324 - Toxic Positivity
What is toxic positivity?
“Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset.”
-Verywell Mind
“We define toxic positivity as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.”
-thepsychologygroup.com
Being positive is generally a good thing, but sometimes it can overflow into toxic positivity. When something unforeseen happens, sometimes it’s better to embrace the pain and work through your emotions rather than suppressing them or trying to float above them.
A lot of toxic positive aphorisms have been integrated into our cultural psyche:
When something negative happens, many people hear “Just stay positive,” or “Look on the bright side,” or “Everything will be fine.”
When someone dies, often we hear “Everything happens for a reason,” or “They are in a better place now.”
When you’re depressed or sad, “Happiness (or any other emotion) is a choice,” or “Don’t worry, be happy!” or “It could be worse!” are common phrases others utter.
These things may come from a place of wanting to help, and the people saying them often want to help you feel better, but toxic positivity can also be used as a manipulation tactic or to gaslight others. It can be used to invalidate the emotional response someone has to an upsetting event. It can also be used to further racial prejudice, such as saying phrases like “All lives matter” or “I don’t see color,” which invalidate the pain and suffering of BIPOC populations face on a daily basis.
Toxic positivity is also harmful because:
It is a form of shame that is basically used to tell someone that their emotions are wrong and they should change them.
It can cause guilt. Along with shame, the person feels guilty for not appreciating the good things in their life.
It can be an avoidance tactic, used to avoid emotions that are taking place during a negative event. This can prevent growth by avoiding the challenge as opposed to facing the situation.
Some behaviors to watch out for:
Avoiding or brushing off problems rather than facing them head on.
Not showing others or yourself how you really feel about something
Minimizing others’ emotional life when they are being vulnerable or asking for help.
Feeling guilt or shame about your own emotions, especially any “negative” ones.
Putting on a happy face or being stoic about a problem or difficult emotion.
Shaming other people when they “don’t have a positive attitude.”
Throwing out aphorisms like the ones we spoke of previously if someone is having a bad day.
Be gentle with yourself and others during challenging times, and have the courage to feel those emotions and challenge yourself to grow.
Avoiding toxic positivity
If you feel like you’re being toxically positive towards yourself or others, try these things:
Actively listen instead of chiming in right away.
Use the Triforce of Communication to ask what they need.
Show someone you care about them instead of using words.
Learn to be gentle with yourself when it comes to the emotions you’re feeling.
Remember it’s okay to feel more than one emotion at once.
Limit your social media intake.
Here are some toxically positive statements and some alternatives to use instead:
“I’m here to listen” instead of “Just stay positive.”
“That must be so difficult” instead of “Look on the bright side.”
“I’m here for you” instead of “Everything will be fine.”
“I am so sorry” instead of “Everything happens for a reason.”
“What can I do to help?” instead of “They are in a better place.”
“Your feelings are totally valid” instead of “Happiness is a choice.”
“What are you struggling with?” instead of “It could be worse!”
If someone is using toxic positivity on you, try pointing it out to them. Explain that your feelings are valid and you’re just struggling with them right then. Enforce your boundaries with those who continue to use toxic positivity on you.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about Toxic Positivity. We've all had that friend or partner who seemingly was above it all, just always going with the flow and was optimistic no matter what life threw at them. Maybe we've even been in that position personally sometimes. However, too much positivity can actually result in a lack of support, or not giving other people what they need in the moment. Today, we're going to be discussing some ways that toxic positivity can show up in our lives, in relationships, as well as how to combat it if you are on the receiving end, and what things to say instead if you happen to be the one who realizes that you're doing this.
Emily: I had not heard about this at all until very recently when I was scrolling through Instagram stories, and then all of a sudden, it's like, "Toxic positivity." Dedeker, I bet you're about to tell me like, "We've talked about this." Maybe we have.
Dedeker: No, it's more of I'm surprised by that because you are tuned into the scene of people who do yoga and are vegan or maybe a little bit into alternative medicine, and I think that toxic positivity is often very imbued with that culture, in that scene. I've heard some people call it light washing things.
Emily: I've absolutely heard people use these statements before, these toxically positive statements, but I didn't know that it was called this. It's really hot right now. People are talking about it in Psychology Today and writing a bunch of blogs and articles and stuff on it. It seems like it's really gaining interest and traction right now, which I think makes sense and we're going to get into that.
Dedeker: We've gathered a couple of definitions of what toxic positivity specifically is. This first one is from verywellmind.com. They define it as the belief that no matter how dire or difficult the situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. Along similar lines, here's a different definition from thepsychologygroup.com where they define toxic positivity as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience. The exact origins of this phrase, toxic positivity, are unclear, but to sum it up is a general sense of, "Good vibes only".
Jase: Yes, man.
Emily: Yes, which I do understand, but that is in the, I don't know, yoga community and stuff like, "Whoo."
Dedeker: The more crunchy granola-y sphere, I suppose.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: It reminds me of something we have talked about a little bit before which is the whole power of positive thinking, and the potentially harmful aspects of that. Very much those two go hand in hand with each other.
Emily: Yes. I did look up the positive psychology Wikipedia article which had some things to say about the criticism of this positive psychology because there is a lot out there that like you said, we've discussed on previous episodes. Toxic positivity is this criticism of the ideas presented by positive psychology.
Those who are critical of positive psychology argue that and this is a quote from the Wikipedia article, "The field of positive psychology places too much importance on the upbeat thinking, while shunting challenging and difficult experiences to the side. Individuals who engage in a constant chase for positive experiences or states of high subjective well-being may be inadvertently stigmatizing negative emotional conditions, such as depression, or maybe suppressing natural emotional responses, such as sadness, regret, or stress."
Jase: It's interesting because, from the actual lectures and things that I've watched about positive psychology, they tend to be, at least the ones I've watched, very clear about, "This is not about feeling good all the time or being happy all the time, but it's about essentially looking at what helps us be more high functioning." However, I think just the term, positive psychology and maybe some of the stuff that gets pulled out of it and posted on blogs, can very much feel like that, "Oh, it's just about being positive all the time."
Emily: Exactly. Information gets distilled down to just, "We need to be positive," or "Stay positive," or "Don't let the little things get you down." I do think that that has become this thing that we're all needing to look like we're positive all the time and excited about things all the time, and our lives are going really well. I'll get into this more, but in social media and stuff, we're supposed to be looking like everything is good to go, and in reality, we may be suppressing a lot of those emotions that are natural and understandable especially at times, like what we have been collectively going through in the last year.
Jase: This is a quote from Stephanie Preston who's a psychology professor at the University of Michigan. This is from an article in The Washington Post. It says, "It’s an attractive behavior in people that makes them seem more well-adapted and more popular with their peers, so there are a lot of reasons people want to seem more positive." That makes a lot of sense, that it seems attractive and sounds like, "Oh, well, this must be what we should be doing then."
Emily: Specifically, she was talking about this idea of positivity is very rooted in American culture, where positivity is very highly valued. We've talked a lot about being positive on the show, or taking ourselves out of the challenging times and moving ourself in a direction of more positivity or self-soothing, things like that. That's all well and good. That's a good thing to try to strive for, but sometimes, the unexpected happens, like a huge global pandemic and any other type of unforeseen challenges. It is sometimes just important to embrace the pain and work through those emotions rather than trying to suppress them or float above them all, like sometimes toxic positivity is telling us to do.
Dedeker: Do any of us know anyone who's acted in this way? Have we ourselves maybe been toxically positive to someone else in our life, or even in a self-directed kind of way?
Jase: Certainly. I can't think of specific examples right now, but I know that I've definitely been on both sides of this and definitely have done this to myself, of beating myself up for not feeling better. I actually think this is something that for me only in the last couple years, have I really learned to be a little more comfortable with not always feeling positive or always being happy, but not feeling like, "Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, I have to fix this right now." That that's a newer thing I've been trying on the past couple of years.
Emily: There is a big narrative to feel happy or be happy all the time. I do think that sometimes toxically positive statements will come out of my mouth when I don't know what the hell else to say.
Jase: For sure, that makes total sense, yes. It's just that like, "I want to help you and so."
Emily: Or even subconsciously like, "I want to make myself feel better, so I'm going to say this positive statement, and hopefully, it'll just like gloss over the challenge that you are facing."
Jase: Yes, absolutely.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. I think that sometimes this can be more subtle. In my experience, sometimes the things I feel more toxic are when someone is trying to comfort me, and if they go to a place of like, "Oh, everything's going to be fine," or "You're not going to have to worry, it's going to be fine."
Sometimes, I think we do need maybe just a little bit of that reassurance, but then other times, it can land in that way of you're not feeling validated in the worry or not feeling validated in what's distressing you or the negative emotions that are coming up. Maybe that can be a hard balance to strike because telling someone that things are going to be fine or trying to reassure them that things are going to be fine, can be effective in certain situations, if that's what they're going for, but also can, I think, come across as just toxic positivity in other situations.
Jase: I could also see that as we talked about in the anger episode last week, that if you talk to someone who just continues to fuel that and keeps you in that angry state, that's not really helpful either. Sometimes, what you need is just reassurance of that feeling, but then you also don't want to just be adding and keeping that person in it. It is a tricky balance, but it's worth being aware of the toxic positivity side of it.
Emily: This to me feels like the other extreme of the anger episode, which I like because it's being too overly positive and glossing over things whereas you can suppress anger and do things along those lines or go overly angry and then that's also not a good thing.
Jase: You get stuck in it, yes.
Emily: I think there's similar themes here.
Dedeker: Let's talk about what this actually looks and sounds like in real life. In our culture, we have a lot of built-in aphorisms for situations when things are rough, or I think like you were mentioning, Emily, for situations where we just don't know what to say, or we don't know how to comfort somebody, or we're trying to make ourselves feel better about a bad situation.
You may have heard a friend or your parents or your grandparents or yourself say many of these different aphorisms at different points in your life. For instance, when something negative happens, like let's say losing your job, people will say, "Okay, well, it's important to stay positive. Oh, look on the bright side. Oh, everything's going to be fine." Things like that.
Emily: Even when a loved one dies saying something like, "Everything happens for a reason, or they're in a better place," which I guess is maybe rooted in religion, but-
Jase: Absolutely, but it's still--
Emily: -it can be a gloss over. They're in a better place now. Or people saying, "Look at the silver lining," or something like that. Also, if you're feeling depressed or disappointment or sadness, people telling you that happiness or any other feeling is a choice. You're making a choice to be depressed, and happiness, on the other hand, is also a choice. Or just saying, "Don't worry. Be happy." Or, "It could be worse." People saying these statements, most likely, they're coming from a place of good, they're not trying to harm you, they most likely want to help you make your pain go away or make you feel better or themselves better.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. However, it can become even more insidious as well. Toxic positivity can be a form of gaslighting and even can be used as a manipulation tactic. For instance, toxic positivity can be used to invalidate what a person is feeling and invalidate their emotional responses to something if they're having a difficult situation.
Or if it's used in a manipulative manner, the person's doing it to make themselves feel better or alleviate any challenging emotions or maybe get themselves out of feeling any responsibility for your feelings of just saying, "Oh, well it's all your choice, so you just need to be positive." It can also turn to a more intentional dark side. Even though I think, like you said, Emily, most of the time, it's really coming from a place of the best intentions for ourselves and for other people.
Emily: Yes, but it can be glossing over some of those bigger issues and bigger questions there for sure.
Dedeker: Something that I think we saw a lot of last summer is also that racial prejudice can come through in the form of toxic positivity. I'm going to quote from this Medium article written by Dr. Caroline Leaf, where she says, "Using phrases, like All Lives Matter, let's all just love each other, and I don't see color when talking about race, invalidate the pain and traumatic experiences that BPAP people face on a daily basis. When we use positivity in this way, it shuts down open and honest communication. As a result, we run the risk of not making the personal and societal changes that need to be made, which is only going to make things worse in our society.
We should never use positivity to hide the ugly in our life or in our communities." Again, I think this just goes to show it's just one of the many reasons why it's really important to validate a person's experience rather than just push a different, more positive narrative upon them that is easier for yourself to swallow or that we think is going to be easier for them to swallow.
Emily: Also, toxic positivity is harmful for a variety of other reasons. We talked about this in our anger episode, but toxic positivity can be another form of shame, or it can give shame to the recipient because if you're standing there and hearing happiness is also a choice, then it is invalidating the response that you're having, and it can maybe make you feel shameful about the response that you're having in that moment about the emotion that you're feeling, like, "I'm feeling shitty and shit, I wish that I weren't. I feel like I need to feel better in this moment."
Dedeker: Yes, I think a lot of us have experienced that. I saw a lot of this actually when COVID was first kicking off, as things just kept getting worse and worse and darker and darker, but a lot of people feeling like, "I can't really complain about my situation because it could be worse. It could be worse I haven't caught COVID, it could be worse I haven't lost my job, and so I need to just soldier on and keep on this happy face because otherwise, I don't necessarily deserve to be feeling all these other emotions, which is not necessarily the case." I definitely saw a lot of, I think, unnecessary guilt around those things.
Jase: Yes, absolutely.
Emily: It can also be an avoidance tool. Toxic positivity can be a way to avoid emotions that are happening either to the individual going through the difficult time or the person who is being told about the challenging situation. You say one of those aphorisms, and it's like, "Well, okay, I guess we're just going to avoid the actual feeling, the actual thing that's going on." Really this can prevent real growth from happening because you're avoiding that challenging situation instead of facing it head-on and facing those emotions that are happening from it. A lot of growth can happen out of adversity and out of challenge, out of sadness, out of pain, and that's important to deal with and to move past.
Jase: Sometimes, as we've talked about a little bit, we're guilty of using toxic positivity on ourselves, and that can manifest internally. We could also use it on others, but often it starts with the way we talk to ourselves. This means things like, Emily said, avoiding problems by just brushing them off and putting on a happy face and being like, "Well, if that makes me upset, I shouldn't deal with it." Or it can manifest as not showing your true self or even admitting your true feelings to others or even to yourself about something, or it can come up in minimizing others' emotional experiences when they're being vulnerable or asking for help.
Dedeker: It can also look like we've mentioned feeling guilt or shame about your own negative emotions, feeling the need to put on a happy face, to be stoic about a problem or a difficult emotion that you're going through. In turn, as we've learned that when sometimes we feel shame about something, the way that we respond to that is to shame other people as well. That can get spewed on to other people where we may shame the people in our lives around us for not having a positive enough attitude or not having enough resilience and going through something difficult, or resulting to throwing out some of the aphorisms like we mentioned earlier in the episode if someone's having a bad day
Emily: Dedeker just touched on this, but the fact that COVID happened and that I think initially for maybe the first six months or so, the narrative that I kept hearing from podcasts and people writing on social media and a bunch of different news outlets is that if you're not using this time off to get out there and do a side hustle or learn a new language or get way in shape or something, then you're a failure. I struggled with that, for sure.
I struggled with feeling like I wasn't doing enough, like I wasn't utilizing my time in exactly the right way, and that I should be more grateful and positive because I wasn't losing a loved one. Or I lost my job but I was on an employment and so many people weren't, and that I didn't have a kid that I had to homeschool or child rear or any of those things. There is, however, this huge seismic shift and a ton of huge change that we all went through.
It makes a lot of sense that we're not going to be completely positive in those moments or even for a long period of time. I think that narrative has started to shift, which I really appreciate. I think most people are like, "Listen, you're doing good enough. It's okay." I did want to point out that for the longest time, so many of us were told, "You aren't doing enough, and you need to be doing more because you have time off now, so you can't use time as an excuse."
Jase: I remember, it was a random memory from years ago, I had a friend who was really into trying to embrace celebrating things being acceptable. We're sometimes obsessed with everything has to be excellent or great. He's like, "Acceptable is good because it's not unacceptable. It's acceptable, right." I like that idea in this instance here.
Emily: That makes me think about how we have talked about compersion on this show that there's that idea that, "Oh my gosh, to be a good polyamorous person you have to really, really love the fact that your partner is going out with other people and feel like such a glow of happiness for them." Instead, we've talked about embracing neutrality and that that's okay, you're not failing.
Jase: Essentially, all of this is to say that this was just a gentle reminder to be gentle, a gentle reminder to be gentle with yourself and with others and to have the courage to feel those challenging emotions and know that it's okay if you weren't super productive or you weren't super grateful about things or that you're struggling with something that's going on in your life right now.
We all deserve a little break from these internal and external forces telling us that we should always be doing more or at the very least we should always be much more happy, and to just be gentle, let go of that and just understand that while there's good in some of those messages and while those can be useful, they're not the be all end all. Just because they're an aphorism doesn't mean they're always true. I think that's a key point to this. The positivity is not bad, but it can be, if you have too much of it. It's like how taking zinc is good, but too much of it will make you really sick.
Emily: Take everything in moderation, the multiamory moderation.
Jase: Yes, zinc is really good for you though. I do highly recommend it, but don't take too much. I have done this and felt really shitty for a few days until I realized I was taking too much zinc.
Dedeker: Even positivity in moderation.
Emily: All right, we're going to talk more about toxic positivity and how to avoid it, how to be better for sure, but first, we are going to speak about the ways in which you can help our show out and help us continue bringing it to the masses for free.
Dedeker: Hello, welcome back. Let's talk about ways to avoid becoming toxically positive both with yourself and with other people. If you found that some of the examples we provided sounded things that you say to people or that you say to yourself internally, you may be toxically positive towards your own feelings, and so here we have a list of suggestions to try to shift that.
Emily: This is more about listening to others and how you deal with others in challenging situations like say, somebody comes to you and is "Oh my gosh, I just lost my job. I feel really awful. I feel really terrible." Something you can do is actively listen instead of chiming in right away with a toxically positive statement. Really allow a person to express themselves to tell you how they're feeling, explain that difficult situation that they are in. There's so many of us just want to be really quick to say a statement and move on and go back to easier conversations with your friend instead of really listening to what they're going through. I think active listening in this moment is outrageously important.
Jase: I think that a part of that, a subcategory of that is developing the ability to be okay sitting in discomfort with someone else. Imagine a situation where someone's upset about losing their job or they had a fight with their partner or something, and they're coming to you to talk about it, and they dump all this on you. First of all, if you're someone who has any empathy, which hopefully you do, you're going to then feel some of that to yourself. Sometimes, there's that reaction of, "Oh, this uncomfortable. I need to get out of this right away."
I'm going to either jump into trying to fix their problem, and/or, I guess these could be the same, jump to these kinds of toxically positive aphorisms, or just try to escape that feeling right away. I think that's part of it too, is developing that skill of realizing that that's okay, that being uncomfortable, or maybe more importantly, that someone you care about being uncomfortable is also okay for them to experience that and for you to be there with them and not need to fix it right away. I guess that segues into our second point here, which is about using the triforce of communication.
When someone's sharing this with you ask what they need. Do they just want to be able to share and you listen and that's it and you're done? Triforce one. Great. Are they looking for commiseration or support or something that? Maybe it's triforce two. Maybe you can even go a little more fine-grained than just which triforce are you looking for, but what is it that you want right now?
Do you want commiseration, or do you want me to help you come up with solutions, or do you want me to be encouraging, be, "Poor baby"? Do you want me to talk you up and just really support you right now? There's a lot of ways you could offer support, but sometimes just asking, just being clear about it could be really effective. Do you two have any experience with that? Of a good example of that happening in your life, either of you doing that asking, or if someone asking you that, or you're communicating, "Hey, I actually just need you to be here with me when I'm sad"? Or like, "No, I actually want you to cheer me up. Can you do some good jokes?"
Emily: I watched the two of you do that a lot, but I also appreciate when my partner will say, "Hey, this isn't about you. I'm feeling down right now because of the X." I'm able to be like, "What can I do to help you out?" Or, "I'd love to give you a back rub or do something along those lines to make you feel a little bit better." It's super important to communicate at those points. Especially, if the feeling that you're getting off of your partner is there in maybe not the best mood right now and that makes you like, "Oh my God, are they pissed at me?" This is a great time to ask those questions instead of just like, "Be positive." That's not going to help anything.
Dedeker: Yes, I found what's been really effective for me is I just find myself getting more clear on what are the moments when I do want to be cheered up by somebody versus when are the moments where I just want it to be okay to be sad with somebody. I think I'm learning to get better about differentiating those two and learning to ask, and be more clear in my ask for those two from my partners, friends, and loved ones.
Emily: We can even be more clear in our triforce, I like that.
Dedeker: Even clearer. Crystal clear.
Emily: Even clearer in our triforce.
Dedeker: Sometimes, showing someone that you care about them is more profound than just telling them that. A great example of this is acts of service. It can be huge when a friend or a partner or a loved one is going through a challenging time. You can drop off groceries for somebody or a meal for them. You can clean their room. You can offer to give them the night off of watching the kids, or you can even just send over a nice text or a voicemail to let them know that you're thinking about them and that you're there for them.
We found that sometimes it can be helpful to make specific offers to somebody as opposed to leaving it in a more general, "What can I do to help? Is there anything I can do to help?" Sometimes, that's hard for people, especially if they're dealing with a death or the loss of a job or something really stressful, it can be hard to even make that decision. Having some ideas on the table already, if it's something as simple as, "Can I take you out to lunch?" Or, "Can I watch the kids on this particular night," may be more likely to be received?
Emily: A friend of mine recently had a baby and she was talking about how often her other non-babied friends go away during that time and how much she appreciates it when somebody asks, "Hey, what can I do for you in this moment?" Or, "Can I bring something over?" Or, "Can I take you to get a manicure and let you get out of the house for a little while?" I agree. That's a nice thing to make specific offers. That really helps because sometimes people don't even know what they need in that moment, and it's good to be like, "Does this sound fun? Let's get out of the house."
Jase: It's making me think about a couple of my friends who have a kid, and several times now, the thing they've needed is for me to watch the kids so they could go pee. Both of them on separate occasions that's been like the, "Oh my God, I haven't been able to pee for hours because I can't leave him alone." They don't think to ask for it right away, and it's not something that comes to my mind to offer like, "Hey, do you need to go pee?" Maybe that's a good one to keep in mind specifically for people with young kids. If you show up and be like, "Do you need to pee? I can watch the kid for a sec."
Emily: That's great, I love that.
Dedeker: Be choosy in who you choose to open with, use that line though--
Jase: I got to be close friends with people who can have that-- .
Dedeker: You know who it is in your life where you could open with asking if they need to pee.
Jase: Yes, maybe don't do that at the park when it's like, "Hey, do you want me to watch your kids, so you can go pee." That's weird. Next one is learning to be gentle with yourself. Now this one is turning it back onto yourself instead of just reacting to someone else, and be gentle with yourself with the emotions you're feeling, allow yourself to have a bad day. Instead of kicking yourself when you're feeling down, you could learn some self-soothing techniques to help yourself feel better, meditation, going on a walk, journaling, talking to a friend, talking to someone, and using your triforce to say, "I just want my feelings to be validated right now. Can I just tell you a little bit about that?"
Something that's worth noting here is that on the one hand, you have the toxic positivity where it's like, "I'm having a bad day, so I'm doing something wrong, and so I need to fix it. I need to change my mindset, or I need to think differently." You can beat yourself up over that and that's the toxic side of it that can come in, or on the other hand, there can be the thing of, "I'm having a bad day and I'm just going to keep cycling myself in that and get caught in this mental loop of just, "Oh, I'm having such a shitty day, and like, Oh yes, right, oh man, yes it is just shit day.""
You can work yourself farther that way too. Something that I love about this idea of being gentle with yourself or just having compassion is like sitting with your friend who's going through a hard time and being comfortable with that is doing that same thing with yourself, of being like, "Okay, I'm feeling this less than ideal things today, maybe for a reason I understand maybe not," but that in either case, finding that place of neutral of, "Okay, this is all right. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm feeling this thing." I'm also not digging myself further into it trying to avoid, ruminating and getting caught in those cycles. I'm also not being like, "Oh, I have to get myself out of this, or I'm failing somehow." It's finding that neutral point.
Emily: moderation.
Jase: It's such a valuable thing. I think it's because neutral doesn't fit into little aphorisms as well. That always look on the bright side of life, fits in a nice little package, or I guess maybe even negative ones, like, "The bastards are always trying to get you down." Those are easy to aphorismize. It's harder to be like, strike that balance of neutral, because that's--
Emily: We should just rebrand all of our stuff, and now it's just like totally nudes, nudes and creams and neutrals.
Jase: Okay, got it.
Emily: Sorry, sorry, sorry, no--
Dedeker: Oh, can you imagine that rebranding, just what an unveiling, quite literally.
Emily: Wow, the brand really changing.
Dedeker: We're all naturalists, now. We are neutral naturalist.
Jase: Neutral naturalalist.
Emily: I read like neutral colors of sepia tones or something, not the loud colors that we have right now. I'm saying we're talking about moderation and neutrality.
Dedeker: Like we talked about in our episode 321, about navigating life changes, it is okay to feel more than one emotion at once even with something that's really positive or exciting, like a new promotion at work, or moving to a new place, or a new relationship. Our emotional life as human beings is incredibly complex. The situation that's leading you to have all these complex emotions is also complex in and of itself. It's okay to embrace the challenges with the good stuff and to not let guilt be part of that equation if you're not feeling 100% excited or happy about something positive that's happening in your life.
Emily: It's amazing how often this comes up. You can still be really excited about something, but then also have a lot of trepidation and maybe even feel sad. My acting teacher, when I was in conservatory, talked about this a lot, that emotions are not one thing or the other, that the most interesting thing to watch is a person who is having a lot of deep, complex emotions at once, and they're struggling against that. That's just reality of life, that we are not just one thing or another. We are many complex beings.
Jase: Something else related to this that comes up besides just the complex emotions of feeling something positive, and also maybe some trepidation or fear or even sadness that comes along with that. There's also that thing that we mentioned way back before about the, "Well, it could be worse." I think that sometimes even if something a little bit bad happens, we can still feel that struggle of like, yes, on the one hand, acknowledging it could be worse.
Maybe it could be helpful, and maybe we do feel a little bit relieved that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. By acknowledging that doesn't make the other feelings of sad at the loss go away. It's like, again, acknowledging that both those can exist and that maybe the toxic positivity part comes when we feel like the positivity has to override rather than maybe trying our best to live alongside the other feelings.
Emily: If you find that you are spewing out a lot of toxically positive statements, or that that's a place that you go to if you're feeling down or if others around you are feeling down, something that you can think about doing is limiting your social media intake. I'm saying this myself-
Jase: I never thought I'd hear Emily say these words.
Emily: -more than all of you. It's true because again, I heard about toxic positivity on social media. I was learning a good thing, but so often, I will find those little pithy statements in bright colors or some beautiful yoga person-
Jase: Nudes probably.
Emily: -in a yoga position and then below on the blurb it's like, "Radiate light. Everything is wonderful," or something like that. I don't know.
Jase: That's good. I believe it. Put that cross stitch up in the house.
Emily: Exactly. I think it's important to look at how you're feeling when you're looking at stuff like that on social media because is it causing you to want to do that and be that and say those things to people out there, or is it making you feel shitty about yourself? I think a lot of social media tends to do that. It tends to make you think that this is reality, and that this is true life, and that everyone is just so above it all and so happy. It's just not the case. If you find that you're really going to either overly toxically positive places or trying to strive to be that, or that it's making you feel really shitty, both of those are good reasons to maybe limit your social media intake.
Jase: To close out this episode, we want to look at some statements that can border on this toxic positivity as well as some potential alternatives. If you find yourself just like, "Oh, gosh, but I default to those. What else do I say?" Maybe this could be a helpful thing to look at. If something bad happened to someone, like they lost their job, or they didn't get an audition or maybe didn't get a job that they were really hoping for, or something like that, this patent response of, "Just stay positive."
Emily: Instead, something that you can say is, "I can see that you're feeling down. If you want to talk about it, I'm here to listen."
Dedeker: That's good. That's nice. What else you got, grandpa?
Jase: "Oh, boy. Well, just look on the bright side. That company probably sucked."
Dedeker: Let's see. Instead of telling someone to look on the bright side, maybe it's just highlighting, "Yes, that sounds like that's really difficult." Some of this feels so simple, but I think that really often simple is best.
Jase: Yes, of just acknowledging, instead of trying to change it right away. I do like that.
Dedeker: This seems like a good opportunity, along with the, "I'm here for you." Again, like we said, of being specific in what are the ways that you're going to be here for that person. "Hey, I'm here for you if you want to talk about things." Or, "Hey, I'm here for you if you want to go get lunch next week, and we can talk it out if you want or not. That seems like a good opportunity for that."
Jase: I think also a good opportunity to then offer something that you are willing to give too. It's not like, "Oh, that sounds hard. We can go for dinner, or I'll cook you dinner or something." When it's like, "I really don't want to cook dinner for this person." Maybe offer something else like, "Hey, I'll take you out to lunch." Or, "You can talk to me about what's going on, and I'll just listen." Offer something that--
Emily: "We'll have someone else cook dinner for us."
Jase: "I will pay someone else to cook dinner for you. How about that?" Let's see. Let's get some more toxic grandpa in here. Toxically positive grandpa. Toxic grandpa's a different guy.
Emily: Different kind of grandpa.
Jase: How about, "Well, everything happens for a reason."
Emily: You say instead, that thing happened, "I'm so sorry."
Jase: It's simple. I like it.
Emily: "I'm really sorry."
Jase: "You know, Sunny, happiness or any other feeling is a choice."
Dedeker: Instead of that, instead of telling someone that their happiness or their depression or whatever is a choice, I'd say just lean into telling them like, "Yes, your feelings are totally valid. It's understandable why you'd be so angry or why you'd be so sad." I think that's a pretty easy place to go, just telling people that feelings are okay to feel.
Jase: "It could be worse."
Emily: "Maybe cowboy grandpa, you can ask me what I'm struggling with so that I can talk and be vulnerable to you, which is all that I want."
Dedeker: It's okay to say, "Gosh, I don't even know what to say. I'm so sorry." You could be honest about that.
Emily: That's something that especially when you're having a rough, internal emotional experience at somebody's pain, in the past, I've often said one of these like, "It's going to be okay." Instead of being like, "I really don't know what to say."
Jase: Yes, just being honest.
Emily: Just that simple and effective and true. I just wanted to point out at the end here that if someone is using toxic positivity on you, maybe try pointing it out to them. You've listened to this episode, you know what to look for. You've heard it maybe from this specific person before, and so explain to them that, "Hey, you know what, my feelings are valid. I'm really just having a difficult time right now." Go back also to our episode on boundaries, it was a long time ago, but it's a classic. We love it. Maybe learn to create boundaries around these situations that you seem to be getting in with people.
Again, that may just look like, "Hey, I'm not going to be around this person who is consistently toxically positive with me. I'm going to leave the room if they tell me to get over it, or if they tell me like, "Look on the bright side of life."" Maybe even that looks like ending a relationship with somebody if this just isn't a positive person in your life, if they're toxically positive by not invalidating your emotional experience and allowing you to have a vulnerable experience with them, and if they're just not a good friend to you in that way, then maybe reassess your relationship with them.
Jase: I'd say hopefully, if you're able to just communicate, honestly about, "Hey, you know, I know you're trying to make me feel better, but what I really want right now is just to be listened to." If you are aware of that and have the wherewithal to think of that at the time, hopefully, that's something that your friend could learn then too, and doesn't just have to be cutting them off. You always got options. It's always okay to have boundaries.
Emily: It's okay to break up as we always like to say.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Indeed. All right, so now we are going to go onto our bonus episode for our Patreon's and talk about positive affectivity, another side to this. I'm interested in both of your opinions on this for sure. Our call to action question this week which is going to be on our Instagram stories is, what does toxic positivity mean to you? We're interested to know what that looks like to you, and if you've experienced it before. The best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is on this episode's discussion thread, in our private Facebook group or Discord chat. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to patreon.com/multiamory.
In addition, you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our episodes are edited by Mauricio Balvanera. Our social media wizard is Will McMillan. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.