Excuse my language but really what the fuck? This is a term I just heard today, and not even said directly to me but my husband.
My husband is very much a positive person and is in touch with his emotions. However when asked about his weekend, he stated this woman that it was great and that he never has a bad day. He always tries to find the good even in the roughest of times. She then in turn, proceeded to tell him that it’s okay not to be happy all the time and that being positive can cause toxic positivity. As I heard her explain this to him, essentially rejecting all negative emotions and how it’s evolution that if we go through pain it’s so that we won’t go through it again and blah blah. Basically, if you are too happy and positive, it’s bad. That’s what I got from her explanation.
I sat there listening to this with a stunned and bewildered expression. It took everything in me not to jump in and make comments to this woman, because frankly this way of thinking is fucked up. What has happened to our society that we consider positive thinking and happiness as a negative now?
Here is the descriptions I found on this:
- Toxic positivity or positive toxicity is dysfunctional emotional management without the full acknowledgement of negative emotions, particularly anger and sadness.
- Descriptions of toxic positivity vary, though there are some common elements in each definition. Toxic Positivity occurs when encouraging statements are expected to minimize or eliminate painful emotions, creating pressure to be unrealistically optimistic without considering the circumstances of the situation. https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/toxic-positivity
This terminology is linked to Anxiety and Depression. I’m not sure this woman even truly knows the definition and why it was originally created. When she stated that we as humans have evolved to learn from our emotions so that we don’t do or go through it again. It made me really upset. That isn’t even true. My first thought was child birth, the second was mourning a death and the third was raising children. All these things have difficult emotions attached, but also happy ones as well. God gave us emotions for a reason.
I would happily go through child birth again because it gives me a child which my body was able to grow, I love raising my daughter and hope to raise another child or two and I’ve mourned so many loved ones, but the hurt never overshadows the beautiful memories I have of them.
The way she utilized it was so far incorrect it’s disappointing and irks me to my core. This was created for people who have difficulty with emotional management. But the better question is why?
I apologize if I offend anyone here, but this is my opinion. Shouldn’t we as a society look at the bigger picture as to why people are masking depression with the age old “I’m great!” answer. Instead of labelling everything, creating new terminology or just allowing it to be acceptable, shouldn’t we try to find a solution? It’s not okay to mask emotions all the time, eventually they get released and sometimes the consequences can be extremely terrible in some cases. But where is the line when people use terms incorrectly or try to bring someone down for genuinely be a positive, happy person?
It causes a heavy heart for me to see a society so accepting of this. It’s become a norm and it really shouldn’t be. We as a society need to realize that all these things swirling around in our world now, are not all good things. The even a misuse of a term can cause harm. Can I call this Toxic Misuse and make it a thing?
This concept doesn’t remotely apply to my husband. Thankfully he stood up for himself and told her he didn’t believe in her theory and in a round about way told her off. When we looked it up, we were both astonished and just shook our heads.
Toxic Positivity….Are you kidding me?
End of rant.
Ciao!
Mama on the Move 