When Happiness Becomes Harmful: Exploring the Dangers of Toxic Positivity

In this episode, we talk about what is toxic positivity, the signs to look out for, and ways to manage it personally and in the workplace.
Are you ready for a discussion about Happy-Sad? It's Mike.
And Yuen.
Welcome to The Imperfect Clinician.
I'm going to open this one with my series of thoughts that were sort of bouncing between the bounds of my school here and there.
Because we're discussing toxic positivity, we have to, in my opinion, acknowledge a few things.
We are flawed and very imperfect. That displays in a range of feelings and emotions.
We like to be positive, and we most likely want to be positive.
If we commit full power of our energy to be positive, we might wake up as someone else, someone who masks a true self.
And by masking all of our imperfections with positivity, we deprive ourselves of authentic self.
Avoiding less desired emotions like guilt or suffering and putting up positive front usually ends up catching up on us and biting hard, because reality check may come when we are least prepared.
It feels like a voluntary agreement to present ourselves as someone else.
It feels to me a bit like a ticking bomb of positivity.
Like an old actor's rule, don't act if you are not getting paid for it.
And we tend to act then in a way that prevents us from achieving what we initially set out to.
And toxic positivity has some common grounds with acting.
I think that as humans, we are doomed to experience a whole range of emotions, whether they're good or ugly.
Maybe a better comparison would be that we are blowing a balloon of positivity.
It's rarely infinite, and although expected, the moment it bursts is always a surprise.
It's a bit like drinking a bottle of your favorite beverage.
We know a bottle is going to end, but it is always a surprise.
It feels like a defense mechanism that seems more prominent when we are exposed to positivity and happiness of others.
In the world of social media, we see scraps of people's lives, mostly those really good ones.
Holidays, nice meal, usually cannot avoid a sweet cat or, I don't know, a wonderful dog or whatever people post on their socials.
It feels like we are falsely led to believe that only positivity surrounds us.
And therefore we try to keep up, and we put up that front that it feels like a fashionable thing to be positive.
It feels like we tend to reduce the amplitude of our expressed emotions from great to not too bad.
It feels like an alternative to news, which are usually not that great, so we put them aside.
And I believe that we need to realize that it's okay to feel. What do you think?
I agree. I think, especially your part about social media and putting a front, we need to give some context on what is toxic positivity.
So for me, positivity is something that is good.
However, when the ask is to suppress negative emotions, feelings or reactions, then it invalidates the person's experience.
It also means that it's overstressing the importance of optimism and denies emotions that are not positive.
So you've mentioned earlier on it can happen personally, so you can do this to yourself.
It can happen in a social circle, whether family or friends are doing that to you or you are doing that to them unknowingly.
And it can happen in a workplace culture.
So what signs would you say of toxic positivity you could potentially notice, I don't know, in others or yourself?
So I guess if it's something that is happening in yourself, a lot of the time instead of dealing with how stressed you're feeling or how frustrated you are, you tend to brush under the carpet and say, no, everything's fine, I'm okay.
So you put on a brave face and you sort of plough through things.
Yeah, and you give in some ways a false sense of reassurance because you're actually not okay.
And also by doing that, you're not addressing the issue.
It's like you're acting, like being somebody else.
And there are both ways.
One, you are not addressing the issue within yourself because you are reassuring yourself when you're saying that, even though you say that to other people as well.
And also people around you don't know that you are struggling, so they don't know when you need help.
So it goes both ways.
And I feel that it can create a vicious cycle because you're not asking for help.
People around you are not aware.
And so you are getting more and more stressed, overwhelmed and then burning out eventually.
Would that be something that we sometimes present in front of our children?
Yeah, I think it's very commonly sometimes children might cry after a fall or an argument, and I'm guilty of that as well.
It's sometimes instinctively I would say it's okay, it's not a big deal because I'm trying to reassure them.
But essentially what I'm saying to them is your pain and your feelings, I don't hear it.
It's actually okay.
There is no need to cry or there is no need to react that way.
For example, when I talk about in terms of social circle or friendship.
So an example would be someone tells you about difficult relationship in their family and you say it's family.
You should love her no matter what.
Or if a friend tells you they're stressed at work and your response will be you'll get over it or someone has it worse than you.
So instead of saying, I can see it's really hard for you, I'm here to listen.
It's equivalent of man up, essentially, or woman up, person up I believe these days.
Or for example, if it's in a workplace, a colleague tells you about their concern about a project.
You might say, I don't see the problem or that should be easy for you or don't think about it, stay positive.
Yeah, I notice that sometimes when people say it's easy, but it's easy for you doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy for anybody else.
I prefer to use the phrase straightforward.
It sort of doesn't bear the same weight on people's responsibility to treat it as an easy thing.
Yeah, because then I guess it's already hard to ask for help.
And when you put the connotation or the label that it should be easy, asking for help might be a reflection of their incompetencies.
And so what can we do instead? How do we address things like this instead?
So like I said earlier on, instead of saying what you said, perhaps try, it sounds hard, tell me about it or tell me more.
Or I'm here for you, or I hear you. How can I help you? How can I support you?
Because if you imagine your manager or your boss telling you about stress at work and the reaction that you get is, it is what it is.
How disempowering that would make me feel?
Well, it just puts all the pressure of coping with it just on yourself.
And that's not always quite fair. And it just doesn't promise a positive outcome to me.
Yeah. And why do you think it happens?
I think that to some extent it's a bit of an avoidance mechanism.
And it's fear of dealing with the emotions.
And it's like a pressure, self-generated or externally generated, to feel fine, to feel happy about things that are happening around you.
I agree. I think especially for people who are not used to dealing with emotions, whether due to upbringing or whether it's due to lack of practice.
I think the first reaction then would be if I have not had the practice of dealing with my own emotions.
First of all, seeing other people having the same emotions as I am, I don't know how to deal with because I like the practice.
And second of all, when I see that, it might trigger my own emotions as well.
So I'm doing what I can to avoid it at all costs.
So it might be that I take it lightly. It might be that I belittle it.
Because then I feel that the emotion hasn't got such a strong hold over me. Does it make sense?
Yeah, I think it does. I mean, is trying to break through things always bad?
I don't think so. I think it's when you are unsure of how to deal with the emotions, and hence you dismiss them or you discount those feelings.
Yeah, I think this is the factor that we wanted to address, that you tend to shun away from the emotions.
If you recognize the emotions, then you can recognize your imperfections or some flaws.
And you still want to get over the problem. I guess that this is a different approach to completely shutting down what your true, authentic self is.
And then you sort of plow into the problem, trying to fix it, putting on a smiling, happy face and braving through it.
Yeah, and I think mainly it's the attempt or the lack of attempt to try to understand.
And some of it might be stemming from judgment. So for example, I've had it before and I had to deal with it, so it can't be that bad for you because I've done it.
Sometimes you also may compare yourself to others. Well, we can't be that bad because others are in the worst position.
It's transferring the responsibility onto the world around you, really. Onto others that have to cope with much more serious, severe.
But I have to disagree with it because if you're a child, trying to reach something might be as big a problem as divorce for when you are a grown-up and making decisions about important things.
It's just the scale of things is different in different times of our lives and in different situations that we put ourselves in.
Agree, and comparative suffering doesn't help anyone because you are not accepting how it's affecting the person.
So like you said, the child who's not able to reach for something, they are majorly upset and that is how they're feeling.
And all emotions and feelings should be validated regardless of the scale, regardless of how intense it is.
Your first reaction might be, oh my goodness, it's such a drama or it's not a big deal, but it is a big deal for them.
I completely agree, and I think that building resilience is a way of trying to help with understanding that there are some problems that are slightly beyond our reach.
And we can't sometimes affect the reality around us, but we can choose to some extent on how to respond to it.
Yes, and I think it affects people in different ways when you're steeped in the toxic positivity, whether you're surrounded by it,
whether it's something that you've created within yourself as a way of coping, because you lose the connection.
So if it's something that you do, always saying, yes, I'm fine, I'm okay. When you take on more, yeah, I'm all right, even though you're not okay.
You lose the connection to yourself because you don't check in. You don't check in to see how you're actually feeling.
Everything else that you feel that are negative are hidden away, locked away in the Pandora box, and only the positive ones, like you said, put on the front.
And if this happened in a relationship perspective, whether it's friends, whether it's family, or even at work, because I feel relationship is based on vulnerability, trust, and authenticity.
So when you receive toxic positivity, or when you do that upon yourself, you feel less safe, less positive. I talk about reduced connection.
And I want to say one way or another, it increases stress, and the well-being deteriorates, maybe on one party or both.
And that, in a longer perspective, can deprive you of your resilience. It can diminish it in a way, because you deny the support that people need, and you feel less hurt, I guess.
Yeah, and because you don't feel heard, you don't feel safe enough to bring all parts of you forward.
So you feel that you have to hide some parts of yourself and perhaps some parts of your emotions that are not, inverted commas, accepted.
And what are the longer-term effects of it?
I think it stops progression, personal progression, professional progression, because it stops growth.
You're too focused on putting on a front that is acceptable, and the act of just doing that is already really tiring.
I think it also makes people feel, depending on the language that they receive, might be...
Or they use themselves.
Yes, language that they hear internally, in the head, or externally, when other people say it to them, might cause the feeling of guilt or shame.
So I think it's important to give a bit of context to that.
We talked about it in Season 1, where it was one of the most popular episodes for shame and guilt.
But the difference between guilt is, I've done a stupid mistake because I haven't studied for the exam, because I haven't prepared for the presentation.
And shame is, I'm stupid.
So you let something that's happened define you as a person.
So it's really important to differentiate the both, because shame is corrosive to you.
And guilt can be corrective.
Yes, and guilt can be something that's positive.
There's a hope for you.
Yeah, it's more constructive.
But with toxic positivity, you observe that you can't always recognise those feelings, or you don't want to discuss them.
You just brave your way through it without acknowledging very often.
Would you agree that's the case?
Yes, I think when you have practice of doing that, let's say for at least 10 years, that might be an automatic reaction that you don't even realise.
So we'll talk about how to manage it in a bit more seconds.
I want to explore how will it affect work culture, because toxic positivity can happen in workplace culture.
And usually, it can be a place that you step into that's already have that culture.
Or it might be from top down where leadership showcase and promote using words or actions, toxic positivity.
So how do you think it will affect aspects of work?
I think at work, it can have multiple different phases.
And very often, it might be what you see on the outside of what's happening in the team, that everybody's happy jolly.
And then there are some problems underneath that nobody seems to address.
Brewing.
That could be brewing.
It could be thinking about it also, for example, an introduction to a risk or problems with management of risks in general.
So some unfortunate situations that are swept under the carpet because we want to bring up this positive front to say that everything is fine and we don't have any problems.
And that encourages potentially practices that are not being analysed and not being actioned upon.
Not being improved on.
Not being improved on because you essentially pretend that everything's fine and there's no need to get better.
At least to the safety problem.
So I can only imagine and probably have heard cases like this where mistakes or poor practice, even if challenged, are not being dealt with appropriately.
Hence, it starts to spread like wildfire.
And when it gets to the safety point of view, it's already a workplace culture that is too entrenched.
Yeah, and you sort of come across a completely different idea rather than the reality of the team.
I remember my dad told me a story when he was in the army.
Bear in mind that doing communist-pervilant army was a mandatory thing for most of the young men, essentially.
And my dad told me that when there was an inspection coming from Warsaw from a big, you know, all the generals and marshals coming over,
and they were making sure that, like, all the equipment was shining and looking beautiful and the tyres were polished and, you know, everything was sparkling new.
But there were no engines in the cars.
There were no engines in the trucks because they were all sold and forgotten.
Yeah, so you put up this right front that everybody is under the great impression that we are a super strong army.
But underneath, there wasn't much substance. There wasn't much structure.
And there was just bad practices that are being polished just to make sure that we look good rather than we actually being good.
And another example of it would be if you go to a restaurant that has beautiful front, amazing seating.
Your front of the house is super polite, cut and everything else.
They're jumping around you like they wanted to treat you like a king.
And then there is a dirty kitchen and dirty toilets.
Because you see the front and the practices at the back may not necessarily inspire you to come back to it.
You may be served a nice meal, but then if you want to dig a bit deeper, how would it make you feel if the food wasn't particularly prepared in a,
well, clean conditions to start with, there is a risk for you, for your goods, I believe.
So then I think just based on the examples that we talked about, it feels that it's not rare to see situations like that or to hear about it.
So how would you suggest that we give our listeners some tips to manage it?
We'll start with the personal perspective first and then we'll go into the workplace.
I think the personal one is a bit more important because it's something that can really affect our mental wellbeing.
And addressing that situation is far more impactful in the long run because then we go into discover more of our authentic self that we talked about in one of our previous episodes.
I think also when you do that, when you work on yourself, you create a stronger resilience.
And by doing that, it allows you to deal with toxic activity in the workplace better.
So you're almost more equipped to deal with that.
And I think you're better prepared to spot things like this, especially if you've been through a situation where you had to put up a brave front.
And I think we can work on it ourselves by checking in with ourselves and through general mindfulness.
I think that it is okay to talk about the emotions, about explore your own emotional side and to reflect on it.
And I think that if we reflect on our emotions in the context of the world around us, we would be more inclined to understand where to find that true happiness and not just a happy front.
Yeah. I think when you check in with yourself, it's important to open yourself up to both positive and negative emotions, or I don't really want to label them that way to all emotions.
Because those emotions come and go, especially when they're being dealt with, if not, then they fester.
Whereas when something happened, when somebody commented or when somebody criticized your work, you would automatically feel X, Y, and Z.
Maybe defensive, maybe frustrated, maybe felt disappointed.
But all these emotions are valid.
And when you open yourself up, you mentioned about talking about it.
So that can be one way. It can be that you're not a talker.
You find it hard to talk to people that you know.
You might find it hard to talk to strangers.
So there are other ways of letting it out.
You can journal, you can meditate.
And when I say meditate, I don't mean sitting down, close your eyes and just go cross-legged.
There are other ways of meditating.
It can be when you're going for a walk, in some ways, clearing your head.
So letting yourself feel all of that.
And then, as if you're looking at the clouds in the sky, they come and they go, they come and they go.
Once you've learned the practice of accepting those and embracing it, that would be when you learn to check in.
And when you embrace that, you notice that emotions are complex.
So you would see a whole host of emotions happening in a short burst of time, feeling so many things at once.
But take time to face it instead of avoiding it.
And be kind to yourself.
Don't feel like you need to sort it out quickly.
Give yourself time and be patient.
And if you're able, find out why you use that pushing it under the carpet.
Why do you use that as a defense or coping mechanism?
Because pushing it under the carpet can be using a joke or laugh as a way of not dealing with the actual problem.
So this can be your defense mechanism or your way of coping.
It's like diminishing the value of the consequences of it.
I guess instead of the consequences, diminishing how it's affecting you.
So you don't want to fully embrace the impact of those emotions on you.
Because it makes you feel uncomfortable.
So how many times have you heard, whether it's patients or colleagues or family members, when it gets to deeper issues,
people usually, when they feel uncomfortable, they laugh it off because they don't know how to deal with it.
And so start with the practice of checking in and see where you are.
Once you've built the practice of that, then you can move on to the next step where you go,
Actually, why do I do that? Where is it coming from and how is it serving me?
How is it helping me or how is it not helping me?
And when you get to the point where you know, I know why.
Maybe because that's my only way of surviving when I was a child, or maybe that's my way of surviving when I was in school.
This is the only neural pathway that I know in my brain.
So how can I unlearn it and relearn something new?
So checking in with yourself would be a good place to unlearn and create new neural pathway in your brain.
100%. I think that it's good to acknowledge that the full range of emotions doesn't just consist from being, you know, feeling great to not too bad.
We have the right to feel unhappy, bad, sad, angry.
There is a whole absolutely massive range of emotions that we should learn to feel.
What can be done in the workplace to manage or deal with toxic positivity?
I think there is a number of things that can be done and can be addressed if we implement the right culture in a team.
If we look after the team's health and if we provide all those elements that we discussed in the past,
like safe space for people to open up, safe space for people to be heard.
If we are in tune with what's happening, then we don't have to put up the, you know, falsely positive front.
And we don't want to turn it into a make-believe.
If we are inclined to create the team that's going to be a long-term, successful congregate of, you know, free minds,
we need to make sure that people have got this right approach to the work where, by the safe environment,
by the safe space for people's expression, they can address any concerns, address any feelings and emotions
to ensure that the outcome is positive and not just the front, you know, not just looks positive.
Yeah, I think it's also important to listen and be supportive in ways that they need you to be.
And I think this is one of the biggest things that I see very, very frequently, that it is so difficult.
And it's not easy for me either, but it takes a lot of practice to sit in discomfort.
Sit in those feelings and listen and learn to be okay not being able to solve or help them.
Because instinctively, especially in healthcare culture, you want to solve the problem, you want to help.
And sometimes it's harder to say, I hear you, it must be really hard, I'm here for you, full stop.
Like you're not there to make them feel better, you're not there to magnify the negative emotion, you are there.
And learning to be in that situation is very, very hard.
But it is this part of the safe space that you provide.
Yes. And I think it's important if you're able to challenge the toxic positivity, and if you are the one who is doing it,
whether it's intentionally or not, as leaders, it's important to admit to your mistake, own up and show changes
so people can then slowly build trust again within the team.
But I think there's one more thing, because I personally don't think that we are advocating, you know,
if there are problems in the team that we're going to all spread the word around that, oh, we're not doing very good
because we have problems and all that.
Everybody in the team, I believe, wants for the team to be successful and to be seen as successful
and to be seen as well organized, well managed and have those positive attributes that we strive to.
But I think that behind that, it should be the end result of a process of addressing all those issues
that are going to contribute to the success. And, you know, I want wherever I work or whatever the team,
whatever the family I'm part of, I want to make sure that we're not only looking happy, but we are happy
because, as I said, it's just a balloon that's waiting to burst if we keep blowing it without any limitations
into all this positivity, because then the things are going to burst and problems are going to surface
at the moment that we are least prepared for it.
I agree, and I think it's important to focus not on the surface attributes that we talked about,
but focus on how do you want to feel when you go into work? How do you want to feel when you finish work?
So well-being, culture, those should be priority. If you're thinking about attraction,
if you're thinking about retention, those can't be attraction, retention and an afterthought.
It should be the priority.
Absolutely 100%. It's a bit, in my opinion, also like in a family where you're putting up the big beautiful front
that everything is absolutely perfect, and there might be, I don't know, somebody cheating in the family.
And behind the scenes, it appears that things are not as great as they initially seemed.
So we want to work on those issues that are stopping us from providing the right culture in that family or in that team.
And a lot of it is fear-driven. It's what if other people think of me that way, what if?
And we talked about fear-driven decision in our previous episodes.
And I guess when you do that very frequently, you lose the driver's seat. The fear takes over.
So start with the mindfulness, with the checking in and see how am I actually feeling today and accepting it.
Check in and embrace. Check in and accept. Let's start with that. Baby steps.
With practice, it will become second nature because if you do it frequently, it will just become a habit that you can't break.
Do that as a base and let's build on that together.
That is it for today. We've been the imperfect clinician. My name is Mike.
It's Yuen.
And we'll see you next week. Remember to tune in every Wednesday and tell you what we think about some things, I guess.
We want you to join us in our conversation and we value your thoughts. Let us know what you think.
Yeah. Now we're going straight to Yuen Reads and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.
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