How to avoid the toxic positivity trap
From Instagram quotes to affirmations, it’s hard to escape the pressure to be positive in today’s social media world. Recently, I heard a term floating around that really got me thinking about the whole concept. Toxic positivity. I heard the term for the first time just the other day and it made me wonder if my obsession with self-development and specifically with thinking thoughts that allow me to attract more of what I want in my life is actually a form of toxic positivity. Yet, my intentions feel authentic and I have noticed myself grow through developing a consistent meditation habit, using affirmations, visualization and focusing on a positive mindset. Nothing about it feels toxic to me – except for one thing.
The misconception that one should always feel positive.
I am a firm believer in manifesting what I want through positive thinking and visualization - but does that mean I always think positive thoughts? Absolutely not. I’ve had moments of really low-lows. However, these are the moments that push me towards meditation as a practice of healing. Through meditation, I’ve found visualization which has in turn led me towards creating a habit of thinking more positively. It’s the healing cycle that brings about the need to think more positively. Toxic positivity and authentic healing are entirely different things and once I was able to truly recognize the difference, I was able to let go of any pressure to feel positive.
Don’t cover up the mess. Toxic positivity is the act of putting a positive blanket over negative thoughts -thus exuding a sense of positivity that isn’t necessarily authentic. This is very different from authentic positivity which can only come through a process of healing. In those low moments, we tend to want to figure out what is bothering us. This may not happen right away but once we’ve been feeling low for a day or two, it’s natural to want to find out why. This process of getting down to the root of a negative emotion is what opens the door to healing that negative emotion so that you can exude more positivity from an authentic place. Positivity is not a substitute to negative thoughts. It’s a pillar in your journey of healing that will only authentically surface once you’ve dealt with negative emotions. No one can be positive 100% of the time. It’s the ‘negative’ moments that we actually gain the most insight from. These moments allow us to grow, thus bringing more positive energy into our lives and the lives of those around us.
Life’s a history lesson. Who you were in the past doesn’t decide your present. It simply informs your present. Healing is a process not a destination and we need to take the learnings we’ve received from the past in order to help us define who we want to be in the future. Having a negative moment doesn’t make you a negative person. I coach clients on how to bring out more of their own authenticity yet the other night I had a moment where I felt completely out of balance. It was just one of those moments where all I wanted to do was watch Netflix and be in my feelings. The next morning I started to wonder if I was a hypocrite as a life coach by guiding people towards dealing with negative feelings when I just spent a whole evening in bed watching Netflix and allowing myself to simply feel sad. That’s when I realized that these are the exact moments that truly inform our future. I needed to let myself be sad because when I reflected on those feelings I realized that I had been sitting with a lot of anxiety around the pandemic and the future that I hadn’t allowed myself to deal with. By the next morning, I knew that I needed to refocus my thoughts on health, wellness and gratitude as opposed to worry, concern and anxiety. That specific evening didn’t make me a negative person, it simply shone a light on the thoughts that I had been focusing on – allowing me to decide how I wanted to reframe my thoughts in order to move forward in a more productive way.
Guilt is not a productive emotion. That night was also a lesson in not beating myself up for having negative thoughts. I spent the next day practicing forgiving myself for that moment and the need to disconnect from everyone. Anytime I felt guilty about it, I forgave myself and reminded myself what I had gotten out of that moment and how I was able to learn and grow from it. It’s so easy to associate feelings of guilt to our moments of self-care. It’s almost as if we mistake self-care for self-indulgence – two very different things. Self-indulgence would have occurred if I had let myself stay in bed watching Netflix and feeling sad the rest of the week. Self-care was knowing what I needed in that moment and then using that moment to define how I needed to take care of myself productively the rest of the week. You aren’t indulging in yourself by caring for yourself. You’re just caring for yourself in the same way you would care for someone else. This is part of the process of becoming whole.
Toxic positivity is not healing. In fact, it’s positivity without deeper thought. If you’ve gained positivity through a process of healing there’s nothing toxic about it. To heal doesn’t mean you never think negative thoughts. It means that you develop the tools you need to heal from those thoughts when they do come up.
So allow yourself to go through the process. Remember life’s a marathon, not a sprint. You’re allowed to have negative thoughts, their natural. It’s how you bounce back from those thoughts and continue to grow that will define you. There’s no pressure to feel all of the good vibes that Instagram quotes tell us to feel. But if one those quotes feels good for you in that moment, then you’ve gotten something out of it. If not, it’s time to turn away from the scroll and look within to figure out exactly what you need – because no one else can decide that for you.