Why Is It Important To Know The Difference Between Toxic Positivity And Healthy Positivity?
Positivity can be defined as the practice or tendency of being optimistic in attitude. While it gives us hope to a certain extent it can have a lot of negative impact on our mental health. It is because of this reason that we need to differentiate between toxic and healthy positivity and apply it in our lives accordingly.
Healthy positivity means acknowledging the negative feelings and thoughts and working through strategies to gain optimism. On the other hand, toxic positivity is dismissing any kind of slightly troubling emotions like sadness, anger and over generalising the feeling of happiness and optimism. Dismissing emotions or living in denial is not mentally healthy for any human being; hence, it leads to a lot of emotional baggage, feeling of isolation, depression, trust issues, sleep issues, inferiority complex and so on.
So how do we recognise toxic positivity and what and what we do to prevent it?
We can do so by noticing some common, yet rarely differentiable expressions and experiences of daily life, like faking happiness, not being able to express our emotions, feeling ashamed of our negative emotions and feeling guilty for feeling the way we are. We should be able to analyse our emotions, face them even if they are negative, try and rationalise them which will make it easier for us to accept and express. Even if we go through some event which may have affected us negatively, we should consider going to a therapist or counsellor and not stigmatise it.
READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE.
Find a BUDDY to share all your problems with (even anonymously, if you want) on the FeelJoy Mobile App available for all Android users.
