Toxic Positivity: Reframing How to Be Encouraging As a Support Person
“Just stay positive!”
These words are often offered as a salve forrdships and negative emotions. However, it’s not a magical cure for difficult emotions. In fact, positivity can often go toxic. The expectation to smile through the pain and “just look on the brightside”, can hinder the healing process.
In this article we’ll cover:
- What toxic positivity is
- Why toxic positivity is harmful
- How to be positive without the toxicity
What is Toxic Positivity?
Negative thoughts are hard, but they shouldn’t always be avoided. Toxic positivity is the act of suppressing, invalidating, or dismissing negative experiences and emotions. This toxicity can come from external or internal sources.
Toxic positivity removes any space for negativity to exist and invalidates important thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The pressure of toxic positivity doesn’t allow space for processing difficult realities and facing the circumstances. This leads to suppressed feelings that become more harmful over time.
Examples of Toxic Positivity
Toxic positivity can manifest in a lot of different ways. It can be outright telling someone to not feel bad, or more subtle.
In most instances, the person who says these things is typically trying to help uplift, but in reality they are dismissing feelings and reinforcing negative stereotypes.
There is a lot to learn about mental health treatment and supporting a loved one. However, you’re in the right spot. Sequoia Behavioral Health has many resources you can freely read to learn more about mental health and offering support.
Positivity vs. Toxic Positivity
Positivity hopes for good outcomes without ignoring the failures, fall-backs, and slip-ups that happen along the way. Those issues are learning opportunities and offer a chance to grow.
Read our related articles about why relapses happen.
On the other hand, toxic positivity falsely encourages a good outcome by ignoring and dismissing failures, difficult emotions, and issues. With a toxic positivity perspective, those issues will either disappear without work or don’t actually exist.
Why is Toxic Positivity Unhelpful?
During mental health treatment, hard truths and negative thoughts need to be faced, It’s not pretty, and it takes hard work. There are good days, there are bad days.
Toxic positivity harms the healing process by discouraging people from being honest, accepting their struggles, and working through their issues. In most cases, pushing positivity is an enabling behavior because it encourages people to ignore their issues.
It can be hard to accept the imperfections and hardships of our loved ones. Read our full guide on enabling and codependency to learn about better ways to help a loved one in mental health treatment.
Addiction, trauma, and other mental health issues change the chemistry of the brain. They don’t typically go away on their own, and it takes effort to grapple and process them. Toxic positivity is unhelpful because it denies any issues in the first place.
Acceptance is the first step, and toxic positivity denies the issue.
Why People Use Toxic Positivity
Being toxically positive might seem like typical, normal, helpful positivity to you. When someone is feeling down, you want to help them by letting them know there is a lot to be grateful for. On paper, this doesn’t seem like a horrible thing, but it can be damaging.
These are signs that you promote toxic positivity:
- A sense of guilt when negative or difficult emotions arise
- Disengaging or dismissing others when they express difficult emotions
- You have a strong desire for the people in your life to have an easy life
Maybe you’ve adopted toxic positivity from your family, and that’s the way things have always been. If that’s the case, you may also be masking your own struggles and negative emotions.
Read about avoidance coping to learn why it’s detrimental to recovery.
Related Blogs
Invalidating Feelings: Why It's So Hurtful and How to Avoid Doing It
When you invalidate someone's feelings, they’re less likely to trust you, and they're more likely to present themselves as someone one they’re not.
How To Stop Being Codependent
Codependency causes you to lose your sense of self in relationships. With the right amount of self-awareness, therapy, and support, you can regain your identity and form healthy relationships.
Avoidance Coping: What It Is and How to Stop It
Avoidance coping is a negative coping strategy that causes anxiety by pushing problems away rather than dealing with them.
Being Positive Without The Toxicity
Positivity isn’t about ignoring negativity. It’s about accepting difficulty and negativity and working with it. As someone who is supporting a person through treatment, it’s important that you accept that they will experience difficulty. Some days will be good, others will be very difficult, and there’s a good chance there will be a relapse.
If it’s not a mindset you already have, you should work on being ok with not being ok.
Related Resources: Mental Health Relapses: Causes and Prevention
Reframe Difficult Emotions
As a support person, you play a crucial role. As your loved one goes through treatment, they will learn more about their tendencies, trauma, and how to live a healthy lifestyle. It’s your job to encourage them through the process.
Try to see difficult times and negative thoughts as a chance to grow. Negative thoughts and emotions are stressful, but they provide insight into continued change and growth.
Encourage your loved one to continue growing and learning from their experiences.
Talk Less
As someone who is trying to support someone during and after mental health treatment, listening should be your most used tool.
If someone begins sharing negative emotions, don’t shut them down. Listen to what they have to say and reinforce that it's ok for them to not feel ok. It’s normal for them to experience hard emotions.
Related Resources: What to Tell Someone Who Relapsed
Learn More
Being a support person for someone who is going through or has finished mental health treatment is hard work, but it’s also a joy. You have the opportunity to watch them grow. You’ll likely cry with them, and cheer for them when they obtain their goals.
While you may have a natural tendency to be supportive, it’s still a challenge. Learning more about mental health treatment will equip you to better support your loved one through it.
Support Your Loved on a Better Way
Helping those in going through a tough time isn’t always inherent or easy. Toxic positivity might feel like what your loved one needs, but it is, indeed, toxic.
When your family member or friend enters treatment at Sequoia, you’ll still be their support system, and you’ll likely be there for them after. Find out how to best be there emotionally for them while they’re going through their mental wellness journey.
Sequoia Behavioral Health has a library of resources available to help you learn more about mental health struggles and how you can support your loved one struggling. Use them to become a better support for your loved ones, and contact us with any questions you may have.
Learn More
Family Therapy
Family therapy sessions can greatly improve a client’s success in treatment by resolving conflict, and providing their support system with knowledge and care.
Group Therapy
In group therapy, individuals can learn, grow together, and experience meaningful support through psychoeducation, recreation, and community development.
Strength-Based Therapy
Strength-Based Therapy helps people realize their strengths and utilize them to achieve their goals. It focuses on re-framing your perceptions of yourself.
Supporting your loved one is difficult, especially if you can't relate to their struggle. Learn more about the mental health disorders we treat at Sequoia