How can positivity be toxic? Is that even a thing? It may sound like an oxymoron but the truth is that toxic positivity is extremely prevalent in many people’s lives and it goes unacknowledged or unnoticed for a lot of reasons.

First, what is toxic positivity? I’m not talking about those who live their life as glass-half-full; we definitely need people like that in our lives and in society. Toxic positivity is when someone refuses to acknowledge reality in favor of a delusion or avoidance. Wikipedia defines it as “dysfunctional emotional management without the full acknowledgment of negative emotions”. If you remove the word “dysfunctional”, it makes sense as to why and how toxic positivity exists. Who wants to feel angry, sad, guilty, ashamed, etc?

I didn’t know the term toxic positivity until my sister pointed it out to me. I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 26 and everything changed for me, although I have been slow to acknowledge just how much it impacted my life. I was very fortunate to be able to get surgery to remove it, and eight months later I was back to full capacity, albeit with a nasty scar.

The mental scars, however, still remain today. After my diagnosis and while I was waiting for my surgery, there was about 30 days of an extreme range of thoughts and emotions. Some mornings I could wake up and ignore the mass of cells threatening a coup d’etat of my body and future. Some mornings I could wake up a warrior, fearless and unshaken in the face of this new adversary, so sure that it would not win this war. But some days… some days…

Some days I was filled with so much anger. Why me? Why now? I was too young (no such thing, btw). I didn’t deserve this (true but definitely not how cancer works). Some days I was incredibly and debilitatingly sad; a sadness based in the fear that nothing would ever be the same, that my body was betraying me, that maybe this was some sort of punishment. And the ever present thought that scratched the back corner of my brain multiple times a day: was I going to die? Tomorrow? In a week? Ten weeks? Ten months? Years? How much time did I have to achieve my life goals? How much time did I have to say goodbye to my sister? My nieces? My world?

The problem with toxic positivity came up because when I was struggling with these thoughts, I was leaning on others for support. Family members. People I had been friends with for ten years. My partner of four years. The people in my inner circle who, out of anyone in the world, I needed to support me. I would express my fears, my doubts, my anger, my sadness. What if nothing was ever okay again? This is going to be a permanent core *thing* in my life and I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. Why was my own body trying to kill me? How do I reckon with that when I look at myself in the mirror? 

I know that was probably a scary time for those who cared about me. They would be losing me too. This affected them too. But any attempt I made at expressing these thoughts and fears was met with “you can’t think like that” and “you need to think positive”. The one that always sent me into a tailspin were the “don’t”s. Don’t be angry, don’t say that, don’t think that, don’t wallow, don’t worry. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. Dear reader, I hate being told what to do.

It was as if expressing or having these non-positive thoughts and emotions would somehow speak my demise into existence. It was as if those around me were telling me that the cancer was really just made out of my own negativity, and that the cure for my cancer was positive vibes only. Maybe it just made those around me highly uncomfortable to accept reality. Maybe they meant to be encouraging. I don’t think anyone had bad intentions with their words. But I didn’t have the luxury or the ability to ignore reality and all the emotions that went along with it.

As much as the people around me didn’t want me to think the way I did or feel the way I did, I had to. Without these non-positive thoughts and emotions, I wouldn’t have been able to emotionally process what was happening to me. I would have been delusional and wondered why six months or a year later I was depressed or exhausted. I would have avoided healing because it would have taken me so long to even acknowledge the trauma of it all.

And I realized most importantly that I had always lived in a world surrounded by people telling me that everything is fine. Like the meme, where the dog is sitting at the table as his house burns down around him saying “this is fine, everything is fine”. Toxic positivity had surrounded me for my whole life. I wasn’t taught to express negative emotions or thoughts, those were BAD. I wasn’t allowed to be unhappy because if I was unhappy that meant there were problems and there’s no problems here, folks. Nothing to see here, move it along, everything is sunshine and daisies. 

I was left in a state where I felt like I was screaming into a void. No one was listening to me. No one wanted to hear about the struggle. No one wanted the BAD Thoughts and Emotions to exist. I felt utterly and completely alone. And I didn’t want to deal with this again in six months or a year or two years. I needed to deal with it now, right now. So I went to therapy. Part of my recovery process was physical therapy 2-3 times per week, and mental therapy once a week. I was able to express and process everything: how hard recovering was, how my life had changed, what support looked like to me, where I was going from here. I was able to make space for the negative emotions, to understand them and process, and then move towards a place where the glass could be half full again. 

Most importantly, I was able to start clocking toxic positivity when I saw it. I was able to express myself better to those around me by saying “I understand if you don’t want to hear this, but it is how I feel and that’s okay”. AND. THAT’S. OKAY. It became an almost automatic part of my vocabulary for a while, to the point where I wouldn’t even give those around me a chance for toxic positivity. If someone asked me “How are you today?”, the answer could be “I’m a little sad today but that’s okay”. I would give myself permission to feel the way I felt, express it, and let others know that they needed to be okay with it too. 

If you are struggling with negative emotions and feeling like you can’t express them without others telling you that you shouldn’t *be* this way, the few things I want you to remember are:

1. You do not need permission from others to feel or express anything, whether it is negative or positive.
2. You do not need to pretend things are okay, when they are not,
3. Your emotions are valid and creating space for them is crucial to your processing and healing.
4. Not everything is alway going to be okay, no matter what anyone else tells you. Human beings go through things.
5. And that’s okay.