~Morgan Greene
I'm a fundamentally positive person, and I believe that optimism is helpful. So I am pro-positivity, but I definitely believe that some positivity is disrespectful and unhelpful. You can be toxically positive to yourself by not giving yourself room to have negative feelings, but my focus today is the way people do it to each other. I think I used to do this, to be honest. Maybe not the worst of it, but I can always find a silver lining, and that isn't always helpful!
* Everything Happens, a podcast by incurable optimist Kate Bowler (author of Everything Happens For A Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved)
* (Warning, tissue alert: Kate's TED talk)
* Jan Richardson's “The Blessing You Should Not Tell Me.”
* Do you want comfort or solutions?
* An article about threading the needle between complaining and toxic positivity
* I'm not knocking healthy positivity!
Many of the toxic positivity statements listed here can be construed as scolding, condescending, simplistic, even mean. Nothing positive about them! A thoughtful response, keeping the other person's feelings in mind is definitely the way to go.
ReplyDeleteI'm bookmarking this post to refer back to, Tabatha. I admit to falling into a dismissive/simplistic response at times because I don't want to see my loved ones suffer. Unfortunately, that probably is making them suffer more. Will do better. Thank you! :)
ReplyDelete