Toxic positivity is the new negativity.
What is toxic positivity?
- Masking your true feelings to appear happy and positive.
- Telling others how they should or shouldn’t feel or act.
- Immediately flipping “negative” feelings to the positive, rather than allowing yourself to feel them first.
Toxic positivity is a rejection of our stunning humanity – our shimmering scales.
I can see it affecting people, in my sunny Costa Rican beach town, filled with seekers.
The look on peoples’ faces, as they grapple with what they’re feeling, with the words coming out of their mouths…
… because they might not be perceived as “positive.”
The fear of feeling the full range of emotions is palpable.
The self-judgment and shame compounding these feelings – festering, rather than feeling and releasing.
We are not one key pianos.
If we were meant to always feel positive, our bodies and lives would be designed very differently.
A one-key symphony would be very boring.
It’s the variation that makes a piece beautiful.
The real flex is not in smashing the positivity key over and over, tone-deaf.
The real flex is in how deeply you can be with every feeling – every piano key.
The deeper you can be with every key, the quicker you can return to a high note.
The real flex is in your ability to seek support, to be vulnerable with another.
It’s safe to feel everything, to talk about everything – with consent.
If you feel a “negative” emotion, that doesn’t mean you’ll stay in a negative place forever.
In fact, if you don’t feel it, you may spend more time in the dark.
The more fully you can feel it, the more likely it is to pass at a healthy pace.
Feeling everything is not the same as venting…
It’s not the same as gossiping…
… and it’s not the same as needlessly speaking negativity.
I truly believe in the power of pragmatic positivity:
Seeing how everything is serving me, even when I’m feeling heavy emotions and having objectively difficult experiences.
I’ve made a huge change in this area, training my brain away from worry and fear.
Today, I feel genuinely positive and joyful most of the time.
The key? Allowing myself to feel everything.
Feeling everything is the gift of being a highly evolved mammal, a human, innocent in all your emotions – and it’s a necessity:
Without full-spectrum feeling, your system gets clogged up.
Seeking the support you need to process your feelings is key, including professional support in many cases.
So please, do not push positivity on someone when you don’t know what’s going on for them.
What happened.
Where they come from.
Do not deny their feelings.
Do not deny their humanity.
Do not deny their reality, even if it looks different from your own.
Empathy is not the same as agreement.
You can acknowledge another’s feelings, another’s experience, even if you don’t agree with why they feel that way, or how they got to that experience.
Rejecting the full spectrum of human emotion is not positive.
If you’re aiming to support someone, the most genuinely positive thing you can do is love them as they are, and hold neutral space for them, if it’s available to you.
Assure them that it’s safe to feel everything.
One of my dearest friend’s Instagram handle used to be @allthefeelsarewelcomehere, and when you truly sense that in someone, what a relief.
It is safe, normal, natural, and high-vibe to feel everything.
So please, be real.
If you can, be loving.
If you can, be present.
And please, release judgment.
With love,
Lula
Note: This is not intended as a sub for therapy or medical advice – everyone is on their own journey and has different needs. Take what serves and leave the rest.