What is toxic positivity and what are some examples of it?
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You ever see the Pixar film Inside Out? Joy, at the beginning, is a great example of toxic positivity. She is so concerned with keeping everything *appearing* happy, to the point where she stops Sadness from doing what she needs to do. With disastrous results.
Toxic positivity manifests in the real world in several ways:
“Good vibes only” – You’ve almost certainly seen someone saying this or something similar. There’s merit in trying to keep your environment and associations positive so that you aren’t in a perpetual doom spiral, but taken to the extreme this results in cutting out friends who are legitimately grieving or otherwise struggling because they’re “harshing the vibe”.
“Don’t be sad” – This will happen when someone expresses unhappiness for whatever reason. The toxic positive person seems to take more issue with the fact that the sad person is sad than with the reason behind it. So they’ll plaster over the sadness with platitudes. “Everything will work out for the best,” “There’s plenty of fish in the sea,” “They’re in a better place,” “The only disability is a bad attitude,” and so on.
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