If you’ve ever gone through something difficult, you know it’s not helpful when someone says something like “look on the bright side,” “there are people who have it worse,” or “at least you’re not experiencing x, y, z.” Rather than making you feel better, these comments make you feel more isolated and alone. This perspective feels invalidating to what you’re going through and builds shame and guilt around your experience. This is because there’s a difference between positive thinking and toxic positivity.

How Toxic Positivity Is Different From Positive Thinking

An extremely positive facade is not necessarily the solution to mental health ailments such as anxiety and depression. Kendra Cherry, MS, explains toxic positivity is a belief and way of thinking that suppresses difficult emotions in favor of an overly cheerful and often falsely positive mask. This is different from positive thinking which is a mental shift that makes room for positive thoughts and beliefs without minimizing the difficulty of the situation. Positive thinking can lead to an increased sense of hope; toxic positivity leads to suppressed emotions and potentially more harm.

While happiness is a more pleasant emotion to feel, uncomfortable emotions like anger, sadness, and sorrow have their place too. Toxic positivity only leaves room for happy emotions, but it’s healthy to normalize all feelings because sometimes it’s in the depths of our pain and heartache that healing happens. This is why it’s not helpful when we try to force ourselves to “just be thankful” and “look at the bright side” when the dark side needs our attention.

The Dangers Of Weaponizing Gratitude

Gratitude is a helpful tool to improve mental health. It builds hope and opens our eyes to other perspectives outside of what we’re hyper-focused on. Where practicing gratitude can go wrong is when it’s used as a weapon to invalidate a lived experience. Just because you’re thankful for your siblings does not negate the grief you feel over your mom’s passing. One does not invalidate the other, and gratitude is not a substitute for processing emotions.

Comments such as “be thankful you have a job at all” are missing the point when someone is expressing harassment or abuse in the workplace. The push to just be thankful feels invalidating when you’re facing hardship. Used in this way, weaponized gratitude becomes a form of gaslighting because it devalues and dismisses very real emotions and experiences. It’s possible to recognize the good things in your life and let yourself feel hard feelings.

Embracing The Uncomfortable

Life isn’t always positive, and allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable and hard emotions when difficult things happen improves your mental health. It’s okay to not be okay. Rather than shaming yourself for “not thinking positive,” what if you took time to process and manage your emotions, even if they’re uncomfortable?

It’s possible to use positive thinking while embracing uncomfortable but real emotions. This practice is called empathy. Empathy is extending understanding, compassion, and kindness to yourself and others. Empathy is able to cry with you over the loss while remembering the good memories. Empathy is able to sit with your anger over a project at work while remembering this too shall pass. And empathy is able to embrace the uncomfortable emotions that come with a complex human existence without forgetting there is still good in the world.

Practicing Empathy

So, how do you combat toxic positivity and practice empathy for yourself? It starts with acknowledging your feelings without judgement and not forcing yourself to always be happy or positive. It’s normalizing not being okay all the time, and allowing yourself to feel the full spectrum of emotions.

Mindfulness can be a great tool for practicing empathy for yourself. Mindfulness is sitting with whatever is in the present moment without judgement over what is coming up for you. Some find meditation a helpful form of mindfulness, but a simple mindfulness exercise includes:

• Find a quiet, calm place where you feel safe.
• Close your eyes, and focus on your breathing.
• Note what feelings and thoughts come up for you.
• Let them come and go as you continue to focus on your breathing.

This small practice when done regularly can create space for all emotions to come and go as you need them to. Once self-empathy and mindfulness become habitual, you begin to live with positive thinking rather than toxic positivity.

If this is an area in your life you feel you need support in, that’s okay! A therapist could be the partner and patient listener you need to help plan out a path to deeper healing and freedom.

Therapy is for everyone, and it only takes one step: showing up. Take that first step today, and see if one of our therapists would be a great fit for you! Get started today.