A toxic positivity response might be to say, “Just trust the process. You got this. Don't worry about it!” While that response may sound like it should be motivating, it completely dismisses your colleague's concerns and doesn't help them work through it.
Toxic positivity is actually a form of gaslighting, the term for when someone causes you to question your own sense of reality. It can cause people to dissociate themselves from their negative feelings, rationalize unacceptable experiences, and even gaslight others in turn.
It's an emotional avoidance, lack of empathy, denial and invalidates yours or others feelings. Signs of toxic positivity can be: Using the phrase “It will all workout at the end” in an act of avoidance, and not wanting to deal with the situation. Dismissing others emotions.
Examples of Non-Toxic & Accepting Statements
“Don't think about it, stay positive!” “Describe what you're feeling, I'm listening.” “Don't worry, be happy!” “I see that you're really stressed, anything I can do?”
Toxic positivity minimizes, rejects, and discounts the expression of negative emotions. It causes the person reaching for connection to feel dismissed – as if their experiences or feelings don't matter.
Toxic positivity arises from an unrealistic expectation of having perfectly happy lives all the time. When this does not happen, people "can feel shame or guilt" by being unable to attain the perfection desired.
Toxic positivity creates pressure to look only on the bright side and dismiss negative emotions. (Credit: Shutterstock) If a positive attitude helps manage stress, research suggests toxic positivity can seriously affect mental health, leading to feelings of guilt, anxiety and inadequacy.
A major difference between optimism and toxic positivity is that optimism doesn't deny unpleasant realities. In fact, optimism is often seen when people are confronted with some sort of adversity or difficulty. Toxic positivity is more widespread than is often acknowledged.
Toxic Positivity and Narcissism
A narcissist may use a "positive mindset" to make you doubt yourself or avoid supporting you emotionally, or even to bypass your boundaries and control you. "It can be malevolent in intent if being used to gaslight and manipulate you to invalidate your feelings," said Katz.
Toxic empathy, also called hyper-empathy syndrome, is a type of empathy disorder where one struggles to regulate their emotions and empathizes with others so much it impacts their well-being. This contrasts empathy deficit disorder (EDD), where one lacks the ability to empathize with others.
Toxic positivity can also be a coping mechanism you employ yourself to grin and bear it. According to The Psychology Group, “With toxic positivity, negative emotions are seen as inherently bad.
Toxic positivity is the denial or minimizing of negative emotions and dealing with distress with platitudes and false reassurances rather than empathy.
Toxic positivity is the belief that people should maintain a positive mindset no matter how dire or difficult a situation. “It's when someone is feeling down, and people dive in to make them feel better and we cheer them out of it,” said Anne Moss Rogers, a mental health and suicide prevention speaker.
Toxic positivity is maintaining that one should have a positive mindset and exude only positive emotions and thoughts at all times, particularly when things are difficult. This approach is damaging because it discounts and discredits emotions that are not positive.
This is when someone attempts to put a positive spin on your negative situation or emotions, and it can feel as though they are downplaying your experience. For example, being told that 'at least you can get pregnant' when you've had a miscarriage, is of no help in that moment, to the person grieving their loss.
"Toxic positivity is when somebody avoids all negative thoughts or feelings, pretending everything is going well when it is not," explains Melissa Dowd, a therapist at PlushCare, a virtual health platform for primary care and mental health services.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is associated with an assortment of characteristics that undermine interpersonal functioning. A lack of empathy is often cited as the primary distinguishing feature of NPD.
Toxic positivity rejects difficult emotions in favor of a cheerful, often falsely positive, facade. Toxic positivity leads to a lack of authenticity in our words and relationships. Our emotional and physical well-being can suffer by pretending that "bad things don't happen here."
According to Van Edwards (2022), 74.7% of people say they have never heard the term toxic positivity before, but after it was explained to them, most knew the feeling all too well. 67.8% even said they had experienced it in the past week (Van Edwards).
Suppressing our feelings will only lead to more stress, and increases risk for a host of mental health issues. Gratitude Shaming is related to toxic positivity. It's the act of criticizing oneself or others for feeling negative emotions while lacking gratitude that the perpetrator believes should be felt.