Positively Pebbles: Do You Know What Toxic Positivity Is?

“If everything's just happy, mm, that ain't real.” – J-Hope from BTS (Normal)

Every week as I’m putting my newsletter together, and thinking about what I want to talk about with you, I randomly have the thought, “am I being ‘too positive’?” I try to run it through a “toxic positivity” filter.

The Anxiety & Depression Association of America describes it this way, “Toxic Positivity occurs when encouraging statements are expected to minimize or eliminate painful emotions, creating pressure to be unrealistically optimistic without considering the circumstances of the situation.”  The majority of the time I can honestly say I’m not being “too positive,” and if I do find I am, I rethink what I want to say.

I think we need to do the same in our own lives. While I started Positively Pebbles in order to help myself (and you), with trying to have a more positive mindset and to focus on the good in our lives, I am also VERY aware that the reality is, we need to honor the negative feelings that we do have. They’re there for a reason, we have them for a reason.

Life is hard and we all go through really difficult periods. And while we absolutely need to figure out what we need to do to get through those periods, we also need to know: when it’s time to feel the feels, when those feels are causing us harm, and when it’s time to process and then put away those feelings. Believe me, I know that this isn’t easy.

At one time I was going through a really difficult breakup and I was stuck in a bad place for a while. And I even had people who made comments to me invalidating my feelings and the impact this had on me. Well, my feelings were valid, AND after a while, I realized I was in a dark place and needed help, which I did get. Two things can be true at the same time.

As J-Hope from BTS said above, “If everything's just happy, mm, that ain't real.” I want us to be happy. I want us to be positive. I want us to lean into joy and peace and kindness. AND I also want us to be real and to realize that being happy and positive all the time isn’t realistic, and can cause us further harm if we don’t address the negative feelings as well. My hope is for us to find, and maintain the balance, to live a life that allows us to remain optimistic in the face of life’s challenges.

Wishing you all a beautiful week.

Positively yours, 
Pebbles 💜 

Make sure to check out The Positively Pebbles podcast, available here, or wherever you get your podcasts.