Toxic Positivity: Extreme Happiness Is Bad For You?

Honestly, to me, the concept of Toxic Positivity sounds like something created by a pessimist.

First of all, let’s talk about the word “toxic” — sounds quite negative, right? I can’t imagine anyone who is an optimist defining positivity as “toxic”. I mean sure there are:

(1) Disadvantages to positive emotions;

but there are also:

(2) Advantages to being positive;

(3) Disadvantages to being negative; and

(4) Advantages to being negative.

(in my book Optimal Happiness, I call these four options the Four Quadrants of Happiness)

Here we need to review scientific literature, specifically the meta-analysis conducted by Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of Psychology at the University of California and author of The How of Happiness, and her colleagues [1]. This meta-analysis looked at 225 papers on the topic of happiness, which together combined the data of over 275,000 participants, and concluded that by a landslide “(2) advantages to being positive” beats all the other 3 Quadrants of Happiness in virtually every part of life.

For example, happy people are more productive, creative, social, healthy, and wealthy, and they beat their less positive counterparts in virtually every other part of the time.

In other words, Lyubomirsky states that we should exclusively and full-heartedly embrace positivity and disregard negativity (such as toxic positivity) as the negativity of any sort (even towards positivity) does us more damage than it provides worth.

When I first learned the above, it was like a huge weight was taken from my shoulders since I no longer needed to give my energy to negative emotions.

This being said, let’s look at the definition of toxic positivity to understand what it actually means. It means being too positive, exclusively looking at (2) advantages of positivity and (3) disadvantages of negativity, not being able to acknowledge negative emotions, such as anger or sadness, or negative events, such as a serious injury or death (the (1) Disadvantages to positive emotions and (4) Advantages of negativity).

These people are unable to process negative emotions in a healthy way, essentially contradicting what I said above (we will address this contradiction in a moment).

Furthermore, author of the Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy, Whitney Goodman, believes that toxic positivity is a form of personal emotional gaslighting, meaning that we should be “sad when [we]’re sad and angry when [we]’re angry,” so we can fully experience one’s “rainbow of feelings.”

The problem with Goodman’s words, or anyone else who is a supporter of the toxic positivity movement, is that being positive does not automatically means that we will need to fight for our life at every turn. In fact, truly negative events are rare, and when they happen a positive person will have enough tools to deal with them in a healthy and mature way.

Furthermore, small or intermediate negative events happen to us all the time. Unfortunately, most people aren’t completely sure how to deal with all that negativity that comes their way and therefore they just learn to accept it, calling it normal or unavoidable, hence buying into “let us normalize being negative” culture. As such, toxic positivity culture justifies negativity and keeps it in place, avoiding looking for real solutions for negative behavior.

What I’m saying is that truly happy people aren’t delusional optimists. They are people with great emotional intelligence and a functional tool kit of ways of dealing with both positivity and negative situations, which occur to them as much as anyone else. They will just deal with these situations in a different way than most.

As such, learning how to feel happy is the ultimate solution for our well-being, since happiness positively affects virtually every part of life.

Perhaps the only time I’d recommend buying into the whole toxic positivity nonsense is if we are unwilling to truly learn how to feel happy today and forever.

As for reaching this high level of happiness, going from beginner to expert in happiness, unfortunately, this topic exceeds the discussion in this article. Yet, if you read this far then I’m happy to tell you that I am the founder, happiness coach, and Chief Happiness Officer at Optimal Happiness, where I teach people how to turn their lives around and help anyone reach their happiest potential.

You can learn this important skill here or just support us on Medium by hitting that clap button or following my profile for more cool articles on the topic of becoming the master of happiness.

Stay happy!

Source: Lyubomirsky. S., King, L., and Diener E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological bulletin. 131(6), 803. < https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-1316803.pdf

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Toxic Positivity Test

To understand your personal beliefs about toxic positivity, please answer the following questions:

• Is extreme 10 out of 10 happiness possible? Why or why not?

Your answer: _____________________

• On the same 0 to 10 scale rate, what is a realistic level of happiness we can experience in a long-lasting, healthy, and sustainable way?
  (0 being extreme unhappiness and 10 being extreme happiness)

Your answer: _____________________

• Is occasional negativity important and healthy?

Your answer: _____________________

• Now rate your average everyday positivity/negativity level on the same 10 to 10 scale (for example, the average of this week).

Your answer: _____________________

Share your answers in the comments!