Dear Kiantha: Always being positive can be a negative

Dear Kiantha,

How do we stay positive at all times with so many negative things happening around us?

Dear Friend,

Positivity can be relative, and being positive at all times – even through the plethora of negative things happening – is actually not healthy. There’s even a term for it: toxic positivity.

Of course, being a person who strives to be positive is a good thing. After all, no one loves a Debbie or a Darryl downer. At the same time, being positive to the point of ignoring your own hardships or the problems/hardships of others actually produces negative outcomes. Life can be hard and there are times that we have to sit with pain.

When we are hiding painful emotions or feel guilt for being sad or upset, it is then that toxic positivity often rears its ugly little avoidant head.

The reality of life is that there will be conditions and situations that we cannot just “get over” or “see the bright side” of. There are things happening in our homes and families, as well as in our local and global communities, that must not be dismissed by finding the euphoric silver lining.

For example, there were news reports over the weekend about two siblings killed as an SUV crashed into a child’s birthday party in Michigan. Let’s look at the suffering of that family through a lens of “staying positive” at all times.

In the incident, a driver, who was reportedly under the influence, drove through the building where the birthday party was taking place. Two siblings were killed. Nine other children were injured.

With no malice intended, imagine the parents of the children who died being consoled, then having to ingest a well-intentioned comment like, “Thank God no other children were killed.”

Yes, the fact that the other nine children survived is something to be positive about:Thank God for their safety. At the same time, this comment can feel dismissive to the reality of what the family of the deceased children is experiencing.

Sometimes, life hands us devastation. In hard moments, we get to have hard feelings. We get to experience anger and grief. Those feelings are just as deserving of being felt as the positive ones.

Soul to soul,

Kiantha

Dear Kiantha can be read Fridays in The Spokesman-Review. To submit a question, email DearKiantha@gmail.com. To read this column in Spanish, visit spokesman.com.