it will begin to relax and think “hey, I’m done, I don’t have to do anything more”. Well, what happens then when, in the process of the physical you going about trying to attain your goal in real time, you encounter actual obstacles? The answer is, you’re totally unprepared and completely caught off guard. So, as counterintuitive as it may sound, practicing a simple technique called mental contrasting can actually help maintain that balance I alluded to. In mental contrasting, we actually visualize possible obstacles that may crop up along the path to our goal. It turns out that simulating those obstacles actually motivates us and prompts our brains to come up with workarounds. As such, when presented with actual roadblocks, we are ready and well-equipped to deal with them. This has proven true for athletes and soldiers fighting in elite military units. Granted, fantasizing about the attainment of our goals is easier and a lot more pleasant that pondering everything that could go wrong along our journey. However, incorporating a little negative thinking in the form of mental contrasting can in fact be useful and beneficial if employed correctly. A simple acronym can help us remember the process and it is called WOOP: wish, outcome, obstacle, plan.
