When Positivity Becomes Toxic
Unpopular opinion: I have a bit of an issue with gratitude.
I know, I know – I’m a meditation teacher, isn’t gratefulness folded into the essence of my being?
Amongst other things, May is Mental Health Awareness month. So in the spirit of being more vulnerable & exploring my own psychology, I’m sharing this dark secret with you. I imagine I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Did anyone else grow up hearing:
You better finish your food because there are starving children in (insert ‘3rd world’ country here).
Just be grateful. Things could be worse.
Everything happens for a reason.
This is toxic positivity: The belief that one cannot or should not feel down or ungrateful because things could be worse. It’s a “good vibes only” approach to life. However…
While maintaining some perspective and choosing to learn from life’s most difficult moments can be helpful, forcing ourselves to “just be grateful” is toxic. It stretches to put a positive spin on something before we’ve even had an opportunity to feel it.
In doing so, we strip ourselves of the opportunity to let the suffering move through us, neglecting our own emotions and processing system, harming us in the long term.
This pressure to just be grateful all the time often leads to a feeling of immense guilt-- And for what? Having emotions? Burdening ourselves with needing to be grateful when we are genuinely upset about something, forcing a “bad” feeling to go away and trying to cover it up with gratitude, is detrimental to our mental health. And it leaves us feeling confused, guilty, and perhaps even ashamed (again, for having emotions).
So yes, gratitude is important. Recognizing the many blessings you have is vital to leading a happy and fulfilled life. But there is space to acknowledge that some things that happen to us just absolutely suck, and that sometimes there is no greater reason beyond horrible timing or bad luck.
In this same vein, I’m by no means encouraging that we ignore when we have privilege-- especially in a society so overrun with systemic inequities. It’s extremely important to recognize one’s own privilege. But it’s not helpful to feel guilty about the life circumstances you were born into: your skin color, your status, the country you live in, the family you have. This is not productive to ourselves, nor to the people that could use the help of privileged people in order to create meaningful change.
We don’t create compassionate children by telling them that other children are starving in other parts of the world in order to get them to eat – this makes them feel guilty for their life circumstances and cuts them off from deeply feeling. Instead, we can acknowledge our own suffering and deal with our own emotions (and teach our kids to do this too) so that we can cultivate an attitude of loving-kindness and a desire to want to help others.
Feeling guilty about who we are, and forcing ourselves to try and be grateful under all circumstances doesn’t help move society forward.
Yes, be grateful for this life, the body you have, the humans who have brought light into your life, the running (hot) water that soothes you, the access to delicious and nutritious foods, the many possessions you perhaps don’t need but you were lucky enough to have access to – its all a gift. Live gratefully and generously...
...Because an attitude of guilt caused by forced gratitude pushes us towards a scarcity mindset: “I better hold onto what I have because other people don’t have it and now I fear losing it.”
Instead of this, we can acknowledge all the blessings we have in life, and we can acknowledge when things suck sometimes. We can acknowledge that we are privileged in so many ways and we can use that privilege to support and care for our global community who may not have the same access as us. We can maintain perspective and find balance somewhere between wallowing in self-pity and feeling ashamed for having feelings at all.
In this way, we take care of ourselves, making us the most able to help take care of others.