{"id":7196,"date":"2016-04-24T17:27:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T11:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2016-04-24T17:27:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-24T11:57:57","slug":"everything-will-be-fine-will-it-really-lets-talk-about-toxic-positivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7196","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEverything Will Be Fine!\u201d: Will It Really? Let\u2019s Talk about Toxic Positivity"},"content":{"rendered":"\nW<\/span>hen I was 10 and on stage for an elocution competition in school, I was so nervous, I froze, spat out the Vicks tablet I was savouring, and then ran down crying. It was humiliating for sure, but my teacher tried to calm me down by saying that I shouldn\u2019t cry and instead look at the bright side. \u201cAt least you tried. It is all going to be fine… it always does,\u201d she assured me and I believed her. The words stayed with me and I grew up with unrealistic expectations always convincing myself that everything would be just fine. Sadly for me, it didn\u2019t.\n\nBack home, I was told that if I wanted to be a good girl, I should not get angry or display my emotions. It was something ingrained in me. So year\u2019s later, when I was hopping mad at a man I was dating for not being honest, I just kept mum and internalised everything I was feeling. I kept telling myself, \u201cIt\u2019ll be okay\u201d and \u201cI was better off without him\u201d. I did not give myself the chance to come to terms with what I was actually feeling \u2013 hurt and cheated. What I did instead was pretend to be absolutely fine because I thought that no one wanted to be around someone who was not happy.\n\nWe often convince ourselves to be upbeat and put on a brave face. We force ourselves to throw a positive light on a bad situation and this has become such a habit that we impose it on others. When you are mourning the loss of someone or something, you are told not to cry; when you are angry at someone and want to vent, you are asked to keep calm.\u00a0 All throughout our lives we are constantly told not to feel the emotions we want to feel at that moment, unless they are happy emotions. But the truth is that we have a whole range of other feelings \u2013 anger, sadness, disgust, and fear \u2013 and it is important to deal with them. It\u2019s okay to feel low or livid, dejected or disappointed; it\u2019s okay not to be okay. What\u2019s unacceptable is to pretend to be otherwise.\n\nUnfortunately, the pressure to be cheerful gets to most of us. In fact, the \u201cpositive vibes only\u201d clan has been on an overdrive during this pandemic. When the world is grim and uncertain and everything unfolding around us triggers so much anxiety, these stubborn sunshine-chasers like to advocate hopefulness \u2013 like making Dalgona coffee, baking banana bread even as the pandemic rages on.\n\n

Unfortunately, the pressure to be cheerful gets to most of us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nWhen I was struggling to get work sometime last April, my friends would keep asking me to cheer up and social media was overflowing with posts on seeing the bright side of things. It made me want to tear my hair out. That\u2019s not what I needed at the time; all the assurances felt untruthful. While I\u2019m certain their heart is in the right place, forcing positivity onto someone can feel suffocating. It\u2019s like invalidating people\u2019s stress and denying them of their agency to truly express themselves.\n\nThis 24X7 all-is-well attitude is famously labelled as \u201ctoxic positivity<\/a>\u201d\u00a0by psychologists who claim that anything in excess, even optimism, can be harmful. According to American psychotherapist Carolyn Karoll<\/a>, \u201cJudging yourself for feeling pain, sadness, jealousy \u2013 which are part of the human experience and are transient emotions \u2014 leads to what are referred to as secondary emotions, such as shame, that are much more intense and maladaptive.\u201d\n\nSo every time I told myself \u201cit\u2019ll be fine\u201d and things didn\u2019t look up or friends and family assured me that I would get work if I stayed positive but no assignments came my way, I\u2019d feel shameful and further start doubting myself. I thought I was being weak and felt stupid for wanting to be sad. The constant bombardment of positvity \u2013 it could be motivational quotes or cat videos on WhatsApp \u2013 was of no real help. It provided momentary distraction but doing this repeatedly only left me with unprocessed emotions over time.\n\n

I decided to embrace my negative emotions and it felt cathartic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nSo some three months ago, I decided to not run away from my negative emotions. I weeped, I wrote down about how gloomy I was feeling, and vented about how angry I was that some people have it so easy. When a friend texted me, \u201cHow was I doing\u201d, I decided to be honest and tell her I wasn\u2019t alright. And when another asked me to chin up, I said I wasn\u2019t in the mood. I didn\u2019t need someone to tell me to be positive or that everything will work out fine. I just needed someone to hear me out; someone who said, \u201cI get you. It sucks to not have work right now.\u201d\n\nBut since no family or friend would tell me that, I decided to embrace my negative emotions and it felt cathartic. It was liberating to stop pretending to be okay for once.\n\nThe truth is that we need sorrow as much as we need joy. So stop the pretence, let yourself mope. You can start like how I started \u2013 by unfollowing an Instagram influencer whose every post comes with that annoying hashtag \u2013 positivevibesonly.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cpositive vibes only\u201d clan has been on an overdrive during this pandemic. When I was struggling to find work last April, I was bombarded with messages asking me to \u201ccheer up\u201d and \u201clook at the bright side\u201d. I felt like everyone was forcing optimism onto me and it was really suffocating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":7197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cEverything Will Be Fine!\u201d: Will It Really? Let\u2019s Talk about Toxic Positivity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The \u201cpositive vibes only\u201d clan has been on an overdrive during this pandemic. 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