The ‘good vibes only’ approach to life is not as healthy as we thought.
Toxic positivity is defined as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralisation of an optimistic and cheerful state across all situations.
Furthermore, this mindset tends to reject difficult emotions in favour of a positive façade.
By denying the existence of certain feelings, we will slip into a state of denial. Our emotions are repressed instead of processed.
Emotional invalidation
Whenever we express our feelings, our primary goal is to validate our emotions. It helps us understand and embrace the emotional experience.
Avoiding negative feelings denies them of validation.
Phrases like “Be Happy” although well intentioned, suggests that our current feeling is our own fault for not ‘choosing’ to be happy.
Consequently, leading to distress and guilt for feeling otherwise.
It’s okay to not be okay: Accepting all our emotions
Clinical psychologist Dr. Jaime Zukerman highlighted our inability to control emotions.
“Not only is it okay to not feel ‘okay,’ it is essential. An abnormal emotional response to an abnormal situation IS normal. We cannot simply pick the emotions we want to have. It just does not work that way.”
Acceptance is possible only when you allow yourself to feel.
Emotions are fleeting, pushing them away only prolongs the agony.
Anger, sadness, joy and happiness; they all come and go.
Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires.”
from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
Give yourself the permission to experience them as they come.
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Proofreader: Anna Wong
