Mitigate the Negative Impact of Toxic Positivity

Author: Vasundhara Sawhney

It will all be well. Don’t worry. That was the advice of my mother, as she hung up after telling me that she and my father had tested positive for Covid in the early days of the pandemic. I had good reason to worry.

My world had just collapsed. My father had underlying health conditions and, with both of them being ill, I did worry. How would they get the care they needed to recover? How could I not feel despair? I spent the day making frantic calls to friends who wouldn’t mind listening to my deepest anxieties. I was met with pep talks and positive affirmations:

• “Just try to put positive energy into the world.”

• “Focus on the good things in your life.”

• “It could be so much worse—be grateful.”

• “This too shall pass.”

One response stood out: “It’s OK to feel this way right now. It’s your parents.”

When I heard that, I could finally take a breath. I needed to know that it was OK to feel how I was feeling in the moment—rather than bury my emotions and pretend they didn’t exist.

It took my folks 28 days to test negative. I was mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. And still, the only person I didn’t hide my true state from was the friend who didn’t see my negative emotions as inherently bad. With everyone else, I put on a poker face and said I was doing fine.

Months later, while trying to clear my mind with some brainless Netflix scanning, I came across a Korean drama, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay. The title brought me back to those stressful weeks—all that pretending. Why was everyone trying to hand me a lollipop when all I wanted was a cup of chamomile tea? What is with all these “sending sunshine your way” and “positive vibes only” messages?

I Googled it.

That’s when I came across the term toxic positivity. Dr. Jaime Zuckerman, a licensed clinical psychologist and trained cognitive behavioral therapist, describes this as, “the assumption, either by one’s self or others, that despite a person’s emotional pain or difficult situation, they should only have a positive mindset or—my pet peeve term—‘positive vibes.’”

Dr. Zuckerman is currently in private practice outside Philadelphia. She specializes in the treatment of adults with mood disorders and anxiety. She helps her patients develop healthy boundaries in their relationships and focuses heavily on the negative impact toxic positivity has on patients’ lives. I reached out to her to learn more about toxic positivity and why it’s bad.

Here’s what I learned.

Toxic positivity not only invalidates your emotional state, but also increases secondary emotions

According to Dr Zuckerman, “The inherent problem with this concept is that we assume that if a person is not in a positive mood (or whatever we think a positive person should look or act like), then they are somehow wrong, bad, or inadequate. The problem is that, when we invalidate someone else’s emotional state—or in this case, when we tell someone that feeling sad, angry, or any emotion that we consider ‘negative’ is bad—we end up eliciting secondary emotions inside of them like shame, guilt, and embarrassment.”

In so many words, we are saying to them that they should feel ashamed of being sad or that they should feel embarrassed for being afraid. “Efforts to avoid, ignore, or suppress emotions that are appropriate to context can isolate someone in their time of need, thereby perpetuating the stigma that mental health issues equate to weak-mindedness,” Dr. Zuckerman explained.

It really is OK to not be OK

“Not only is it OK to not feel ‘OK,’ it is essential. An abnormal emotional response to an abnormal situation is normal. We cannot simply pick the emotions we want to have. It just does not work that way,” Dr. Zuckerman said. So feeling sad and scared about my parents after they got sick was normal. Crying after a fight with your partner is also normal, as is feeling anxious and scared about an uncertain future. When we think we might lose something we care about, that’s sad. When we don’t know what to expect next, that’s scary. We should let ourselves, and other people in our lives, feel these things as they come up.

Dr. Zuckerman noted, “Allowing yourself not to feel OK involves accepting all feelings, thoughts, or sensations and sitting with them until they pass. If you try to avoid, suppress, or ignore them, they will only grow stronger and leave you overwhelmed and believing that you cannot cope.”

Remember that no emotion is permanent. Anger and sadness, just like happiness and joy, come and go. We need to let ourselves experience painful feelings if we ever want to truly let them pass through us.

By hiding your discomfort, you’re only adding fuel to fire

“The more we avoid internal discomfort, the more isolated we can become, the more anxious we can get, and the more depressed we can feel,” Dr. Zuckerman told me. We need to not only feel, but also acknowledge our legitimate emotional responses to situations.

“When we pretend that emotional pain doesn’t exist,” she explained, “we send a message to our brain that whatever the emotion is, it is in some way bad or dangerous. If our brain believes we are in a dangerous situation, our body will respond as such. For example, we may experience rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, and a natural need to unnecessarily avoid the misperceived dangerous situation. When we avoid any kind of emotional discomfort, even physical pain, we end up unintentionally making those feelings larger, louder, and more overwhelming. If you don’t confront or process emotions in an effective and timely manner, the science shows that they can lead to a myriad of psychological difficulties including disrupted sleep, increased substance abuse, risk of an acute stress response, anxiety, depression, and even post-traumatic stress disorder.”

There is a better way to address emotions

If you’re still not convinced that being too positive can be toxic, consider its impact on the people you care about (including yourself): You may feel you’re being supportive by sending positive affirmations to a friend who is going through a difficult time, but, in reality, you may be invalidating their feelings and harming them when they’re already in a vulnerable state. Your positive affirmations create the idea that your friend is in some way incapable of handling their feelings. You may also be unintentionally gas-lighting them by signaling that there isn’t really a problem at hand. Toxic positivity tasks the person in need with faking an emotional response that is totally disproportionate to what they are actually experiencing.

When you’re lending an ear to someone in distress, have a positive mindset, but don’t offer them a pep talk unless they ask for it.

Instead, she suggests using phrases that affirm the other person’s feelings and let them know you are here to support them without expectation. You can also use these phrases to talk to yourself and validate your own feelings, such as: “You’re allowed to feel this way. Your feelings are valid,” or “Take your time. I’m with you and I’m listening.”

Feel your feelings. Sit with them. Let them pass. And let others ride the wave of whatever emotions they’re feeling too. It’s OK.

VASUNDHARA SAWHNEY is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.