Being positive no matter what?
Listen: 5-min read
Summary: Toxic positivity has given some people the impression that it’s always best to look at the glass half full. However, our negative emotions present us with gifts and profound understanding of our emotions so that we can live happier, fuller lives.
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The idea about Positive Thinking has been advocated for many years and during Covid, it has intensified with the #GoodVibes only movement.
Indeed, there is enough evidence that a positive attitude can greatly enhance you mental health and emotional well=being, and your life.
However, it might backfire to downplay feeling low and whitewashing this with artificial positivity. It’s hard to keep lying to yourself, and the pressure to pretend, to keep up a happy facade when you feel miserable can lead to guilt and shame, a sense of failure, and loss of self. We might even become estranged from others who seem to have no problems whatsoever, or at least, so they say.
Life isn’t only sunshine - Everyone has to face the occasional storm, and depending on what we came to learn this lifetime, it might actually feel like a permanent bad weather front.
To stick with the image of the storm - We all feel drenched, cold, and even uprooted sometimes.
Of course, drowning in negativity and living life with the perspective that the glass is half empty makes it hard to enjoy life fully. It’s great to have an optimistic attitude, but this doesn’t mean we push away any negative feelings we experience.
Emotions are valuable indicators as to which of our needs and wants are met or unmet. They indicate that somewhere within a place hasn’t found the best way to deal with a situation. It wants you to be included and feel at home, and all it knows is to keep you distant because of earlier experienced hurts.
Positive platitudes won’t help. Instead, they disconnect us from others and ourselves.
I am thinking of these well-meant phrases such as “Don’t worry, at the end of it all, you will be stronger.”
Or, “Come on, nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked,” “I am sure there is something for you to learn from this.” or plain and simple, “Think positive.”
While there is some truth to it - we do grow from our challenges - Someone who is depressed will feel unheard and unseen because, for sure, if positive thinking alone would be the solution to every problem, they wouldn’t be depressed or anxious anymore in the first place, would they?
So, no wonder people often feel like a failure, not smart enough, and something must be wrong with them when they compare themselves to these overwhelmingly positive people.
Again, emotional management is essential - which actually means accepting that a healthy emotional landscape includes positive and negative feelings. The key is to accept the negative emptions as easily as the positive ones. They are part of the whole. It doesn’t mean giving in to negativity; it means not pushing it aside but accepting it as part of the situation.
When you find a way to stay present with everything you feel, without being attached to liking or disliking it, or judging it, then real happiness follows.