On Toxic Positivity

    I have always suffered from acne. I am not degrading myself or anything, just stating the obvious. This started during my middle school years, towards the end of eighth grade when one day I looked in the mirror and saw that a martian had landed on my face and established its home base on my forehead. I am not going to lie, I have complained about it (a lot); what 13-year-old child who had their first acne experience didn’t? But, with those complaints came personal steps towards improvement; I researched on how sleep affects the rate that which acne bloomed, how diet and the sacrifice of junk food (which I miserably failed at) helped ameliorate the flourishing of the skin, and so on. I wanted to improve because I did not feel comfortable having such a problem with something I know I had control over, but nobody told me that.

    The majority of the people around me merely gave me a pat on the back, telling me that it's okay and that the body is merely doing what it’s supposed to. That may be true to a certain extent; nevertheless, the fact remains that even though you are facing a problem (haha, get it?), the need for it to remain that way is untrue because there is always something you can do about it. This reminds me of that time I was sulking in bitterness at what I had done; I had been in a feud with my father—as all Gen Z teenagers do—and I told my friend about it, merely predicated upon the basis of venting, to let my frustrations out. She patted me on the with the whole "it’s okay, it’s not your fault" spiel. However, I knew within myself that what I had done was entirely my fault and that it was not okay to have done whatever it was that I did that led up to the disputation. Now, I’m not complaining, I can empathize with these people and I understand what they are doing is genuinely well-intended. But, these good intentions and bad ideas are doing nothing more than killing good potentials and letting individuals become comfortable in dispossession; who in their right mind would want that?

    In my podcast, "When The Bell Rings," Farrel and I talked with Stevie Nino, a clinical therapist and an individual who has immersed himself in the realm of mental health. Our conversation ultimately circulated within the topic of psychology and mental health, especially in today’s world wherein chaos runs amok (to say the least). One of the things I had brought up was the topic of Toxic Positivity and what his thoughts on the matter happened to be. We had correlated the notion of toxic positivity to a dirty room filled with glitters, where instead of facing the fact that you are dwelling inside of a trainwreck, you merely bedazzle the furniture, put a rainbow banner up on the crusty walls, and call it a day. There comes a time when you know you are a wreck, where you know that you are in a deep and dark place, and people need to understand that individuals in this situation do not want to hear the appalling "everything is going to be okay" spiel. Sometimes it’s better to simply let the person know that you are there for them, that if they are ever in need of anything, to let you know. Either pick up a broom and sweep together or give them the cleaning materials necessary and allow them the responsibility of cleaning up for themselves. “I think sometimes people need to bask in what they’re feeling,” says Stevie, “and sometimes it’s better to say nothing and just allow that person to vent and express whatever they are feeling at that moment, and let them get it out."

    In the literary work "How To Think Like A Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius" by the cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, trainer, and writer Donald J. Robertson, we can see that the pursuit for hedonic pleasures is great in the short term—in the case of said dilemmas above, it’d act as vaseline to a cut—but eminently unfulfilling in the long term. The Stoics differed the two sorts of joy; hedone and chara. Chara is the purest entity of joy, experienced by becoming the embodiment of altruistic virtues and the striving for greatness. Hedone is the deep and dark pleasure that eats away at the souls of every individual. Virtuosity is attained, according to the book, through immense hardships and troubles; you need to face your dragons with complete and utter autonomy, not to cower in your room and to turn the lights off. Clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson wrote a fantastic book entitled "12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos," and in that book, I can't help but think about this one quote over and over again, “You cannot be protected from the things that frighten you and hurt you, but if you identify with the part of your being that is responsible for transformation, then you are always the equal or more than the equal of the things that frighten you.”

    At the time of the writing of this article, I am currently reading the book "The Coddling of the American Mind" by authors Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, and one of the key things that struck a chord with me was the research that suggested that the removal of peanuts and other types of snacks along these lines from schools and the diet of young children altogether, actually increased the number of individuals and kids with peanut allergy. “Humans need physical and mental challenges and stressors,” the authors say, “or we deteriorate. For example, muscles and joints need stressors to develop properly. Too much rest causes muscles to atrophy, joints to lose range of motion, heart and lung function to decline, and blood clots to form. Without the challenges imposed by gravity, astronauts develop muscle weakness and joint degeneration.” Humans need to be comfortable autonomously handling their own set of misfortunes. Not doing so puts a cap on their potentials and they become increasingly dependent upon those who impose such coddling methods upon them, in a world that does not care about their feelings.

    This sort of phenomenon has been ubiquitous, especially in today's day and age. One could not help but take notice of the parents who would allow their children the luxury of having better phones than themselves (even at the youngest of ages). How instead of allowing their children the necessary experience of being physically active outside, they instead sit them in front of an iPad or a television set to doze off, ultimately fulfilling every whim and desire of their children. This type of coddling is dangerous to the human mind, especially at such a young age, because they do not get the concept of the word "no" and therefore put feelings ahead of logic. So how do we fix this problem? By teaching people the value of the sovereignty of the individual and personal responsibility.

    But obviously, there is a huge jump from friends telling you that it’s okay having a pimple to fighting off dragons. But make no mistake about the underlying motif beneath the surface of the coddling of divestiture—pushing people towards atrophy, not giving them an ideal to strive for. Positivity becomes toxic when you not only deprive an individual of the time needed for grief and/or space, or cosseting a person—becoming the archetypal logos of the devouring mother—and depriving them of an ideal to strive for, correcting any err they may make as opposed to not allowing them to make any, leading up to the mentality of over-sensitivity with a coddled mind.