Recognizing & Combating Toxic Positivity

“No one can spend life 100% happy; life is a balance of both positive and negative, and that’s just what it means to be human.”

Air Date

October 17, 2022

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Today, we’re continuing our deep dive into our book, Start From Joy, leading up to its release on January 3rd, 2023. This episode’s topic can really frustrate us and needs to be clarified. We’re talking about toxic positivity, which is when we think that positive emotions are the only ones that are okay to feel. Listen in as we discuss toxic positivity and give some tips on how to combat this thinking in our lives!

Key Takeaways

Our lives are a mix of positive and negative emotions.
Toxic positivity causes us to deny, suppress, invalidate, and rush out of negative emotions.
“We spend so much of our lives trying to fight our negative emotions instead of feeling them so that we can heal them.”
All of our emotions have a peak and a fall. No emotion will stay in our lives indefinitely. When we don’t let ourselves process our emotions fully, they remain in our bodies.
If you have emotions pop up when you don’t intend, this is a sign that you have a pattern of cutting off emotions.
The most joyful relationships we can have are the ones that see all sides of us – the good, the bad, and the sad.
We have to give ourselves the space to feel all of our emotions.
“Your negative emotions are not signs that something is wrong with you. It’s a sign that you are human.”