When being positive is toxic
By: Linny Teh
Tags: Positivity, Mental Heal, Toxic Positivity, Self Help, Stoicism

We all like optimists.

Few of us want to be down, or a burden. We constantly create new labels for such people, much through the influence of popular culture. Behind these pejoratives often lurk sexism and racism. But that’s not the point. No one wants to be seen as miserable, or vulnerable, or complaining about ‘nothing’, or labelled so.

Social comparisons have become exacerbated through social media, following us home, and out. Even on holiday, a means of escape from the mundanity of regular life, we somehow manage to spend a large chunk of time on our devices. Social media allows us to connect and keep in touch but is not without its drawbacks.

It is similar to statements overheard, or said to you, because the vast majority of content a person posts would be them accomplishing something, or having a good time. It’s not untrue, we just don’t see a lot of the struggles and pains people go through. It’s filtered. No one wants to see the unhappy bits. Without realising it, we lose ourselves in an idealised, curated, version of the world that we see on our screens.

We inundate ourselves with the content on ‘wellness’ and influencers with ‘good vibes’, in an attempt to fill what is missing in our own lives. Such positivity sells and it’s intuitive. It’s within the constraints of what we consider okay to talk about freely, and safe for ourselves because no one wants to hear about pulling yourself out of bed every morning feeling like a mass of doubts and nerves, eating boring healthy food that isn’t an acai bowl, or asking for help when no one’s putting their neck out.

We would rather flick to the glossed over covers of magazines, with the best face masks to exfoliate with, spa retreats for self-care, or gym membership packages promising us better figures. These are things we can buy, without sitting down to look within ourselves. As much as a bubble bath or book might care, they distract. We like escapes. The notion that we have to spend money on self-care to be alright is comfortable because it feels active, and doesn’t require often painful analysis of the self.

When a person posts something about a struggle they’ve gone through, others try and value how much running time the individual gets to complain, or rant. If it’s not a labelled eating disorder, or full-on depression, or a long-term break-up, we listen less because we have compared it to ‘much worse’. It sounds logical, but it undermines people, through their problems and forces them to suffer alone, or not tell others the real extent of what they are facing, because their problem ‘isn’t big enough’. This is part of the reason what we see is more polarised than reality. As much as we wish it was, it’s not limited to being a virtual problem.

We hate uncertainty.

We want to be in line, on time, clocks ticking with everyone else, so we compare. We are told to do this, as a means of enhancing someone’s self-awareness or capacity to improve, ‘oh look at so and so, see what you can learn from them’, coupled with ‘why can’t you be like them’, or ‘you need a role model’. It’s far easier than looking at yourself, there isn’t an escape anymore. Social comparisons can hurt, or at least aren’t effective.

Both downward and upward comparisons are detrimental. Upward, comparing your incompetence to someone far better, or downward, feeling like your bad grade in the test is somehow kind of alright, only because people did worse than you, making you feel better. The pressure to feel contented with how you have performed, because ‘other people did worse’ is harmful, and shames people for wanting to better themselves. In fact, they can even be labelled ‘selfish’ for it.

The act of comparing shifts the focus from yourself, which is where it should be, to the perception of other people’s experiences and lives, and it’s pointless, either creating unhappiness, or reliance on another’s judgement and experience, or complacency, happy in ‘beating’ the person next to you. It might be tempting and comforting to do these things, but it limits your ability to see yourself objectively, and improve.

Taking advice from other people is often crucial, though it might not work because we are all different.

This is too often confused with only comparing yourself to the next person, without seeking concrete advice. Such comparisons then become toxic, when they are disguised as ‘positive’ and ‘inspirational’. The subconscious belief that it will ‘rub off’ from comparing, or that you will absorb some of their success. We can learn from others but our mindset is often wrong. We only focus on how they succeeded, and how we failed, making us ‘failures’, and them successful, or at worst, ‘normal’.

It can also cause a lot of envy, and resentment, then we cannot handle falling short to someone who’s probably more experienced, or better, than us at something. We swap our emotions of disappointment, or ‘wanting to be better’, with anger and hostility, colouring our view of an otherwise normal person. Other times, we place the person on a pedestal and admire them without seeing what can be learnt.

The truth is we can’t help comparing, and it has its good and bad. We aren’t rational, and end up tearing ourselves down, or being ‘inflated’, because someone else is the yardstick. It is necessary for progress because learning from the mistakes of other people is a needed shortcut to take. It is a trick that our minds play on us, our ability has stayed the same, whoever we compare it with.

One of the greatest costs of ‘self-development’, as important as it is, is that we will never be contented with where we are, so recognising growth is crucial, but harder, with success stories, and people constantly surrounding us. Our ability to assess ourselves clearly is clouded by the noise of toxic positivity, and the bar stops being something we control.