Toxic Positivity: The Dark Side of the Positivity Movement | Ep. 33 (Audio Only)

Welcome to my podcast. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a master's in clinical psychology and a former anxiety sufferer turned anxiety freedom rebel. Hi there. This is Dr. Nicole. And today I want to talk with you about today, toxic positivity, the dark side of the positivity movement. I believe in the power of positivity. In fact, the way that you wire your brain is how your brain is going to fire. So thinking positively can help your brain become more positive. However, any attempt to escape the negative will ultimately result in its amplification. In short, what you resist will persist, and that requires we understand what symptoms are. Today is all about toxic positivity. And if you're tired of people telling you to manifest your joy, to just look at the bright side, or if you've fallen victim to the positive psychology movement that tells you to ignore your anxiety, to ignore your depression, and to suppress your negative thoughts, and that has caused you to feel more anxious, depressed, and negative, then today's message is for you. First, I want to talk about what toxic positivity is and what it is not. Toxic positivity is a strategy that we use to suppress or cover up or otherwise silence valid human emotions. It's kind of like if you hit the mute button on a crying baby or if you shut off the fire alarm and your house is burning to the ground. Toxic positivity is all about silencing a natural human experience, right? Humans are designed to feel, and that's the whole spectrum of emotion. We're designed to feel anger and terror and sadness and joy. And in fact, we see that as fetuses in the womb, that you were designed from the beginning to have emotional experiences. As your neurological system formed, your emotional experiences begin to form as well. What toxic positivity is, is it's a mute button. And what it isn't is it's not a sustainable solution. So let's pause for just a second, and I want to have you do a self assessment. I want you to ask yourself, do I struggle with toxic positivity, or am I receiving messages about toxic positivity from my environment? And I actually have a list of 10 indicators that this may be something that you're dealing with. So let's go through them together. One is that you feel like you're hiding or masking or bypassing your true feelings. Number two is that you don't feel like you have permission to feel your negative feelings, either permission from yourself or people around you who may just be uncomfortable with you having anxiety or depression or anger or any sort of what we are labeling as negative emotion. Right. If you identify as a stuffer or suppressor of your emotions. I have a lot of people talk with me about that in my office. Or they say, yep, I'm the master of suppression. I stuff stuff it in a corner and I just ignore it until I can't ignore it anymore. Or do you feel like you've spent a whole bunch of your time just trying to force yourself to be positive? Number five is if you feel guilty for feeling sad or anxious or really feeling any emotion besides happiness and positivity. Right. Or number six is you're uncomfortable around others when they express a negative emotion. Or. Or you may try to distract them away from feeling those feelings. The narrative in your environment is filled with sayings like, it could be worse or others have it worse than you do, or you're choosing this negativity. Or maybe they're saying things like, you need to focus on manifesting joy. Number eight is that when you start to experience a negative emotion that you notice yourself becoming dissociated or distanced or from your body or your environment around you. Number nine is that you feel like you have to hide behind a mask of positive feelings or put on your rosy colored sunglasses and you don't acknowledge the other feelings that you might be experiencing. And then number 10, the number 10 sign that you may be a victim of toxic positivity is that you scold yourself or others for a lack of positivity. And so the question that may be rising in your mind is, well, why is toxic positive? Why is it so toxic? Right? And there are three key reasons. One is that it can lead to shame. According to Brene Brown, she says where there is hiding secrets and denial, shame is usually in the driver's seat. And here's how you might assess if shame is around you ask yourself, if blank knew blank about me, what would they think? And so then insert in the blanks what comes to mind for you. If blank knew blank about me, what would they think? So an example from my life would be, if my clients knew that I experienced anxiety, what would they think? Would they think I'm an imposter? Right. And so when we're suppressing that, it can lead to shame as opposed to addressing it and working on those feelings. Right. Number two is that suppression is actually harmful to the body. There's a whole bunch of literature on this, but I want to actually share with you a story about a friend of mine. This friend had this really good idea. And it took him months, but he finally mustered up the courage to bring his idea up to his boss. So he went into his boss's office. He finally just said what he'd been so desiring to say for so long. And then his boss said, that's a stupid suggestion. Leave my office. My friend felt a surge of embarrassment and anger and disappointment, but he stuffed it down and he went back to his office. And then within an hour, he had this most raging migraine that he couldn't function. And it lasted for days. And so, just like my friend's emotions are valid, so are yours. And while exploding all over his boss might not have been the solution to his suffering, stuffing his anger or maybe trying to be positive wasn't the solution either. Right? And then the third is that what we deny will amplify. You can't solve a problem that you are unwilling to have. And by acknowledging your anxiety or your anger or your frustration or your sadness or whatever else it is that you're feeling, you have the opportunity to understand why you feel that way and then to do something about it. Instead of ignoring it or adding more post it notes with positive affirmations all over your bathroom mirror, you can actually get to the root cause of your feelings. So let's talk about what you can do. Instead of being sprinkly, sugary, sweet and casting those thoughts everywhere and covering your home in post it notes, or as the old saying goes, putting lipstick on a pig, I have three steps for you, and they come from the ACT method. So number one is that you acknowledge what you're feeling. Let's use the example of anxiety. Simply say to your anxiety, I hear you, I acknowledge you. What do you need me to know? And then step two is you identify the characters or the factors that are contributing to your valid feelings. Right? These may be parts of yourself that feel insecure or anxious or that who have gone through difficult traumas or difficult events. And then there may be the social characters. These are the environmental characters, like my friend's boss, who disrespected him and embarrassed him. It could be the government, it could be your school, it could be your friends. And so doing an audit of your relationship and looking at what you can change in your circumstances may be the solution to helping you be free from anxiety. Instead of covering your house with post it notes, what if we got rid of the anxiety that necessitated the post it notes to begin with? Right? Right. And then we have the biological characters, and these are the hormones, the neurotransmitters medications, and other physical variables that affect your health. Instead of just trying to be positive when your body is expressing that it needs support, go to your doctor or your trusted clinician or counselor or friend and talk with them about what you're feeling. And make sure that you're taking care of your body as well as your mind. The third step is to use the tools for transformation. And today I want to show you how to shift from toxic positivity to honor healing and balancing and validating statements. And so I have this on the blog and there's a chart. And so I'm going to read this to you and then you can visually see it by looking at the chart at our blog. And so toxic positivity statement number one is manifest your joy at all costs. Don't feel, just manifest your joy. An honoring and healing statement would be, I accept how I feel, and I'm working towards feeling more joy. Just a big difference there, right? I'm not intending to come up against manifestation, but the difficulty with manifestation is that it can create magical thinking if there isn't appropriate and valid action behind it. And then this magical thinking can actually cultivate more feelings of stress and anxiety. So if I think, oh my gosh, what if I have X illness? Sometimes that worry or that thought or that feeling can actually make us more anxious to begin with. And so instead of trying to change the way that you're thinking, you actually focus on acceptance of how you feel and setting a goal. Right. Number two, that we could do is instead of saying, anxiety is not an option, we can say, anxiety is a message from my mind and body so that I can heal and I'm listening. Anxiety is a message from my mind and body so that I can heal and I'm listening. Instead of saying something like, be positive, you can say, whatever I'm feeling, I accept myself. Whatever you're feeling, you can accept yourself. And another one is, I am dragging everyone down by being so negative all the time. You could say, I can love and accept myself no matter what I'm going through. Instead of saying, delete negativity, you could say, everybody suffers. I'm not alone. Instead of saying, focus on the positive, you could say, I acknowledge the entire spectrum of what I'm feeling. I love that I acknowledge the entire spectrum of what I'm feeling. The good, the bad, the scary, the angry, the confusing. Sometimes our feelings mix and overlap and contradict each other. I acknowledge the entire spectrum of what I'm feeling instead of saying, it could be worse or others have it worse than me. You could say my feelings are valid instead of saying everything will work out in the end. You could say what I'm going through is really hard and I am worthy of time and patience in this time. Instead of going to frozen and saying conceal, don't feel. You could say I can authentically feel and share my feelings with those I trust. And then lastly, people won't like me if I'm negative. You could say I authentically accept my friends and I authentically accept myself. Healing comes from truly showing up for ourselves and for others in a truly authentic way. While our brains are impacted by how we think and feel, it's always important to acknowledge how we feel so that we have the opportunity to seek true transformation. Otherwise, we'll find ourselves in this vicious cycle of symptoms suppression. Symptoms suppression. And remember, if you're being influenced by toxic positivity, it might be time to do an audit of your cast of characters. An audit of those around you. An audit of what you're letting get into your mind. An audit of what kinds of packages you need to be returning to sender those things that don't belong to you. Take a look at your social media page. Are there any pages that you need to unfollow? Are there any new pages that you should follow? Instead, do an audit of your friendships. Are your friendships forcing toxic positivity on you? Or are they allowing you to emotionally experience whatever's coming up for you in that moment? Is it time to have a conversation about toxic positivity with those that you love and that you trust? And to do a pivot on how you're supporting and encouraging each other when you experience what we're calling a negative or an undesired emotion journal about them. The research shows that simply writing it down or acknowledging it, saying it out loud or talking about it can be hugely and profoundly valuable. In fact, that's the foundation of what counseling is, right? And the research shows that counseling can be as effective or more effective than an antidepressant medication. So some pretty powerful stuff, right? Embracing the entire spectrum of your human experience. Experience will help you set the stage for becoming fully alive. If you're excited about becoming more fully alive, I have a one week challenge for you. This one week challenge helps you to shift, via the Glitter and Gold method, from toxic positivity to messages that will help you to embrace and acknowledge and accept and deal with the experiences that you're having right now. It's one week, eight video videos, it's totally free, and you're going to love it. You're going to get a ton of support. You're going to get a beautiful booklet and come into the Facebook group. It's totally free and this is where we can interact together and support each other and start to change the narrative around positivity. Let's shift positivity from toxic positivity to the light side, the life giving side of positivity, and we can do that together with the ACT method. I'm Dr. Nicole. You can learn more about the amazing things that we're doing by going to our website drnicolecane.com.

The recording you just listened to consists of the personal opinions of Dr. Nicole Caine, a naturopathic doctor with a Master's in Clinical Psychology. While these opinions are based upon literature, her counseling education, medical training, and clinical experience, this content should not be viewed as the definitive opinion on these subjects. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for any sort of medical, psychological or other form of treatment. If you are in a Crisis, please call 911-OR call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255. If you're in need of counseling, don't hesitate to make an appointment with a counselor in your area. Dr. Nicole Caine is so passionate about people getting their life back. If this resonates with you, you and you think this podcast would help someone you love, please share it with them. Stay in the conversation with Dr. Nicole Caine about writing the next chapter of your life so that it plays out just the way you want it. Explore your options for working with her at www. Dr. Nicolecane.com that's Dr. D R Nicole N I C O L E Kane C A I N.com when you're there, be sure to take advantage of the Free Anxiety Freedom One week challenge. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the get your life Back podcast. Here's to your next chapter.