When is Positivity Toxic?

I like people. A lot. And so, when I’m interacting with someone, my default facial expression is a smile. Sometimes, this is a problem. When I was working toward my Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology, the most frequent criticism I received in practice sessions was that I smiled too much, which might be off-putting for someone who is, say, severely depressed. I’ve tried to be more conscious of this, but I don’t smile on purpose. It’s just how my face works.

To some extent, it’s how my soul works, too. By default, I feel happy, and I tend to return quickly to that sense of happiness following a setback. I get that this makes me really, really, stupidly lucky. I know that happiness is harder to come by for some people than it is for others, and I also know that this has absolutely nothing to do with worthiness.

As a bubbly, smiley, generally upbeat person, I’ve tended to be drawn to others who brim with cheery optimism . . . until recently. Lately, I find myself craving conversation and connection with people who know the darkest parts of life. Now, when I encounter someone who knows deep loss—whose life has compelled them to sit with the absolute precarity of being human—I feel immediate kinship. We both know what it is to grieve, what it is to despair, what it is to look into a future that’s wholly uncertain. Our losses are different, and yet isn’t there a sense in which all losses are the same? Every loss is the loss of a world we thought we knew, thought we understood, thought we could predict, hoped we could control.

Long Covid, like any illness, is a brutal reminder of how little we actually control. It changes our bodies, our relationships, our habits, our hobbies, our goals and plans. In so many of these emails, I’ve focused on the light that is still available to us. I’ve written about gratitude, love, mindfulness, and the power of perception. I still stand by all of this. I still believe that joy is possible, right here in the midst of our pain. But I just want to be sure that you know I’m not telling you to smile all the time, to only think positive thoughts, to proclaim Covid a ‘blessing’, or to focus unfailingly on the bright side. Non-stop Positivity is just the simpering sister of Fear.

So, if you need to cry, cry. If you need to rage, rage. If you need to curl up in bed and stay there for hours, do it. I have done all of those things, and I will do them again. If we want to feel our joy and our gratitude and our love, we have to be willing to feel the other stuff, too.

This, I think, is the difference between genuine, nourishing positivity and what’s often called toxic positivity. Genuine positivity ebbs and flows. It allows other feelings and experiences in. It’s a softness that sits in the background during our dark moments, ready to step in but patiently waiting her turn. Toxic positivity is rigid and insistent. It makes no space for anything else. It’s rooted in the fear that we aren’t big enough to hold all of our feelings.

But we are. You are, and I am. Look at what we’ve already survived. Look at how far we’ve come, the ways we’ve grown, the connections we’ve nourished. Surely, we can grant ourselves permission to have more than one feeling about all of this.

What feeling do you need to hold space for right now?