Why I’m so negative about positivity

There is positivity, and then there is toxic positivity.

Toxic positivity is also referred to as having a “growth mindset”.

I’ve had my fair share of depressive episodes caused by people around me misunderstanding me — it was sensory overload, autistic burnout, and complex PTSD all along.

Life has thrown tons of lemons my way.

You know what I was raised to do with those lemons?

Make lemonade — not because it was the obvious choice, but because what else was I going to do with the lemons? Who was to say I didn’t deserve the lemons thrown at me?

In an interview with a now-defunct indie magazine, Kathryn Prescott said to get out from under the tree when life gives you lemons.

That gave me pause. What?!

It shifted my entire perspective on life and the things that have happened TO me.

I realized that I didn’t have to keep making lemonade, even when I was sick of it.

I could
stop.

I could stop.

I COULD STOP.

Living a life wherein I made lemonade until it negatively affected my life in the name of sticking to the status quo and “staying positive” wasn’t a life I had to live.

I’d always wanted more for myself, but I thought that “more” would happen if I kept doing as I’d been taught — making lemonade.

Change only happens from disrupting the pattern/cycle.

Something has to disturb the comfortable norms before progress is born.

Toxic positivity is harmful

Negative emotions have an important role in our overall mental health.

Negative emotions ≠ negative mental health.

I didn’t learn that until I was…32, I think?

Ignoring negative emotions affects our mental and physical well-being, and also negatively impacts our relationships.

Toxic positivity and emotional intelligence can’t coexist, because they’re polar opposites.

Toxic positivity leads to feelings of anxiety and shame, which can affect mental health by making you more paranoid and vexatious.

Suppressing emotions leads to physiological stress, which contributes to chronic pain and fatigue. Ignoring emotions or numbing yourself to negative emotions weighs you down.

Growth mindset concept

The growth mindset is veiled toxic positivity

Toxic positivity is shameful.

Pushing people to be positive “no matter what” reinforces the notion that negative emotions are shameful, which reinforces the idea that feeling anything other than happiness is bad.

It’s another way to shame people for who they are and what they’re feeling.

“But I want to be positive in my life! I want to shine like the sun and fart glitter!”

Okay? Literally no one is telling you that you can’t do that.

However, coexisting/cohabiting with other people on the planet — that requires compromise, compassion, empathy…it’s about being kind and considerate to other people, not simply living your life however you want and not giving a forecast about who you hurt in the process.

A darker, morbid comparison is a serial believing they want to live their life however they want.

The difference between these two scenarios is that one is criminalized by society (a social construct that ethically makes sense for the safety of others), while the other is accepted in society much like diet culture.

Diet culture is legal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not harmful AF to people.

And I know people are going to get to this part in my post and be like, “Um, Jane? That’s NOT the same! WTF!”

Except…it is the same. You simply don’t like that it’s the same, so you ignore the similarities so you can ignore the negative emotions swimming to the surface.

That, my lemon drops, is toxic positivity.