Toxic positivity is forced happiness. Today’s “good vibes” culture encourages us to force happiness on ourselves. It wants us to smile through the pain and to keep up a cheerful outlook.

But ignoring our negative emotions only inhibits our well-being. Use the strategies in this article to improve your mental health instead.

Face Our Emotional Truth

Although we wish they didn’t exist, negative emotions are simply a part of being human. Repressed grief, pain, guilt, or other “bad” emotions stress our bodies. Refusing to face and unravel these emotions can cause physical and mental health conditions in the long term.

We need to accept negative emotions as part of life. We shouldn’t bottle them up because these feelings will overflow eventually and make us behave in ways we regret. Losing our cool at the drop of a hat could signal our suppressed emotional distress.

We need to face the feelings we’d rather avoid so we can stay balanced and clear-headed.

Strive for Emotional Agility

While we shouldn't wallow in our negative emotions by brooding or getting stuck in a hellish mental loop, we also can’t smile away the pain.

Instead, realize you’re feeling difficult emotions, avoid judging them, and let your mind move on.

Once we are mindful of our mental state, we can confront our hurt and work through our pain to become emotionally agile.

Stop Faking It ‘Til You Make It

Let’s stop faking our happiness.  We can’t sustainably force ourselves to be positive while denying our negative emotions.

Feeling sadness, anger, or fear in an isolated instance is unlikely to ruin our mental health unless we repress them. Yes, happiness can be a choice. But, it cannot be truly achieved without first acknowledging your discomfort and pain. We need to get to the bottom of these feelings and deal with them realistically.

We can’t have emotional balance if we continually numb negative feelings. By being emotionally rigid, being dense to emotional truth, and faking our happiness, we are misusing the concept of positivity. Our insistence to be positive, in this case, becomes toxic to our physical and mental state. 

Photo Credit: Matildadjerf