Suppressing emotions can lead to long-term psychological harm. Photo / 123RF
Sometimes, an upbeat response covers up an uncomfortable emotion.
I was recently texting with a friend when he paused for a moment before writing back:
Him: “Full disclosure here. I’m having a biopsy next week for a growth on my bladder.”
Me: “Thanks for telling me. … You know I had testicular cancer? One of my hard-won mantras in life: wait to worry.”
Him: “I am not one to be consumed with worry. However, I know your words are with good intention, but have you heard of the term ‘toxic positivity?’”
Me: “Yes, kinda. …”
To be honest, “kinda” was stretching the truth. I’d heard “toxic positivity” as a buzzword, but I hadn’t really thought about its meaning – surely it would never apply to me, right? Now, I wondered: why did “wait to worry,” a comment I intended to be helpful, provoke the rebuke?
The term “toxic positivity” has gained popularity in recent years to describe an unhealthy way of tamping down negative emotions for the sake of staying positive. Google Trends shows that searches for “toxic positivity” began to emerge in 2019, with increasing discussion in texts and blogs, and new studies, and even a 2022 book, Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy by Whitney Goodman.
Graham Reynolds, a psychologist and adjunct professor at Columbia University, put it like this: “Toxic positivity occurs when encouraging statements are expected to minimise or eliminate painful emotions, creating pressure to be unrealistically optimistic without considering the circumstances of the situation.”
Harvard psychologist Susan David phrased it even more succinctly, calling it “emotional suppression”.
As I thought back to the chat I’d had with my friend, I realised I’d inadvertently negated his anxiety about a possible cancer diagnosis. Instead, I’d have been more helpful if I’d acknowledged his fear head on, telling him, “That’s scary. What can I do for you?” (Even better, “Can I do some research for you?” Or, “Would you like me to come with you to your next appointment?”)
I also decided to ask several experts for examples, and this is what I heard. Their suggestions focus on how to validate someone’s feelings and not reconfigure their life into a Hallmark movie, with its requisite happy ending.
Don’t say: “Just stay positive.”
Do say: “That must be a hard situation for you.”
Don’t say: “Everything happens for a reason” or “When a door closes, a window opens.”
Do say: “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
Don’t say: “Look on the bright side.”
Do say: “This sucks. How can I support you?”
While I’d begun to understand the drawbacks to toxic positivity, which is sometimes referred to as “forced false positivity,” David gave me even greater context.
Distinctions are made between positive emotions (happiness, joy), which are “perceived to be good and wonderful,” and negative feelings (anger, grief, anxiety), David said, and many mental health professionals try to quickly steer their patients away from the latter, which are often considered unhealthy or counterproductive in processing loss.
But David called tamping down those feelings perceived as negative a form of denial.
Toxic positivity means using language that “sounds good on the surface, but really what you’re saying is ‘my comfort is more important than your reality.’ Sometimes we use glib phrases just to be positive because we are uncomfortable by the conversation,” she said.
I thought back to the texts with my friend and my use of “wait to worry”. True, I hadn’t let him fully express his fear and anxiety, and that was, at least in part, because it made me uncomfortable.
I remembered the many long months, now decades ago, when I’d been in the midst of cancer treatments. When asked how I was, I often replied, “Fine,” which even then I knew was skirting my feelings. The alternative? “I’m nauseated. I have mouth sores. I’m constipated. I’m terrified.”
In not being able to share the emotional truth of two surgeries and four rounds of chemo, I was isolating myself, which limited my ability to draw on support from those closest to me. Long before it had a name, I’d drunk the “toxic positivity” Kool-Aid.
David returned to her theme of “emotional suppression,” including instances when it’s self-inflicted. “It’s where you have this idea that I’m feeling sad but I shouldn’t be sad because a lot of people have it worse than me, or I should just be grateful,” she said. I was thinking to myself, “What’s so bad about that?” when she explained, “to suppress our emotions or push them aside has a real impact on our long-term wellbeing”.
By that she meant it can harm our psychological health, which hinders our ability to problem-solve (say around decisions involving insurance or treatment), to get crucial support, and to do what psychologists often call “sense making,” which is how we draw meaning from an experience. David added, “Sense-making is actually a crucial part of life and of recovery, the ability to move forward.”
During my illness and for years after, I ploughed on, which is to say I resumed regular programming as soon as I could. I took no stock or time to deal with the complex emotions that cancer unearthed, which I now can see kept me stuck. To others I was the happy, fearless cancer warrior. At night, I lay awake overcome by fear.
But denying our own feelings or having them suppressed by others has other consequences.
In a 2024 article, “The Dark Side of #PositiveVibes: Understanding Toxic Positivity in Modern Culture,” Zoe Wyatt, a therapist and researcher specialising in trauma, wrote that the “invalidation of genuine human emotional experiences” can lead to adverse psychological outcomes, including increased stress, reduced emotional resilience and harm to our interpersonal relationships, as well as mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and psychosomatic disorders. Put another way, it can prevent us from processing or dealing with genuine emotional experiences.
Experts suggest a number of steps to avoid indulging in toxic positivity:
As for my friend, the one waiting to hear the results of a bladder biopsy, he’s just fine. No cancer found.
Steven Petrow is a journalist and author, most recently of The Joy You Make and Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old. He writes the Smarter Ageing column for The Washington Post.
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