The Shadow Side of Optimism: Toxic Positivity
Written by Renee Brush, Ph.D.
I have always considered myself an optimist. And many people in my life – usually those who are cynics or self-proclaimed “realists” (which, honestly, seemed more like their way of denying their true cynicism) – have commented on my optimistic perspective, usually in a way to suggest that there was something wrong with it. More recently, my therapist and I have discussed my optimism and how it may have been working for or against me on my healing process.
How optimism can be helpful
I have always been a very sensitive person, with lots of emotion. It seems that I tend to experience very deeply any emotion I have, be it anger, anxiety, joy, or sadness. In therapy, many of the emotions I experience are very overwhelming and difficult to handle. Once I realized that these emotions were essentially emotional flashbacks from my childhood, I began to understand how overwhelmed I probably was as a child. I can see now that optimism, in those moments, helped me grab onto hope that things would eventually get better. Optimism was my tool for survival as a child. I could tell myself that it is ok to have all of this fear, because it would get better soon and I would be ok.
As I reflect, I can also see how my optimism was helpful in relationships. I have many depressed clients who say to me, “No one wants to hang out with someone who is so down and negative all of the time” (referring to themselves). I get this. And looking back over my life, I appeared depressed most of my adulthood. So, even if I complained to someone about how bad I was feeling, I could always end with a statement like, “I know things will get better.”
In general, research shows that optimism is correlated with better outcomes (Carver, Scheier, & Segerstrom, 2010). In their review of the literature, Carver and his colleagues found that optimism resulted in better quality of life after coronary artery bypass surgery and breast cancer treatment. In addition, longitudinal studies have found that optimism is correlated to lower likelihood for heart disease, better immune responses, and longer lifespans.
Those are medical types of studies. Other studies looking at psychological issues have also been done. Optimism also buffered against distress for people undergoing in vitro fertilization and depression for people in treatment for ischemic heart disease (Carver et al., 2010). Furthermore, when examining problem-solving abilities, people who were rated high in optimism were also more likely to face problems by approaching them directly, whereas people who were rated high in pessimism were more likely to avoid problems.
The top of Mt Washington, NH (my happy place)
Can optimism be bad for you?
It has only been recently that I have begun to see how my own optimism could have been bad for my own mental health. I really had an “a-ha” moment in session when I realized this and I knew in that moment I needed to write a post on this. But, I still had to do quite a bit of reflection and research to actually identify where the positive thinking may have led me astray.
One way optimism has shown to be unhelpful is what is known as “optimism bias,” which is also known as “unrealistic optimism.” The idea here is that optimistic people will underestimate the threat they are under to some experience, such as earthquakes (e.g., Spittal, McClure, Siegert, & Walgey, 2006) or even COVID (Gassen et al., 2021). Gassen et al. found that people at the highest risk for COVID (i.e., those with more pre-existing conditions) were actually more likely to behave in ways that would put them at greater risk for COVID, which seems pretty counterintuitive. Other research backs up the fact that unrealistic optimism can lead to more risky behaviors (Hecht, 2013).
But, just as there is an optimism bias, there is a pessimism bias, where someone believes that negative events are more likely to happen to them (Hecht, 2013). This reminds me a lot of my second husband. Shortly after he moved here, a person hit him and he said to me, “The universe is out to get me.” He definitely lived by this type of bias.
What is toxic positivity?
In the field, people can use “positive thinking” and optimism interchangeably. I’m not here to debate if that is appropriate. Optimism is certainly a type of positive thinking.
What do people say when someone is feeling down? They may tell you to focus on the positive. “Think of all the things you have to be thankful for? What do you have to be sad about? Look at all of the good things in your life!”
This is where unrealistic optimism steps in… when people asked me how I was doing, really I was suppressing my emotions and not even realizing what effect that was having on me or my mental health. I was telling myself - This won’t hurt me. It will be ok. I’ll be fine.
But, in reality, my focus on the positive thoughts had moved into “toxic positivity,” which prevents any type of negative emotions to be experienced (Lee, 2021 Feb 9). And this, I think, is much of what society wants to see happen. We don’t want people to be sad or unhappy. But, this is unrealistic.
Focusing on the positive does help us feel better, but it also may cause us to ignore the negative emotions as we experience them – which may then cause us to ignore an important message that we need to hear. Or we may ignore a red flag about a situation that we need to address.
For me, my deeply sensitive and emotional side is a truth that I am only recently truly coming to accept. My parents never really learned themselves how to handle their own negative emotions and so were not able to teach me how to handle my own. So, in order to survive, I learned how to hide them away – put them in a box and not deal with them. I learned how to compartmentalize my emotional life from my daily life. Consequently, I have not been in touch with my emotional side for the majority of my life. I have spent most of my life numb and dissociated from that side of me - and for those of you that have been following me, you have read about this.
I see a number of different ways that caused me to become optimistic as a survival tool. For one, I have the feeling that my mother felt I was “too much” and my big emotions were a burden to her. So, optimism became a way to ignore the negative emotions. “Oh, it will be ok.”
And then when I started to shut down and be more depressed, I would be asked what did I have to be sad about? Optimism or looking at the bright side at that point was a way to protect myself from this type of dismissiveness. I had been dismissed my whole life. I did not believe anyone wanted to hear the truth about my reasons for being sad.
So guess what? I grew up with people who did not know the real, authentic me. They knew the me that was masking the sadness. When I started the hardest part of my healing journey, I worked at a group practice. I had been there for a couple years at that point and had made friends with one particular counselor. After I started the very hard work, I did not mask my feelings at all. In fact, I tended to stay more to myself. I closed my door more often. One time when I stopped in her office to talk about one of her clients, - it had been 3 or 4 months into the toughest work - she actually asked me why I had been so mad recently. She then said, “You used to be so happy.”
The other thing that this toxic positivity has done for me is that it has made it very difficult for me to deal with my client’s hopelessness. How can I deal with someone else who has no hope when I have not even allowed myself to not have hope? I’m sitting here wondering if I have even allowed myself to feel deep despair. I laugh - because I know I have. But, overwhelming emotions remain overwhelming emotions, even if we identify them. This is something I am still working on. In fact, just today, I had to sit with a client who was feeling so frustrated that this work sometimes seems never ending. I mean… sometimes it is.
I have never meant to “be like this.” I’m thinking of my college friend, Dave, who used to be the one who teased me about being an optimist like it was a bad thing. I don’t think it was ever my intention for my optimism to become toxic level. But it has been important for me to examine it honestly to see how it developed so I can choose with intention how to use it moving forward.
Another view from the top of Mount Washington, NH
How to avoid toxic positivity and stay optimistic
If we are going to heal, we need to be able to feel the negative emotions as well as the positive ones. There is what I call a “lame therapist quote” that says “We have to feel it to heal it.” Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk talk about how trauma is more about the energy from our experiences trapped in our bodies than the actual experiences. But our childhood experiences - parents or caregivers or abusers, whoever - often teach us to ignore or hide from those feelings. So naming the feelings is important - and acknowledging that they are valid - and then finding some ways to work them out, perhaps through journaling or with a therapist.
However, you can only be in the negative feelings for so long. Then you have to find a way to soothe yourself. If you haven’t already developed some grounding or other coping tools, please check out my posts on those. Also, finding joy is imperative.
I am a big proponent of affirmations, but I have seen some research that I now cannot put my hands on that suggest that people with low self-esteem do not do well with positive affirmations. But, the problem seems to be about authenticity, which then feels like toxic positivity! Instead, we can use affirmations in a way that is true for you. Maybe just creating a sense of safety would be important, such as, “I may not feel it, but I am safe right now and I can take care of myself.” Or if you are trying to build your self-esteem you can use something like, “I am becoming a person I love.” The idea is to have an affirmation that feels authentic to you.
If you have been avoiding emotions or not been authentic to yourself, please have some self-compassion for yourself. Understand how it has been part of your process and then address it in a way that feels appropriate for you.
I also think it would be appropriate to create an expectation that our lives will move in cycles, where we will have good and bad times. Life is full of accidents and unexpected occurrences. One thing I learned about in my research is that of the “defensive pessimist” who is likely to prepare for the worst case scenario (Norem, 2007). I think this is smart and I have done it many times with my anxious clients. The next time things get bad for you, how will you handle it? How will you remind yourself that things will get better again?
For me, I will remind myself that the deepest, darkest parts of the healing only last temporarily and then I will be able to see the light again. That is optimistic, but not toxic. So that feels like a win.
References
Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2010). Optimism. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 879-889. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.006
Gassen, J., Nowak, T. J., Henderson, A. D., Weaver, S. P, Baker, E.J, & Muehlenbein, M. P. (2021). Unrealistic optimism and risk for COVID-19 disease. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647461
Hecht, D. (2014). The neural basis of optimism and pessimism. Experiential Neurobiology, 22(3), 173-199. doi: https://doi.org/10.5607/en.2013.22.3.173
Lee, K. (2021, Feb 9). The difference between hopeful optimism and toxic positivity. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rethink-your-way-the-good-life/202102/the-difference-between-hopeful-optimism-and-toxic
Norem, J. (2008). Defensive pessimism, anxiety, and the complexity of evaluating self-regulation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(1), 121-134. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00053.x
Spittal, M. J., McClure, J., Siegert, R. J., & Walkey, F. H. (2006). Optimistic bias in relation to preparedness for earthquakes. Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies, 5(1), 15-29, doi: 10.1007/s11069-005-2369-9
