Toxic Positivity : The Dark Face of Positive Thinking

A Facebook friend recently shared a “positive” meme, and it just kept bothering me. Aside from the saccharine wording and facile sentiment, I find there is a deeper, highly insidious and profoundly negative thought pattern under the surface.

The post appeared on a Facebook page with over 33 million followers, plus a large presence on “X”, YouTube, and other social media platforms. It promotes (read “sells”) book(lets) with titles such as “Change Your Life in 3 Minutes or Less”, as well as multiple short posts/articles on how to keep your relationship alive, the characteristics of a healthy marriage, and many brief positive thinking exhortations.

The quote that got under my skin originated at a much smaller Instagram account bearing the profile picture of a heavily made-up young buxom blonde wearing a sparkly dress showing a significant amount of cleavage. The account offers booklets for sale on how she can ghost-write your social media posts, guides to “protect your energy” and how to attract followers on “X”.

Now let’s pick apart the meme: It starts with “I have no time for hate”.

Fair enough. Good to know. No issue here.

Continuing, the post says “Either I love you…”. Here my hackles started getting twitchy. It seemed rather extreme. One is only capable of feeling “love”, and no other subtleties of emotion? One cannot merely “like” someone, or admire them, find them intriguing, or any number of other possibilities? In this belief system (it is a belief system very much prevalent but oddly camouflaged in today’s world — more on this later), the light is either on or it’s off, it’s white, or it’s black, and there are no nuances.

If one does not “love” the other, there follow two options, the first being “I wish you well”. This is not grossly disagreeable; perhaps merely facile — along the lines of “you should move on and have a nice day”. So we shall move on.

Option two is much more disturbing.

“I… hope you heal”. Here is the most uncomfortable part. Cloaked in socially palatable wording, the implication is that if one isn't worthy of “love”, that person is somehow flawed, sick, unwell, and needs to be healed.

How smarmy and presumptuous. How unctuously sanctimonious!

I find that some of those who seem to mindlessly- or simple-mindedly embrace “positive thinking” (and who, consequently, become essentially untouchable; what despicably negative person would criticize those who are positive?), are presenting themselves as somehow functioning on higher moral ground. And yet their pronouncements, their memes, their sugary posts are just that: sugar. Empty thought calories, yet seductive and addictive. And painfully self-righteous.

Imagine: a consumable vice that is considered a virtue!

According to Barbara Ehrenreich (from her masterful work Bright:Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America), “there is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage”.

Ehrenreich further questions the outcomes of eliminating all the ‘negative people’ in one’s life. She does acknowledge that it may be smart to leave a ‘chronically carping’ spouse, but she asks what about a “whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager”? In a workplace situation, she agrees that one should certainly detect and terminate potential mass killers. But what about those individuals who are somewhat annoying but may have something useful to contribute? She cites the hypothetical financial officer who is concerned about sub-prime mortgages. What about so-called whistleblowers who may be perceived as “negative”?

She further adds that if you “purge everyone who brings you down, you risk… being cut off from reality.”

There has recently emerged a term for this phenomenon. According to Psychology Today, “obsessively enforcing a superficially bright, optimistic mindset in the face of serious emotions is known as toxic positivity.”

I believe that the sentiments expressed in the re-posted meme actually promote othering — i.e., I am fine, and you are not; I am morally superior to you.

“Either I Love You” — You are one of us or

“Wish you well” — go your separate way

“And hope you heal” — because you are now the other and need to be fixed.

Another, in my view, even more toxic post inveighs the reader to:

“Ignore people who threaten your joy. Literally ignore them. Say nothing. Don’t invite any parts of them into your space”.

In other words, anything that might upset you must be ignored. Anyone who brings up poverty, social injustice, inequity, and any number of things that might “disturb” you should be banished from your positive and comfortable world.

Yet another asks the reader to repeat this exhortation: “I am no longer available for things that make me feel bad.”

Still more: “Walk away from anything that disturbs your soul.”

Putting aside this breathtaking self-absorption, let’s explore where this mind-set may take us.

On occasion most of us have shared with another person the details of a serious situation and been told, “Don’t worry, be positive, it will all work out”, or the ubiquitous “things happen for a reason”, or “think good thoughts.”

That typically throttles any meaningful conversation.

By opening yourself up to the other, you likely intended to unburden yourself to some degree, and now have discovered that this person doesn’t want to hear you, and “isn’t available to things that make them feel bad.” By parroting hackneyed positive thinking messages, the conversation is essentially done.

Returning to the smug moral superiority buried within toxic positivity, it would seem a given that most people believe they are just, virtuous, and moral. And this interior belief can lead to ugly consequences.

Serious studies (Pinker, 2011; Skitla, Bauman & Sargis, 2005) have been conducted on the outcomes of this unquestioning positive self-belief, particularly when there are two opposing sides who each see themselves as the more righteous. The likelihood of violent escalation is quite high and, conversely, the likelihood of resolution is quite low.

To quote Alike & Gorvarun, (2005) and Taylor and Brown, (1988): “…self-righteousness is not confined to conflict situations; a substantial majority of individuals believe themselves to be morally superior to the average person… distinct lines of evidence suggest widespread moral superiority may be particularly irrational… [moral superiority] represents a uniquely strong and prevalent instance of ‘positive illusion’”.

Personally, I recall one incident that happened in my bookshop years ago. In my mind this crystallized the notion that toxic positivity does indeed decrease the possibility of conflict resolution.

One day an attractive young woman was in the shop, and I had said (without any malice, although likely with a lack of forethought on my part) something to which she took exception. I don’t recall the exact issue, but I clearly remember the outcome. Having seen the reaction in her face to what I had said, I tried to explain myself. I tried to apologize for any distress I may have caused her. At that point, she dawned a sunny Stepford Wives expression with a wide toothpaste advertisement smile (which did not extend to her eyes in the manner a true smile would). She then raised a hand with her palm facing towards me and said, “Have a Nice Day”. A second attempt at defusing my previous comments and engage civil conversation was again rebuffed with the hand gesture. The “Have a Nice Day” was again chanted in a sing-song tone. She then turned on her heel, keeping her arm outstretched behind her, palm in my direction, and said the same phrase a few more times as she exited the shop.

Perhaps we’ve all seen a horror film where a seemingly ordinary person is actually a terrifying creature, and this becomes apparent once the individual’s face is transformed into that of the interior monster. In the case of the pretty bookshop customer, when she chose to show her inner self, all she revealed was a “positive” yet disconcertingly empty “negative” space.

And here we have the portrait of toxic positivity.