The Danger of Forced Positivity: Allowing Space for All Emotions

In honor of our Summer Sabbath Challenge, we are taking time to invest in rest. To give us more space and time we are rebroadcasting previous episodes for June & July. Stick around! I am bringing back some really well received episodes that I know you'll enjoy!

This is a rebroadcast of Episode 78 that aired March 2022.

This weeks episode is shedding some light on toxic positivity. I think we all have experienced this in one way or another although we may not realize it. It looks like someone saying, "Everything will be okay" or "You need to focus on the positive!"

While I will never underestimate the power of hope and positive thinking, it becomes toxic when others (or even you are using positivity to cover up negative emotions or events in our lives. We have to have a balance and be able to feel the wide range of emotions to make it through these events.

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Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

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Transcript

Kara: 0:05

Hi, I'm Kara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible and the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward past many years of surviving and not at all thriving and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created a special needs mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flair of possibility in your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone, or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome. Hello and welcome. Welcome to the special needs mom podcast. This episode is another part of our summer Sabbath series. And as many of you know, I've pulled out our most loved and best of, if you will, episodes way back from the archives and we're reproducing them for you over the summer. So, Win Win gives me a rest, gives you some content that you may have missed from years ago. And this particular episode, as I was preparing to kind of reintroduce it is, it's kind of crazy for me to look back on. Actually, I'm going to give you a little backstory before I tell you more about the episode. This was recorded. The original episode was recorded at a time that I was facing a lot of public knowledge about my son's health. Well. And even more backstory, for those of you that haven't kind of heard the full story of my son's disabilities and, you know, I don't talk about them in detail here all the time. It's actually really funny because my, my younger brother said, I love your podcast. He doesn't have any kids and he was like telling me how he listens to it all the time. And he loves it. He's like, but you know, you were usually, but you know, you really should talk about Levi more often. Cause of course, he's like, I want to know about Levi. And, so it's just really funny, but, Levi, my son, who's now 15, his disabilities were all acquired. Via a tumor resection surgery 13 years ago. So he was this precious two year old who up until that time was completely typical. And after his surgery, as I'm sure you can picture he had many, many disabilities. So, boom, we landed in the land of disabilities very quickly and, you know, very, scarily, is that a word? I don't know how to say that right now. let's fast forward to the fall of 2021. We were humming along, honestly, I was like really engaging and new and like really fun things in the business. And we got the news that Levi had not one, but two new brain tumors. So in other words, recurrence from his original tumor. So we did another brain surgery, of course, with a lot of complications. That's the only way we do things over here. And then. February 2022, we found out that darn it, we didn't get all the tumor. So we had to move forward with another little surgery and then proton beam radiation. So with all of that, a lot of people, I want to say we're up in our business, but that's not what it was. A lot of people wanted to support us and to love us. And, you know, we were sharing a lot more details of his health journey, just the nature of, kind of. How that goes when people want to know and are actively supporting it. We had amazing community support and so it's Interesting. I think about that time and it has very mixed feelings both of oh my gosh Community people are amazing. I have so many stories I could tell you right now and Clearly this is we're kind of walking through hell. So we had a lot to be with in terms of You How people responded to us and our situation that's I think what inspired the timing of this episode The episode was originally called toxic positivity I know really creative title, I mean, you know, there's nothing like being direct The new title is the danger of forced positivity Allowing space for all emotions, because ultimately, whether we're forcing ourself to be positive or other people are trying to force us to be positive, it's ultimately a symptom of discomfort with big emotions or maybe discomfort with hard emotions. I listened to a different podcast recently that talked about this so brilliantly. he's a, I don't remember the name right now, but it's a chaplain who works in hospitals. And, so he is with people who are grieving. So I really think that so beautifully he described the experience of being with without trying to kind of fix and forces positivity. So actually, I'm going to try to get him on the podcast. I have no idea if it'd be like, yeah, so like you're way too small for me. Who knows? I'm going to. Dream big on this one. And I will put the episode, that I'm referring to on a totally different podcast. I will put it in the show notes. If you're like, Ooh, that sounds kind of interesting. I want to hear about someone talking about grief in a really kind of different way. So with that, here is the episode that we've pulled from the archives for you today. Enjoy. The topic of the day what we're calling toxic positivity. And you might've heard of this concept before. I feel like it's kind of out there if you're on social media and that kind of thing, like it's something, a concept that we've heard of, and I want to talk about that today and I'll use probably some examples from my real life on how like this might show up for you. I think examples of what toxic positivity feels like when we experience it from other people is it feels, devalidating, and I think there's two phrases that I hear a lot that to me I would categorize as toxic positivity. The first phrase is, Is coming from another person or actually you might even tell yourself this yourself is everything's going to be okay, right? Have you been in a conversation where maybe you had some hard news yourself or maybe your child wasn't hitting a milestone and it just as hard and someone says, It's going to be okay. Or maybe something like, Oh, don't worry. They're going to catch up. And I think instinctually we as moms know that that's a lie. Like, we don't know if they're going to catch up. And honestly, we don't know if everything's okay. Cause honestly, it's not okay that Levi has this. It's just not, it is what's happening, but I'm not okay with it. Or I hear a lot from people that are kind of really struggling. with feeling that stuck and trapped feeling, and maybe even that lack of, it's completely lack of peace and presence. And they say something along the lines of, I just don't like to focus on the negatives of, I just try to keep it happy. Or I try to just really always correct myself and kind of always focus on the positive. And that's where I think is a slippery slope. And we'll get into the details of the difference between the power of positivity and toxic I almost think that also people, when you think about thinking negative thoughts, or what I'm going to say is thinking a thought that produces a unpleasant feeling, or sometimes we might say a negative feeling, that there's this feeling of like almost like the bogeyman's going to get you. Like if you aren't positive, that those other thoughts and feelings are going to take you down. They're going to bring you more bad or more negative or more unpleasant. And while this isn't, it's an interesting concept because while I do believe that your thoughts, the things that you're thinking over and over again, those beliefs, those do ultimately create your feelings, your actions, your results. Those are who you're being in your life. And so there is truth to if you're continuing to only think some negative thought strains that it will create a specific result in your life. There's a big difference though in I think only allowing the positive. So let's define what toxic positivity is. Medical news today is gonna be where we get our definition, and it's toxic. Positivity is an obsession with positive thinking. It's the belief that people should put a positive spin on all experiences, even those. That are profoundly tragic. Toxic positivity can silence negative emotions. Demean grief and make people feel under pressure to pretend to be happy, even when they are struggling. It's a really good definition. So clearly that word pretend, I think is a really powerful word. If you can picture somebody who's really trying to silence these negative emotions, demean grief and pretend, you can only imagine that when, when you're not doing that very well, that it's going to produce. More feelings of maybe guilt or judgment, like you're not doing good enough or well enough that you actually do have these negative thoughts and feelings. It's almost like setting the bar of positive thinking so high that it's not humanly possible. So you're destined to basically fail at it, which is going to help you produce more thoughts of being not good enough and guilty or ashamed. So you can see how this is not helpful. Additionally, if other people are, are taking on that toxic positivity way of being, then. In trying to connect with them and, you know, in a situation where you kind of just want them to listen to you, it can feel like people are downplaying your very real struggles, right? Have you ever had that experience where you just want actually to be in a moment where like, this really sucks, this is really hard, and someone's trying to encourage you and says, don't worry, everything's going to be okay, or, well, have you looked at it this way, or something along those lines? It actually doesn't feel good. And like I mentioned before, this persistence to only have positive thoughts can then kind of help create some negative thoughts about how you're accomplishing that or rather failing at that. And then that can turn and spin into some internalized negative beliefs about yourself, which then just open up this spiral to continue to have more negative thoughts and really just not feel well and definitely not feel connected. Or authentic in your life. Something I think is interesting to point out here is that sometimes I think our society, and I mean, I definitely had this belief up until maybe like five years ago was that we were supposed to feel good or be happy like 90 percent of the time. And then the other, 10 percent is when we might feel something other than that. And there's a mentor that I followed for a long time and she talks about having basically 50 50 emotional balance of that half of the time we're going to have emotions in what we would call the pleasant or positive category. And the other half is on the other side, right? If you just look at this spectrum of how we might show up in life, it totally makes sense. Even I want you to picture that. And I want you to also remember that I think So that's obviously not true. Like the 90 10 thing that I thought was what I was working to achieve and clearly filling up. I think what I kind of didn't recognize is that there's many times in our life that we actually want to feel an unpleasant feeling or a negative feeling. Like, I want you to picture when let's use a pet beloved pet that's passed away. You would want to feel sad about that. You would want to feel that you missed this pet. And You wouldn't ever want to just purely feel happy or positive about that, right? And I think we can look at maybe again, let's use a milestone missed with a child. I don't know that we want to feel happy about that. I don't know that we want to feel positive about that. It's something that I think for many of us, we would want to grieve. We want to accept. And yes, we can ultimately go on in our life to feel happy. And feel content, but we may never be able to go back to that specific event and cultivate positivity. Do you see the difference there? The toxic positivity doesn't allow for the actual lived experience and the grief. So I want to look at a couple of things. I want to look at how to address. People in your life that I don't know, let's just say they're kind of spreading toxic positivity, or they're trying to help you with what we'll call toxic positivity. In some cases, if you feel comfortable, you can have a conversation. with that person. I teach my clients to do a simple practice called making requests. Now, clearly people don't have to follow your requests, but as a person who is at cause and creating their life experience, you get to go out in the world and make requests. So Assuming that these people care about you and love you, you can go in with a belief that they're trying to help you. They just don't know how. So this request, this conversation can simply be looked at through the lens of you're helping them know how to help you and hold you. So you, you might say something like, I just really need you to listen to me today. And not from a place of like, I just need you to listen more like, Hey, can you just listen to me? I just need to kind of vent and be where I'm at and I don't even need you to respond. I just want you to hear what I'm saying. Or maybe they are kind of trying to jump and fix. And you can actually even interrupt them and say, you know what, I appreciate you trying to help me right now. I know that it's hard to know what to say in these circumstances. It's actually okay if you don't even respond. I just need you to hear me. I don't know. Something like that. And interestingly enough, in our culture, we're actually not very good listeners. And I think we're also typically very uncomfortable on how to respond when we hear news that that makes us hurt. Right. And so I think we've all done this in conversation, trying to fix and trying to help. And I think you as a listener. So, as a mom of a special needs child, this is where you get to practice showing up in the world in a way that creates the experience that you want. So in other cases, you might not feel comfortable having that conversation. Maybe this person is maybe a relative that isn't really known for listening, or they Heating your requests. And this is where you get to set up a boundary. This is where in some cases that boundary might look like you deciding not to spend time with that person during certain times or seasons of your life. That's kind of a more, extreme situation, or it could be not sharing certain things with that person. So you just actually don't, you decide not to go deeper in those conversations. That's an option. And then it looks like actually creating base for yourself to still process, even if that person that you kind of wish would be a little different, isn't able to do that at this time, then you get to still go create the experience that you want to need. And this is where you can go journal. you can say, okay, well, a therapist is actually a brilliant person to allow all the spectrum of feelings to be with. Of course, in life coaching, this is applicable as well, where you actually get to show up exactly how you are and you don't have to come already fixed or positive. And so there's many different tools where you can help actually process the emotions. We won't go over that today, but it does make me think of an episode in the future. And as we wrap up, I want to put in one more point. I want to look at the difference between toxic positivity and positivity. And I think the difference that I see most significantly is that it becomes toxic when it's stuffing positivity over, over sadness, over fear, over grief, whatever it is over. I want you to almost consider that if there's the true emotion that you have based on the experience that you're having, and you're not letting it come out and come up and be tended to, and then try to stuff positivity over it. That's toxic. It's almost like, let's think of an example here. this is random, but we're going to go with it. It's like if you have a pair of gym socks and you just worked out and they, they're a little stinky, they are wet and it's like if you don't let those air out and you just cover them up with, I don't know, dry clothes or if you just put them back in the drawer and like put them back, they're going to get kind of stinky and they're going to get like, they're going to get worse. They're not going to get better. And it's actually, it's interesting, again, this is a very random example. that they're, let's just say that they start like molding and growing things on them because they didn't get the air that they needed. So this positivity, which we're calling is just putting it back in the drawer and saying a happy thought and moving on. actually creates a deeper issue, and in this case, a more stinky issue than if you had allowed them to air out. Okay. Again, I'm sorry. It's a very random example. So it's powerful. If it's what I'm going to call pure, there is actually so much power in hope. And I think positivity is a way of looking at something and creating many times a feeling of hope or an expectation or a looking toward. There's this study. I don't know if you've heard of it before, and I don't know the name or reference of it, but something about rats swimming in pools. And I know I'm sorry about the rat thing, but I mean, we already talked about gym socks, so it's not that much worse. And they have these little rats swimming, swimming, swimming, and kind of getting to the point of exhaustion. And when they get to the point where they, they kind of look like they're fatiguing, they in some way, the experimenters kind of rescue them a little bit, give them a break. So when they go back in the water, after they had had that relief and that hope, they swim something like twice as long as the rats that never got that hope or that we're going to call it that positivity. And so there's power in that, but it's distinctly different in the positivity stuffing over. Do you see the difference there? I think a word that is really helpful in this is and, right? So it's having the spectrum of experiences, the sadness, the grief, and having the hope, the positivity is having them coexist. And let's use my current life situation as example to kind of bring this episode to a close. Toxic Positivity would only allow myself to think of the happy thoughts. We have treatment. It's all going to be okay. We'll get through this. I don't know, you know, what other positive thoughts I might tell myself to make myself try to feel better. But it would certainly look like me also doing the same thing for other people. So in my case, it would look like me hushing other people's sadness. And in my case, my son's sadness, like trying to distract him when he's sad, be like trying to fix him. We were actually in a conversation recently, and I'm going to intentionally leave this vague to kind of protect his privacy. But he was sharing about a fear of something. And honestly, watching him process this and being this, I. Desperately wanted to jump in and tell him it's not going to be that bad because what he was picturing was a little different than I think is going to actually happen. So I wanted to go fix it yet. What I needed to do in that moment as his mom. Is to allow the sadness, allow the grief, allow him just to be in that place without me trying to end it or close it up and wrap it into a bow. Now it's interesting because I'm obviously aware of this, but that didn't take away my desire to go and just say, Levi, it's going to be okay. And tell him all the reasons why it was uncomfortable for me. It was hard for me to watch, right? Like I wanted to have him feel better so that I could feel better. Yeah. And so on the other side, at another time, after I've allowed his sadness to just be there as long as it needs to be, I can go back to him and say, Hey, by the way, you talked about this one experience. I think it could maybe be more like this. What about if we start thinking about it that way so that you don't have as much to fear or that you don't have to think about that thing because I don't think it's going to be that way. Do you see the difference there? It's not positivity over like stuffing over. It's positive thinking and we still get to be sad, but we also still get to feel positive and we get to kind of have the hope and the outlook that we want around us. So that is a wrap for this episode and I thank you for just the community here and for those of you that have already reached out and are so kind and caring and I my expectation for the show is that we will go on and like that we won't have to have any disrupted time but I also have a lot of unforeseen in the future. And as we wrap this up, I want to ask you guys if you have found any value in this show or episode that if you haven't already, it, it's just, it takes just a second to go over to iTunes where most of you listen or Spotify and just do a quick rating. And if you have an extra minute or two, do a review. It just helps other people to look at the show and to have it come up more easily in searches. And don't forget to share the show with your friends. Sharing is caring, as they say in my daughter's preschool. And so I would be so honored if you would share this show, any of the episodes with your community. We will see you on the next episode.