Can we stop using the term ‘Toxic Positivity’?

Hear me out: I’ve recently chosen to take a break from social media on my phone again by deleting the Instagram app. Why? Because the whole world seems so negative. Whether it’s reactions to global events or political elections or even benign everyday stuff, it seems like everyone prefers to have a good moan rather than be positive. What’s worse, if you call that kind of behaviour out, it’s often referred to as ‘toxic positivity’ in this modern day and age.

So what exactly is toxic positivity? Chat GPT says:

“Toxic positivity is the excessive or insincere promotion of a positive mindset, often dismissing or invalidating real emotions. It pressures people to stay optimistic, even in difficult situations, which can feel isolating or unhelpful.”

Ok, fair enough, insincerity is never a good thing. But I think staying optimistic, while also acknowledging that some feelings are rubbish and you can’t just ‘erase’ them isn’t a bad thing. For the record, I’ve been working my way through the non-fiction book, The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. I’m not terribly far into it yet, but I think the general gist is that you can’t force unhappy feelings to go away. You just need to sit with them and carry on with your life.

What’s my point exactly? I see a lot of ‘modern’ mums on social media with a kind of ‘mummy wine club’ attitude towards parenting. Everything is bad, parenting is hard, babies are difficult, toddlers are essentially evil, the in laws are unhelpful and the own parents ‘not good enough’, and just pass me the wine already, will you??

And I hate it. There’s something to be said for accepting bad moments and feelings and not steam-rollering them with artificial positivity. For instance, since starting the aforementioned book, I’ve finally accepted that I absolutely hate pregnancy, and I’m not a bad person for it. On the contrary, I hate it because I love my babies so much that the entire process feels entirely too scary. There’s so much responsibility on me to make sure they grow well and I don’t miss anything that could be wrong, and I thoroughly dislike that feeling. I can’t wait for them to be here, and I’ll relish those early sleepless nights again of feeding little mouths while also being able to better look after myself again.

The point is, that’s fine. I can accept disliking something and then move on by focusing my energy on things that do bring me joy, like hanging out with my family, reading books, saying meaningful prayers, and planning our future once, God willing, our little twinnies are here safe and sound. I don’t need to go on a ‘woe is me’ tirade on social media or spread meaningless quotes about ‘you’re enough’ and ‘it’s okay not to be okay.’ Because we know all of that already, so let’s move on and focus the bits we do like and enjoy, right?

Here’s a little quote from the L.M. Montgomery novel I’m currently reading, Pat of Silver Bush:

“Oh, I’ve got such a lovely home,” breathed Pat, clasping her hands. “It’s such a nice friendly house. Nobody … nobody … has such a lovely home. I’d just like to hug it.”

It resonates with me, because it exudes such a sparkling joy in a really simple moment. Let’s focus more on those moments because, you know what, the actually hard ones will and do come. They come whether we sit weeping into a glass of overpriced wine or not. And if your everyday actually does feel bad and overwhelming all the time, perhaps go about changing it, instead of shouting about ‘toxic positivity’ on social media and spreading negative vibes? Reach out to friends or family or even strangers, and really connect and talk things through so they do get better. Trust me, it makes a lot more sense.