Melissa Dlugolecki offers three ways to respond to toxic positivity: disengage silently, set a brief boundary, or teach someone close to you how to actually support you. Pick the approach based on whether you want to keep the relationship.
And what I'm gonna give you here are 3 different ways to respond. All of these apply to any statement. The first one is a non-response. This is going to be for people who you don't really want them in your life, you don't need them in your life, or maybe you're not in a place to even handle a response because you are just holding it together. That could be a smile, that could be walking away, that could be a deep breath, but it is a complete non-response. The second is a boundary response. Now really, these are all boundary, but for example, it could be something along the lines of, that's not very helpful for me right now. Another could say, You know, another way of saying that is, that doesn't serve me in this moment, or I'm not able to feel that right now. That doesn't resonate with me. Boundary responses are not offering an explanation. It is just simply drawing a line in the sand as to what is an okay way to engage with you and what is not. Then the third, the last one is gonna be what I call an educated boundary response, which is these are gonna be people in your life that you actually want to support you and you want to train them. You want to coach them. You want to teach them. And we let go of the why me? Why do I have to do this? And instead, we choose to be the creator of what we want, the creator of the relationships we want, the creator of the way people show up in our lives.
