Stay-at-home orders have kept many of us isolated. There are currently more than 3.8 million COVID-19 cases confirmed in the United States, and more than 140,000 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard. “With something as unpredictable and uncertain as COVID-19, a knee-jerk reaction might be to slap on an overly optimistic or positive face to avoid accepting a painful reality,” she explains. Jamie Long, psychologist and owner of The Psychology Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “The pandemic is triggering our need to control and avoid uncertainty,” says Dr. Toxic positivity is especially harmful right now “Failure to effectively process emotions in a timely manner can lead to a myriad of psychological difficulties, including disrupted sleep, increased substance abuse, risk of an acute stress response, prolonged grief, or even PTSD,” she says. “Avoidance or suppression of emotional discomfort leads to increased anxiety, depression, and overall worsening of mental health,” Zuckerman says. Zuckerman says that “toxic positivity, at its core, is an avoidance strategy used to push away and invalidate any internal discomfort.” But when you avoid your emotions, you actually cause more harm.įor example, one older study showed that when you’re asked not to think about something, it actually makes you more likely to think about it.Īnd one study from 1997 showed that suppressing feelings can cause more internal, psychological stress.
“They distract us from the problem at hand, and don’t give space for self-compassion, which is so vital to our mental health.” Karoll continues: “Judging yourself for feeling pain, sadness, jealousy - which are part of the human experience and are transient emotions - leads to what are referred to as secondary emotions, such as shame, that are much more intense and maladaptive. “It can give the impression that you are defective when you feel distress, which can be internalized in a core belief that you are inadequate or weak.” “The pressure to appear ‘OK’ invalidates the range of emotions we all experience,” says Carolyn Karoll, a psychotherapist in Baltimore, Maryland. Instead, positivity and happiness are compulsively pushed, and authentic human emotional experiences are denied, minimized, or invalidated. With toxic positivity, negative emotions are seen as inherently bad. It can be your own feelings that you shouldn’t dwell on your feelings of sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or fear. It can be a meme that tells you to “just change your outlook to be happy.” It can be a friend who repeatedly posts how productive they’re being during lockdown. It can be a comment to “look on the bright side” or “be grateful for what you have.” Toxic positivity can take many forms: It can be a family member who chastises you for expressing frustration instead of listening to why you’re upset. Jaime Zuckerman, a clinical psychologist in Pennsylvania who specializes in, among other things, anxiety disorders and self-esteem. “Toxic positivity is the assumption, either by one’s self or others, that despite a person’s emotional pain or difficult situation, they should only have a positive mindset or - my pet peeve term - ‘positive vibes,’” explains Dr. In this case, it’s not healthy positivity, it’s toxic. In fact, it can be a force for good that helps motivate you for the future.īut positivity can also become harmful when it’s insincere, forceful, or delegitimizes real feelings of anxiety, fear, sadness, or hardship. There’s nothing inherently wrong with positivity. No amount of positive thoughts and attempts to “stay upbeat” would change that. Finding a new gig didn’t sound remotely easy, especially when it felt like everyone was looking for a job and nobody was looking to hire. They’re even more awful in the middle of a pandemic, when job loss is at a historical high in this country. I knew I was still in a pretty privileged position.īut that didn’t mean the situation still didn’t suck. And of course, I was grateful for what I did have. No one meant to hurt me with these comments. I shouldn’t dwell on what I had just lost.
The undertone was clear: I should be grateful for what I did have.
Plus, they reminded me, “It could be worse.” At least I was getting a severance. I’d be back on feet if I just stayed focused, they said.
When I was laid off from my staff job a little less than a month ago, many well-meaning friends and family rushed to tell me that I needed to “stay positive.”
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