Toxic Positivity

Toxic positivity is a new term going around social media these days to describe what it's like when someone pushes down all negative emotions and experiences instead of processing them. Instead, they focus only on the positive. Some examples of this can include "fake it til you make it" or "speaking only beautiful words." 

Before I get into why toxic positivity is so toxic, let me just say that I'm not saying positivity is toxic. It is important to have a healthy mindset which includes hope, the ability to see the good in life, and the ability to plan for future beautiful things. Affirmations and mantras can be wonderful, but they're not enough on their own.

Unfortunately, toxic positivity doesn't allow for a brighter future because in order to have all of these things, one must heal from the negative experiences that have happened in the past. In order to heal, one must acknowledge what happened, talk freely about it, and process through to the point of forgiveness and moving on. 

In toxic positivity, none of these things happen. You push down an experience so that it is not dealt with, but it is still hidden in your body and subconscious mind. Every experience you have in life is quantumly and energetically entangled in every fiber of your being. This is actually a beautiful thing because it means nothing is ever truly lost, however if you do not put the negative experiences in context, they will continue to hurt you and they will come back to haunt you later in the form of physical or mental pain, chronic illness, and perpetuating trauma in the lives of others. 

A good friend of mine recently sent me an article about how when you speak words of Love to water, it forms beautiful shapes in the water. The molecules of the water actually are affected by the frequency of the words you speak, and they are arranged accordingly. In the pictures she sent me, the water molecules that had been told loving, positive affirmations looked like beautiful snowflakes and fractals. However, she also send me pictures of water shaped by words of fear and negativity that caused the water to actually panic. The shapes the water molecules made looked like people who were madly dashing about in fear as if someone had yelled fire in a crowded theater. While this has its own dark beauty, you can tell that it was a horrible experience for the water molecules. 

The point of this excerpt that she sent me was that the human body is 60+ percent water. Naturally, if someone says negative things to you  or you have a negative experience, this is felt by your whole body. The idea behind this is to use positive affirmations and experiences to help your whole being, including your physical body, to be healthier. It also is smart to limit useless negativity such as watching the newsmedia or listening to people who tell you you're no good.

But it got me thinking... there are so many negative experiences we have that we cannot control, and so many negative things have happened in the past. These are still in your body, still affecting your being. Adding affirmations on top of that isn't going to get it out. Affirmations and positivity are important, but not enough on their own. 

This is where the toxic positivity comes in. It says that you can only speak beautiful words, only acknowledge the good in your life, only focus on the positive. If you ever talk about the negative, you're labeled a "negative Nancy" or told you're dwelling on the wrong things. I practiced toxic positivity for years. The affirmations and mantras did help, but they never allowed me to deal with the underlying lies and negative experiences that my religion and life had given me in the past. 

Now I realize that it is important to have balance. We do not want to form a negative mindset in which we have no hope in the future being anything but terrible. We do not want to live in a cycle of rehashing the terrible things that happened to us over and over again so that we never see the good in life and are unable to recognize the Divine in even those terrible things. However, if we are not allowed to process and verbalize our negative experiences, we will never connect those negative frequencies to the more positive and hopeful frequencies so that they can form a whole, healthy, balanced energetic being. 

Practically for me, this looks like accepting every emotion I feel and acknowledging why I feel it and where it came from. It looks like not feeling guilty for what I am feeling or thinking, and it looks like processing the things that have happened to me in small doses and in cycles as they naturally come up. Your mind-body is an amazing entity that loves you. Your subconscious will bring up what you need to deal with in small, manageable doses in the right time. The more you process the smaller, manageable doses, the less the experiences will be overwhelming, though I won't say there won't be times when the process is very deep and painful. Panic attacks are overwhelming to the point of feeling like you're going to die, but I truly believe they are your mind-body's way of loving you and helping you heal... and they won't last forever.

It also looks like verbalizing and being real about what has happened to me, acknowledging that people hurt me, and figuring out how to contextualize the fact that some of the people who hurt me also loved me while they were doing it. 

There are many reasons toxic positivity is so popular. Processing is not fun, and it can seem easier to pretend the negative experiences never happened. Some religions and lifestyles promote toxic positivity as the way you "should" be. Society as a whole doesn't like to deal with negative things, and many people are made to feel guilty for having negative experiences or aftereffects of them such as PTSD. However, the more we learn about the human mind-body and trauma, the more we know the importance of processing through things and truly healing so that hidden negative experiences don't come back to bite us or future generations years later. 

Because they will come back. Your mind-body has to release what you've been through in one way or another. Best to partner with it. Best to remember that you love yourself and are only trying to help yourself heal. You can do it. Love can make it possible.