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Where your work meets your life. See more from Arise here.

It was a regular weekday dorsum in August. Past this fourth dimension, my family and I had somewhat gotten used to working from home, but things still didn't seem "settled." We were struggling with managing meals, work, online schooling, keeping the kid busy indoors, and our ain emotional well-beings. As if this wasn't enough, I got a call from my mother breaking the news that both of my parents had tested positive for Covid.

My mother seemed undisturbed as she explained the situation. I sensed that, rather than talking to me about her feelings, she was trying to panel me. We alive 400 miles away from each other. The lockdown was still in place and I couldn't have reached them if I tried. She hung up, maxim, "It will all be well. Don't worry."

My world had simply complanate. My father has underlying wellness conditions and, with both of them being ill, I did worry. How would they become the care they needed to recover? How could I not feel despair? I spent the twenty-four hours reaching out to relatives in their area and making frantic calls to friends who wouldn't listen listening to my deepest anxieties. I was met with pep talks and positive affirmations:

  • "Just try to put positive free energy into the world."
  • "Focus on the practiced things in your life."
  • "It could exist and so much worse — be grateful."
  • "This likewise shall pass."

One response stood out: "It's okay to feel this way right now. It's your parents."

When I heard that, I could finally take a jiff. I needed to know that information technology was okay to feel how I was feeling in the moment — rather than bury my emotions and pretend they didn't be.

It took my folks 28 days to test negative. I was mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. And however, the just person I didn't hide my truthful state from was the friend who didn't see my negative emotions as inherently bad. With anybody else, I put up a poker confront and said I was doing fine.

Ane night while trying to clear my mind with some brainless Netflix scanning, I came across a Korean drama, Information technology'south Okay to Not Exist Okay. The title brought me back to those stressful weeks — all that pretending. Why was everyone trying to hand me a lollipop when all I wanted was a cup of chamomile tea? What is with all these "sending sunshine your way" and "positive vibes only" messages?

I Googled it.

That's when I came across the term toxic positivity. Dr. Jaime Zuckerman, a licensed clinical psychologist and trained cognitive behavior therapist, describes it as, "the assumption, either past one's self or others, that despite a person'due south emotional pain or difficult situation, they should only have a positive mindset or — my pet peeve term — 'positive vibes.'"

Dr. Zuckerman is currently in private practice outside Philadelphia. She specializes in the handling of adults with mood disorders and anxiety. She helps her patients develop healthy boundaries in their relationships and focuses heavily on the negative bear upon toxic positivity has on patients' lives, particularly since the onset of Covid. She highlighted some interesting facts about toxic positivity and how we must let ourselves and others experience the emotions nosotros're feeling in the moment. I reached out to her to acquire more about toxic positivity and why it'southward bad.

Here is what I learned.

Toxic positivity not but invalidates your emotional state, simply too increases secondary emotions.

Co-ordinate to Dr Zuckerman, "The inherent problem with this concept is that we assume that if a person is non in a positive mood (or whatever we think a positive person should look or act like), then they are somehow incorrect, bad, or inadequate. The trouble is that, when we invalidate someone else's emotional country — or in this case, when we tell someone that feeling sad, angry, or any emotion that we consider 'negative' is bad — we end upward eliciting secondary emotions inside of them similar shame, guilt, and embarrassment."

In so many words, nosotros are saying to them that they should feel aback of being sad or that they should feel embarrassed for beingness afraid. "Efforts to avoid, ignore or suppress emotions that are appropriate to context can isolate someone in their time of need, thereby perpetuating the stigma that mental health problems equate to weak-mindedness," Dr. Zuckerman explained.

It really is OKAY to not be okay.

"Not only is it okay to non feel 'okay,' it is essential. An aberrant emotional response to an abnormal situation IS normal. We cannot simply pick the emotions we desire to have. Information technology merely does not work that style," Dr. Zuckerman said. Then feeling deplorable and scared about my parents after they contracted Covid was normal. Crying later on you become into a fight with your partner is likewise normal, every bit is feeling broken-hearted and scared most an uncertain future. When nosotros call up we might lose something nosotros intendance near, that's lamentable. When nosotros don't know what to look adjacent, that's scary. We should let ourselves, and other people in our lives, experience these things as they come up up — which may be more than than usual right at present.

Dr. Zuckerman noted, "Allowing yourself non to experience ok involves accepting all feelings, thoughts, or sensations, and sitting with them until they pass. If you try to avoid, suppress, or ignore them, they volition only grow stronger and leave you overwhelmed and believing that you cannot cope."

Remember that no emotion is permanent. Acrimony and sadness, just like happiness and joy, come and go. We demand to let ourselves experience painful feelings if we always want to truly let them pass through u.s..

By hiding your discomfort, you lot're only adding fuel to fire.

"The more nosotros avert internal discomfort, the more isolated we tin can go, the more anxious we tin get, and the more depressed nosotros can feel," Dr. Zuckerman told me. We demand to not only feel, merely also acknowledge our legitimate emotional responses to situations. Efforts to avoid or ignore them can isolate us during times of need and perpetuate the stigma that mental health bug equate to weak-mindedness.

"When we pretend that emotional pain doesn't exist," she explained, "we ship a bulletin to our brain that whatever the emotion is, information technology is in some way bad or dangerous. If our brain believes we are in a dangerous state of affairs, our body volition respond as such. For example, nosotros may experience rapid heartbeat, shallow breathing, and a natural need to unnecessarily avoid the misperceived dangerous situation. When we avoid any kind of emotional discomfort, even physical pain, we end up unintentionally making those feelings larger, louder, and more overwhelming. If you don't confront or process emotions in an effective and timely way, the science shows that it can lead to a myriad of psychological difficulties including disrupted sleep, increased substance corruption, gamble of an acute stress response, anxiety, depression, and fifty-fifty postal service traumatic stress disorder."

At that place is a better mode to accost emotions.

If you're notwithstanding not convinced that being too positive can be toxic, consider its bear on on the people you care about (including yourself): You may feel you're beingness supportive past sending positive affirmations to a friend who is going through a difficult time, but in reality, you may be invalidating their feelings and harming them when they are already in a vulnerable land. Your positive affirmations create the idea that your friend is in some way incapable of handling their feelings. Y'all may also be unintentionally gaslighting them by signaling that there isn't really a trouble at hand. Toxic positivity tasks the person in demand with faking an emotional response that is totally disproportionate to what they are actually experiencing.

When you lot're lending an ear to someone in distress, have a positive mindset, but offering them a pep talk unless they ask for it. Dr. Zuckerman suggests fugitive phrases like:

Positive vibes only!

It could be worse.

Only smile, cease worrying!

What's there to cry about? It'll be fine.

You have so much going for you lot; how tin can you exist upset?

Get over information technology.

Instead, she suggests using phrases that affirm the other persons feelings and lets them know y'all are hither to back up them without expectation:

It is okay to non feel okay right at present.

You lot should feel whatever emotions you want to feel.

Have your time. I am with you and I'm listening.

You're immune to feel this way. Your feelings are valid.

Feel your feelings. Sit with them. Let them pass. And permit others ride the wave of whatever emotions they're feeling too. It'southward okay.