The Perils of Positive Negativity in Our Lives

Did you know that many of the words and phrases we hear as encouragement and advice to be positive people and to think positively, no matter how dire the situation, are referred to as "negative positivity"? And did you know that this optimism is enough to drive you to live in regret, self-loathing, and delusion?

Today's article is about negative positivity and how it ruins our lives, separates us from reality, and prevents us from approaching our problems logically and objectively. It also discusses how the idea of optimism can work against us and prevent us from making progress.

What is negative positivity?

Despite your diligent study habits and efficient time management, you still fear performing poorly on your exam. You carefully consider your options before making a purchase, but you still feel unsatisfied with the decision.

Similarly, even though you apply for a job with all the necessary credentials, skills, and qualities to ensure your acceptance, you still fear being turned down. Negative thinking, which is expecting negative outcomes despite the presence of the abilities and circumstances that support optimism, refers to these circumstances and many others like them.

On the other hand, despite the fact that you don't study, plan your time, pick your belongings at random, or go to a job interview without any qualifications or experience, you typically expect to succeed because this is what you do when you think positively.

However, the truth is that all you do is positive and negative thinking, which is what truly defines you. Illusions are the key to your optimism and positivity because they give you a false sense of security and enable you to build unattainable dreams.

However, they keep you from facing reality and your true problems, which leads to laziness and failure to carry out your duties under the justification that "hope for the best and you shall find it." If you think well, you only ignore your true feelings, and this prevents you from acting negligently and failing to complete your work.

Additionally, you were put in a very trying situation, and everyone tried to comfort you. Despite everyone's efforts, however, your condition did not improve, and you did not believe the encouraging words that were spoken to you. Rather, you experienced great distress.

Positive thinking, optimism, and rejecting negative emotions are thus characteristics of negative positivity, regardless of how difficult the situation you are in or its circumstances may be. Negative positivity is also described as a broad and exaggerated generalization of the idea of happiness that has the opposite effect, namely, that it lessens the negative emotions that a person experiences.

People around you frequently attempt to lessen the burden of negative feelings that you feel by using positive phrases and advising you to be optimistic, even though the situation does not lend itself to optimism and calls for a genuine awareness of the reality of the problem you are experiencing and a logical analysis of its causes in order to ultimately produce beneficial results.

For example, it makes no sense for your friend to respond, "Be positive and optimistic," when you tell them that you lost a dear friend today and that you feel like life is hard. In fact, in such a circumstance, you need someone to confirm the honesty of your emotions, to comprehend what you are going through, and to affirm that they are negative and difficult emotions.

Sometimes, life doesn't go according to our expectations or plans. Though it may seem bad and negative to us, going through difficult experiences is not as bad as it seems. It is important to acknowledge the difficulty of what we are exposed to in order to lessen this burden as much as possible. There is nothing worse than denying reality and pretending that everything is normal despite its profound impact on us.

According to Pixels, "rejecting and denying negative feelings does a lot of damage."

Harmful forms of toxic positivity

You have undoubtedly encountered toxic positivity or negativity throughout your life. This positivity manifests in various ways, some of which you personally engage in and others of which the environment uses against you. As a result, you become a victim.

• The phrase "Look at those who have nothing to eat, where are you from the children of Africa and the famines of Somalia" is frequently used by those in your immediate vicinityin an effort to make you feel better when you are going through a trying situation, like a divorce, for example.Though the comparison is unfair and does not make you feel better right now or in the future, it will force you to repress and hide your true emotions. Their problems will undoubtedly outweigh your feelings, and you will feel foolish because, despite remembering the famines in Somalia, you are still upset about your divorce.
• Always trying to see the glass as half full and ignore the half empty, always pretending to be happy, and trying to appear as someone who is not affected by anything and very stong are not true positive thinking. Rather, they are negative positives that give you the appearance of being strong while actually making you vulnerable and weak when you can conceal your problems by using this negative positivity.

In reality, giving up is never a good idea, but you also need to be logical and consider the factors that led you to this point. Everything will be fine, but if the situation changes, don't anticipate a different outcome from the same reality.

Negative Positive Damage

In our discussion of negative and toxic positivity, it became clear that it causes a great deal of harm. Here are some of the harms caused by negative positivity:

• Suppressing emotions, being unable to express them, feeling ashamed of even doing so, and losing the genuine support we require when faced with challenging situations.
• The notion that despite how we feel, we must hold on while we need to cry for a while and feel that those we care about are there for us. The notion that the sadness, pain, and sorrow we feel are not worth the reality of all this.
• The intensity of negative emotions brought on by our ongoing efforts to suppress them and refrain from expressing them is what puts such intense psychological pressure on people. It might result in conditions like anxiety, fear, and insomnia. It is comparable to ignoring physical pain. Physical pain will only make the situation worse and make a solution more challenging if you ignore it.
• In addition to the aforementioned, toxic or false positivity prevents its owner from growing and maturing because they constantly hide from their true feelings and displays false and unreal poetry. In the same way, negative positivity prevents you from reaching the most crucial stage of overcoming pain, which is feeling it, and it also prevents you from coming up with real solutions to your problems because you think that things will get better on their own in the future.

It is important to note that we unknowingly push ourselves toward toxic positivity and negativity. As many people did, for example, during the Corona pandemic, they began to compare what they do and what they produce with others without thinking logically about the circumstances in addition to the lock down.

This increased their feeling of distress and helplessness. Another example is when we feel regret because of our inability to accomplish under difficult circumstances by comparing what we do with what others did in similar circumstances.

Advice on avoiding negative positivity

These suggestions will undoubtedly be helpful for you if you suffer from or adopt negative positivity:

• Don't suppress your bad feelings, and don't punish yourself if you feel bad. As long as you don't give in to it and let it control your life, a little negative emotion is not necessarily a bad thing.
• Face the issues and challenges you are up against logically and realistically. Do not exaggerate the difficulty you are facing, as it is perfectly normal to experience negative emotions occasionally.
• Be aware that just because you feel sad doesn't mean you will eventually give in to it. Instead, you can use these emotions as motivation to advance and come to terms with the significance of your life.
• If you are a friend supporting someone going through a crisis, try to stay away from theorizing and illogical comparisons to try to convince your friend that their situation is better than others and that what they are going through is not worth all of this suffering. Instead, try to focus on your friend's feelings and believe them.
• Tell them that you don't need advice and that all you need from them is love and sympathy if one of your friends exposes you to toxic positivity.

In conclusion

The most crucial thing you can do to maintain your mental health is to know yourself well, understand your feelings, and not be ashamed of them. Always keep in mind that fake happiness is just a mask that you will take off at the end of the night and drown in your sadness. Therefore, instead of hiding your feelings, try to confront and deal with them.

Also, instead of false optimism without any basis in reality, work on developing solid found reasons for your optimism. In order to succeed in one area of your life, you must strive for excellence as well as expect the best.