Unpacking Toxic Positivity — Heidi A. Zetzer, Ph.D.
We love saying the phrase, “toxic positivity.” There is something about how concise it is and the rhythm to it that makes it sound 100% true.
People can relate to it. No doubt there is some truth to the phrase. Just think about those times when a friend, in an effort to provide comfort after a disappointment, says “Well, at least you didn’t [fill in the blank]” or that same friend invites you to “look on the bright side." Their intention is to be helpful, but the impact hurts, often more than a little bit.
These experiences are real.
Dr. Thema Bryant in her book entitled, Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self (2022, p. vxi), described toxic positivity as “the message that you can think and talk only about positive things. It forces people to suppress and silence their pain with the mistaken belief that if they try not to think about it, it will go away.” Dr. Bryant’s remedy for this type of suppression and denial of emotions is to allow yourself to feel them as a way of coming home to yourself and to the people around you. She said, “Homecoming requires truth-telling both to ourselves and to others” (p. vxi).
Coming home also involves recognizing strengths, gifts we give or have given, those ways in which we help others and are helped by our families, friends, and communities. As human beings, we have the capacity to draw on the resources that exist inside us and around us, during difficult times. However, it can be hard to identify those resources in-the-moment, especially if we have not cultivated them over time.
What are our sources of comfort and resilience when life gets hard or harder?
Such questions are in the realm of positive psychology, which offers curious readers a knowledge base created by a broad band of national and international scholars, researchers, and practitioners who investigate and describe the many ways that human beings experience positive psychology. They study and apply concepts like resilience, posttraumatic growth, thriving, subjective well-being, meaning and purpose, love and relationships, goal setting and accomplishment, and appealing positive emotions like happiness, interest, contentment, joy, gratitude, forgiveness, exuberance and zest.
The field of positive psychology is often the target of complaints about “toxic positivity” (Goodman, 2022). It can be empowering to think that those positive psychologists have it all wrong. Afterall, what do they really know about the pervasive nature of human suffering? What do they really know about you, or me, or anybody? The real trouble is that the results of positive psychology research are often oversimplified and overgeneralized. It’s almost as though the research should come with a warning:
Warning! Someone may use the research on gratitude against you!
Beware! Someone may tell you to smile when you feel sad or angry!
Barbara Ehrenreich (2009) wrote Bright-Sided: How Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, and argued that the U.S. obsession with positivity, starting with a book by Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking (1994), led to shaming cancer patients for being unable to ignore or overcome their own feelings of demoralization and despair. Whitney Goodman (2022), a psychotherapist, popularized the term, “toxic positivity,” in a Pinterest post that went viral. She subsequently wrote a book that thankfully contrasts “toxic positivity,” with “healthy positivity.” Toxic positivity “denies emotion and forces us to suppress it,” while healthy positivity “makes space for both reality and hope” (p. 12).
So are there two kinds of positivity, one toxic and one healthy? Is it really that simple?
No, it’s not that simple and this is the beauty of the human condition. We are complex. We exist in living systems of love and hate, support and neglect, affirmation and blame and all that comes in-between. The field of positive psychology has grown, over time, to take more of the contextual variables into account.
At first, the researchers could not see the “forest for the trees.”
The first wave of positive psychology research spotlighted the importance of positive emotion, which shifted all kinds of life experiences including the impact of intersectionality and systemic oppression into the background. It was as though positive psychology researchers were too enthusiastic about their mission to balance the field’s focus on psychopathology with strengths and resources. There is a lesson here in that too much of a focus on the positive can pull our collective attention away from the complexities of life and leave many people and many questions out (McNulty & Fincham, 2012).
Fortunately, scholars in the field were paying attention and the whole field has shifted not only once, but twice, towards a more inclusive approach to research and practice, one that includes attention to culture (e.g., Chang et al., 2016; Pedrotti & Edwards, 2014), context (Lomas, et al, 2021) and negative emotions (Ivtzan et al., 2016). We now have positive psychology 2.0 (Wong, 2011) and 3.0 (Lomas et al., 2021).
Positive psychology 2.0 (Lomas & Itzvan, 2016) emerged in response to the observation that human emotions cannot be divided into “good for you” and “bad for you.” “...too much emphasis on positive affect as the answer to all ills can be counterproductive because negative emotions, such as a guilt, regret, frustration, and anger, can all motivate us toward positive change” (Wong, 2011, p. 70).
It’s not positive psychology vs. negative psychology or positive emotion vs. negative emotion.
It’s what philosophers and psychologists call a “dialectic,” which is a “complex and dynamic interplay of positive and negative experiences” (Lomas & Ivtzan, 2015, p. 1753). Second wave positive psychologists embrace this dialectic and recognize the role of negative emotions in our lives. So, let’s update the content warning for positive psychology 2.0:
Warning! Avoid all-or-nothing thinking when reading about positive psychology!
Beware! Positive psychology will not help you erase your problems but it can help you grow out of your problems.
Frankly, the media doesn’t help.
Too much of the sophisticated research on the understanding big theories and concepts in positive psychology like Frederickson’s Broaden and Build Theory (2001) and the ingredients that promote flourishing, resilience, and posttraumatic growth is simplified into 10 easy steps.
Positive psychology 3.0 looks at the big picture, is multidisciplinary and includes all kinds of epistemologies (how humans gain knowledge).
There is more than one way to learn about positive psychology!
Lomas et al. (2021, p.660) said that the 3rd wave “includes going beyond the individual person as the primary focus of enquiry to look more deeply at the groups and systems in which people are embedded. It also involves becoming more interdisciplinary and multicultural, and embracing a wider range of methodologies.”
So, instead of 10 easy steps to happiness or how to overcome adversity, here are 10 steps, divided into two parts, which may help you and the people around you find value in what positive psychology 3.0 has to offer:
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1. Be a whole person; embrace all parts of yourself – share your fear
2. Let the people in your life be whole people – honor the fullness of their experience
3. Be kind to yourself and others; show others that they belong
4. Cultivate a sense of purpose
5. As a colleague of mine says, “Just connect.”
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1. Who created this and why? What was their incentive?
2. Who is this for? Who was the author thinking of when they created the piece? Do you see yourself and your community represented in their communication?
3. What is the source of the knowledge? Science? Professional experience? Ancient wisdom? There are many good sources, just pay attention to which ones they are and if they have a solid foundation given their discipline.
4. How do you feel after taking in the information? Motivated and inspired? That’s good! Depressed and ashamed? That’s not-so-good.
5. Remember that the field of positive psychology is constantly evolving. In fact, the whole field of psychology is going through a paradigm shift, IMHO. There is a big movement away individualistic Eurocentric/western models of well-being and towards people-in-context, healing from racial trauma, indigenous psychology, liberation psychology, and radical hope (French et al., 2020).
The beauty of the human condition is that it is shared.
Reach out to others. Build those connections.
Practice trust and trustworthiness.
As Billy Rogers (2001) says, “Take a healthy risk.”
It’ll be worth it.
Dr. Heidi A. Zetzer (she/her/hers) is a Teaching Professor and the Director of the Carol Ackerman Positive Psychology Clinic in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, & School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the former director of the department’s psychology training clinic (2006-2020). Dr. Zetzer teaches positive psychology, helping skills, and clinical supervision courses. She also directs the department’s counseling and clinical externships.
Dr. Zetzer is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and Secretary for the Society for Counseling Psychology (SCP; Division 17 of APA). Dr. Zetzer is a member of the Editorial Board for The Counseling Psychologist and Training & Education in Professional Psychology. Dr. Zetzer is the Past President of the Association of Psychology Training Clinics and is the Co-Editor of the APTC Bulletin: Practicum Education & Training. Dr. Zetzer is a licensed psychologist and former president of the Santa Barbara County Psychological Association.
Dr. Zetzer’s areas of scholarship include parallel process in supervision, multicultural clinical supervision, white privilege, and positive psychology, including positive emotion in psychotherapy, flourishing, hope, forgiveness, gratitude, and meaning in life.
References
Bryant, T. (2022). Home coming: Overcome fear and trauma to reclaim your whole, authenticself. Penguin Random House LLC.
Chang, E.C., Downey, C.A., Hirsch, J.K., & Lin, N.J. (2016). Positive psychology in racial and ethnic groups. American Psychological Association.
Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America. Metropolitan Books Henry Holt & Company LLC.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden and build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218–226. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218
French, B. H., Lewis, J. A., Mosley, D. V., Adames, H. Y., Chavez-Dueñas, N. Y., Chen, G. A., & Neville, H. A. (2020). Toward a psychological framework of radical healing in communities of color. The Counseling Psychologist, 48(1), 14–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000019843506
Goodman, W. (2022). Toxic positivity: Keeping it real in a world obsessed with being happy. TarcherPerigree Random House LLC.
Ivtzan, I., Lomas, T., Hefferon, K., & Worth, P. (2016). Second wave positive psychology: Embracing the dark side of life. Routledge.
Lomas, T., & Ivtzan, I. (2016). Second wave positive psychology: Exploring the positive–negative dialectics of wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 17, 1753–1768. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-015-9668-y
Lomas, T., Waters, L., Williams, P., Oades, L.G., & Kern, M.L. (2021) Third wave positive psychology: Broadening towards complexity, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 16(5), 660-674. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1805501
McNulty, J. K., & Fincham, F. D. (2012). Beyond positive psychology? Toward a contextual view of psychological processes and well-being. American Psychologist, 67(2), 101–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024572
Pedrotti, J.T., & Edwards, L.M. (Eds.) (2014). Cross cultural advancements in positive psychology: Vol. 7. Perspectives on the intersection of multiculturalism and positive psychology. Springer.
Rogers, B. (2001). A path of healing and wellness for native families. The American Behavioral Scientist, 44(9), 1512–1514. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027640121956944
Wong, P. T. P. (2011). Positive psychology 2.0: Towards a balanced interactive model of the good life. Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, 52(2), 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022511
