Mental health experts believe, not addressing your negative emotions can be detrimental to your emotional, spiritual, and mental health. It means invalidating your grief and your pain which can transform into self-inflicted emotional neglect. To prevent yourself from feeling negative emotions means you’re disallowing yourself to be human. Humans are emotional creatures who feel both negative and positive emotions. It may sound great on paper, but it’s not a realistic approach. The problem with positivity culture is that it is an idealistic and impractical vision. It minimizes one’s struggles and negates their hardships, invalidating their suffering. The belief is either imposed by others or upheld personally that despite one’s emotional and psychological pain, focusing only on the good parts of life is enough to get one through it.
It is an overgeneralization of positive emotions. It favors the idea that negative human emotions like sadness, grief, and disappointment are corrupt sentiments that should typically be ignored or pushed aside, no matter how difficult an experience you encounter. Toxic positivity refers to the concept that one should always remain happy, optimistic, and have a ‘good vibes only’ approach in life. What is toxic positivity or unrealistic optimism? Let’s talk about it in detail. Feeding your mind with positivity only can cause you to ‘overdose’ on it, which can negatively impact your mental health. But preferring an illusion over reality during a moment of crisis is foolish. We believe it is crucial to possess an optimistic outlook on life. That’s because the belief in unrealistic optimism and toxic positivity is so rampant around us, we don’t see how it plays a significant role in damaging us.ĭon’t get us wrong we’re not here to encourage you to be sad and depressed. How often have you been told to “look at the bright side” of a terrible, terrible situation with really no bright side to it but a forced one? And how many times have you heeded that advice because of guilt that someone out there probably has it worse? How many times do you disallow yourself to feel pain and sorrow to focus on the positives instead? One too many times, I’m sure.
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