Melissa Dlugolecki explains toxic positivity as a flight response, not cruelty. When people can't sit with your pain, they say the wrong thing to escape their own discomfort. She says don't take it personally, recognize their limited tools, and if you want, teach them better.
Look at toxic positivity, if it happens to you, as really someone's lack of tools. So if they don't know what to say, their default, their discomfort with your pain, with your grief, with your struggle is going to be to try and get out of it. Think of fight or flight. Toxic positivity is a way of flight. Oftentimes we get angry when people don't know what to say or they don't say the right thing, but don't take it personally and see the humanity of the person who just doesn't know what to say. Then you learn how to educate them if you choose.
