What is toxic positivity and what are some examples of it?
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Like when people wish people with metastatic cancer a speedy recovery. When they admonish cancer patients for being sad and angry and say a positive attitude will improve their chances. That’s toxic positivity
Depends, the more psychological actual scientific side of it is about the negative consequences with believing you always have to be positive and can never show dissatisfaction, eg being a pushover.
The more common parlance is in online fandoms where people will swallow everything up and praise it, such as modern Marvel or star Wars, even when it has major flaws, and will lambast everyone who criticizes it as “toxic negativity”.
The toxic part being that as long as it sells it will keep being made. So instead of taking up legit complaints they defend everything as perfect
It comes in many shapes, sizes, and examples, but the general idea is willfully choosing to only focus on the positives of a situation while ignoring the negative. This is not simply being optimistic but turns to antagonistic behavior such as in specific niches or communities based around a Fandom where anything but positivity about the topic is met with anger or arguing against it
Varying degrees and it isnt always malicious as far as intent, but it’s considered toxic as it’s forced positivity in a way that is trying to mask or ignore negativity.
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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.
Adding a little active positivity to one’s life can be emotionally uplifting. Notice the nice things, write down what you’ve been grateful for that day, savor a sensation with full attention.
With not-terribly-meaningful situations it can also be helpful to see the good *and* bad. As a form of mental exercise how to handle changes/disappointments.
In difficult situations getting to a point where people feel there’s also *some* good coming from the mess is one possible sign of healing. But it’s neither required nor can be forced.
Which is where “toxic positivity” comes into play. “If you’re still feeling bad about something, you’re just not thinking good enough thoughts”
a) It’s not humanly possible nor desirable to be HAPPY all the time. Trying to get there anyways and dismissing all states of not-HAPPY as “wrong” will get stressful very quickly.
b) Other people can’t be forced to be happy. But it’s much more soothing to onlookers if the person in a difficult situation is positive, upbeat, brave, whatever, as long as it’s not some uncomfortable emotion that could require help. Pain, grief, depression, even heartache, the toxic positive person at best doesn’t know how to react to them and wards them off with a “Just think happy thoughts and all will be well” or really actually doesn’t want any hints that negative things exist in their carefully designed, supposedly HAPPY life.
c) Shit happens. No amount of positive thinking will ward that shit off. No one is safe. Happy or not. Blaming whoever is currently stuck in the shit that they only got there because they didn’t think HAPPY enough is simply cruel. But it wards off that sense of insecurity in life for a while. Sorry, superstitions don’t work, and toxic positivity is just another one in a long line of them.
When you spill your heart about your problems and someone says “could be worse”.
It’s no productive. It’s not encouraging. It downplays your problems. And it makes you out to be the bad guy because you had the audacity to be unhappy or complain.
In a work setting, toxic positivity can be making wildly over optimistic plans when you aren’t responsible for implementing them. The famous dynamic here is salespeople promising anything the customer asks for without reference to what the engineering team can actually produce.
I have a semi official job duty of being (non toxically) negative about things because without my input my office tends to overpromise and underbudget. They need someone to consider less than best case scenarios.
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I’d say when people tell ugly or fat people they look good because they’re wearing certain clothes or makeup. I think it’s super rude to lie to people about shit where they could embarrass themselves.
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