I recently read an article titled Toxic Positivity – the Dark Side to Positive Vibes and the concept made a lot of sense to me. This is actually a good rebuttal to all the WhatsApp uncles who send relentlessly positive good morning messages and exhort people to not to question and change the bad; to see only the ‘good’ around us. So what is toxic positivity and how is has this been a particular problem during the pandemic?
This phenomenon is defined as an ‘obsession with positive thinking’; the belief that one should put a positive spin on all experiences including ones that are profoundly tragic. Have you heard people say things like being negative won’t help you, or it’s no big deal, or you'll get over it, or there are others who are far worse off than you, or don’t keep thinking about your problems, or turn that frown upside down? Toxic positivity sounds like this.
The first problem with this is that all those fiercely positive people seem to lack empathy and may be dismissive of the emotions and problems of others. The attitude is that one must be positive regardless of circumstances and the feelings of others. One must ignore and overlook so-called negative but perfectly legitimate and natural emotions like fear, anger, grief, sadness and so on.
When there is such a relentlessly positive person in the house of workspace, there is pressure on others to pretend to be happy. A colleague or family member who may be struggling will feel overlooked, unheard and demeaned. It is actually a form of gaslighting – where the struggles of someone else are seen as exaggerated or unreal or just attention-seeking behaviour.
Toxic positivity isn't just toxic for others around. It is also toxic for the ‘positive’ person. They put pressure on others as well as themselves to constantly ‘look on the bright side’ with the result that they reject their own supposedly negative feelings. It is a form of avoidance and will result in a cussed refusal to acknowledge problems, struggles, failure, suffering, sadness. Internalising and ignoring these feelings isn't healthy for one's mental wellbeing.
All those ‘stay positive’ types have been a real problem in the pandemic – in fact, they sound much like the government that refuses to acknowledge mistakes made and insists that all is well. Consider, for instance, someone who lost their job during the lockdown; something that can be upsetting, bewildering and downright scary. It doesn’t help for someone to say ‘at least you're healthy’ or ‘you're better off than your neighbour who died’.
If a family member was in hospital for a few days, that ‘positive’ person probably said something like ‘at least they are not in ICU’ or ‘I know someone who was in hospital for a month and still isn't OK’. The person may mean well, but ultimately it sends out the message that one's feelings are somehow not legitimate or worthy of concern.
Positivity per se is not a bad thing – it is good to try and see the positive side of things. The problem is when legitimate feelings are rejected and dismissed as being unreal or unimportant just to 'be positive'. Toxic positivity is different from optimism. Optimism is a form of hope, and it does not reject reality.
On the other hand, toxic positivity is a type of deliberate and willful refusal to see reality. Isolation, stigma, communication issues, low self-esteem are some possible fallouts of being around toxically positive people. So during the pandemic, toxic positivity took various forms: yes, people were dying, but many more could have died they said. Yes, the government could have handled it far better but at least they did XYZ. This meant that citizens were not asking for accountability from elected representatives and there were no lessons learned.
Yes, you lost your job but now you had time to learn a new hobby. And hospitals may have run out of beds but hey! more birds were singing! Toxic positivity can sound indifferent and callous to the pain of others. So yes, toxic positivity can be very annoying – and in cases positively dangerous!
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