#toxic positivity
Toxic positivity is no less toxic just because it’s positive.
I know the film is five years old, but one of the things I liked about Inside Out is it addressed toxic positivity. The point isn’t just that it’s okay to be sad, but that it’s abnormal to always be happy. Your other emotions exist for a reason.
I’m all for positivity, but I’ve seen people dismiss those who go through traumatic experiences as “negative” for talking about it or not immediately “looking on the bright side”. Emotions aren’t one-dimensional. You can be happy to be alive and be devastated at something that happened to you.
Like everything, there is a time and a place. Someone’s grief process is not appropriate for “just be happy”.
MBTI & Science
Susan David: ENFJ“Susan David (PhD), one of the world’s leading management thinkers, operates at the nexus of business and psychology.
She is the creator of the concept of Emotional Agility, and uses this lens in her consulting, coaching, and keynotes, and in the development of psychometric tools to analyze, assess and develop these skills.
Her focus is on how Emotional Agility contributes to effective people strategies, particularly in the areas of employee engagement, wellbeing, interpersonal relationships, high-performance leadership, and organizational culture change.
Susan is a founder and co-director of the Harvard-affiliated Institute of Coaching and the CEO of Evidence Based Psychology. (…)
Susan is author of the definitive Oxford Handbook of Happiness (Oxford University Press), Beyond Goals (Gower).
She also authored the top rated Harvard Business Review article “Emotional Agility” which was named as a Management Idea of the Year and was the impetus for her #1 Wall Street Journal best selling book “Emotional Agility”.”
Sources:video, in/susanadavidphd. Screencaps: transcript.
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there’s this wonderful slavic folktale called dyed moroz where the principle conceit is two girls (one good and dutiful, one bad and wicked), and the test they undergo under the pine tree where Father Frost hurts them with cold and spares/kills them based on whether or not they complain.
the good dutiful girl responds to the repeated question of “are you cold?” by sweetly and politely answering in the negative until he has asked the requisite three times, increasing the level of pain and discomfort she feels each time. By remaining stoic and sweet and uncomplaining, and by lying about harm she may or may not be experiencing, she earns the story reward of wealth and true love and happiness.
the bad wicked girl complains her head off all three times, and is frozen to a block of ice. no wealth, no warm furs, no fortunate marriage. she fails the test of stoicism and endurance because she accurately describes the situation that is occurring: an otherworldly fatherly being making it colder, then asking her whether or not she thinks it’s cold. He doesn’t kill her because she’s bad or wicked, or ugly, or a terrible stepsister, although those are all common elements in retellings of the story. He kills her because when he makes it cold, and asks her whether or not she thinks it’s cold, she confirms that that is indeed the reality she is experiencing.
also it’s a dynamite episode of mst3k
there’s a certain amount of acceptance of sacrifice and suffering that goes along with gender that crosses the binary in the wildest ways; destroying one’s body and peace of mind in service to labor is the height of what it means to be a man or a woman from childbirth to linework, nobly suffering in a christlike fashion for one’s designated labor defines successful allegiance to and performance of gender, those that reject labor, that resist the narrative of glorious christian martyr suicide, emasculate and de-feminize themselves, choosing to live means entering failed genderspace.
What are the types of toxic traits?
“I’m chronically ill”
-“It’s all in your head”
“I have symptoms x,y, and z.”
-“Other people have it worse.”
“I cannot do this and that.”
-“Just think about what you can do.”
“I’m really struggling right now.”
-“You need to be more positive; think positive thoughts and you’ll be doing much better.”
“I need to take a break.”
-“Stop being lazy.”
“This condition is genetic.”
-“Take responsibility for your own problems. Don’t go blaming others.”
“I’m in a lot of pain today.”
-“We all have stuff we’re dealing with; you need to move on.”
“This is the probable origin of my condition.”
-“Don’t look in the past. It doesn’t matter.”
“My pain in my muscles and joints make it very hard for me to go for walks or lift heavy things.”
-“If you lost weight, you wouldn’t have that problem.”
“I have digestive issues.”
-“Try this diet, try getting rid of all carbs, drink lemon water.”
“I’m super drained today. I don’t have the stamina to do that.”
-“You need to be more productive.”
“I need to have these things on hand to make my life easier on bad pain/fatigue days.”
-“Don’t be wasteful; you have this other thing already, you just need to take care of it when you use it. Just wash and dry it and reuse it.”
“I need help.”
-“Just go to church and read the Bible and pray more.”
This. This is ableism. This is toxic positivity. This is even gaslighting in some cases. People assume that if you say you are disabled, but you don’t look like you’re on your deathbed, that it can’t really be that bad. They think they have all the answers. They think they understand what you’re dealing with because they have a fragment of your conditions (i.e. you have migraines and they get a headache once in a while, you have severe pain all over and they had the flu once, etc.). They think that you’re always asking for advice when you are simply stating where you are at with your health. It needs to stop. This is not okay.
Those of us who struggle with disability need support, need confidants, need compassion. We are not looking for pity; we just want our struggles to be acknowledged for what they are. We’re not asking for help because we are lazy; there are certain things we just cannot do. Stop telling us all our answers lie in “more god, more exercise, more fresh air.” This doesn’t help us in the now. Stop telling us that we are taking advantage of people, that we are responsible for the illnesses we face, that we are attention-seeking. And please stop putting unrealistic conditions on anything you do help us with. Don’t make us feel guilty for needing assistance. Don’t make us feel stupid for not being to handle every minutiae of our lives alone. Please don’t tell us what we should or should t do to treat conditions you know nothing about either.
We deserve respect. We are as worthy of love, compassion, and acceptance as anyone else. We deserve good things. We are human, just like you. We deserve assistance, just as abled people do.
Also, can we please make ranting and venting about stuff normal?
I’m not a “negative person” and I don’t give negativity “too much room” in my life.
Talking about it and telling ppl how upset I am is my way of dealing with it. I need to get it out of my system or it sticks with me.
And btw, Karen, it’s not my problem if you take my problem and make it yours, or if you think me telling you about something upsetting for me means I now gave you my package. No. I put the package between us and you chose to pick it up. Not my fucking problem. And please don’t tell me you don’t want to hear my negativity. Please. I have to deal with your crude positivity on a daily basis, and that’s no fun either. So just stfu.
There are people who process internally, and people who process externally. If you are an external processer, you likely can’t move on or work through your feelings without expressing them. Writing or creating on some way may help, but verbally expressing to someone else is generally the shortest path to dealing with it and moving on.
If you don’t get the negative things out, they fester in whatever mental box you stuffed them in, and will end up compounding some other problem when you do get a chance to process.
Sometimes life is heavy. Expressing that gives you a chance to set the load down, take a breath, and gather your strength to keep going.
also like, how hard is it to go “damn, that’s fucked up” to your friend?? you don’t gotta feel everything they feel, you don’t gotta solve their problems, you just gotta listen!!
and like, I know it’s considered rude or whatever, but it makes me feel a bit better when somebody tells me a story that’s kind of like my thing that’s bugging me! like, maybe they ether really get it, or they understand some aspects of it, even if they don’t fully empathize with the whole thing perfectly, and like, everybody has different lives, so that’s not even a reasonable expectation most of the time.
even better if it’s a funny story. like, if you want people to cheer up, it’s ok to make an effort to cheer them up.
and like, sometimes, I’ll tell a story and I won’t realize how fucked up it was until my friend goes “damn, that’s fucked up” like, sometimes you just need Perspective on your Life that you’re not going to get otherwise.
Great additions to my post, thank you @iplaywithstringand@ocean-again!!
Also @diamondot how could you hide that in the tags?
In addition, yesterday I learned that this thing is called toxic positivity and that’s exactly it.
Get yourself friends that validate your traumatic experiences, thoughts, and feelings instead of questioning them.
