Toxic positivity sounds like a bit of an oxymoron when you first hear the term, you stop and ask yourself how something positive can ever be toxic, but the concept doesn't attack the act of being positive in itself but rather the denial of negativity. To put it another way, in Greek legend, Daedalus crafted wings for himself and his son Icarus made from feathers and wax. Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the Sun but Icarus threw caution to the wind when he took flight and despite all warnings flew too close to the Sun, the heat melted the wax and he fell to his death.
You will have no shortage of people in your life telling you that you can't do something, criticism comes easy to most people. I've written before about how as human beings we're conditioned to focus on things that are wrong and ignore the things that are right because problems need to be solved, solutions do not. There will be times when you come across the opposite however, often described in a rather derogatory way as cheerleaders, their raison d'etre is to build you up and give you motivation and the belief that you can achieve anything you put your mind to with enough determination and hard work.
The problem is, that's not always possible. The challenge is to find people who are supportive, but realistic. People who can give you constructive criticism by suggesting alternatives or prompting you to shift your focus when you find yourself fixated on one particular element. The internet is a wonderful thing for connecting people anywhere in the world with a wealth of resources that describe almost anything. Sifting through that wealth of information however is not so simple. I was born at the end of the 80s and witnessed the transition of a world without the internet to one where it is now ubiquitous. I saw a world without Google and used it in its inception through to its current form. Whilst Google is very good at helping you find what you're looking for, it falls flat in one specific area - helping you when you don't know what you're looking for.
Google and many other search engines, and for that matter any search box on any website, all rely on one key variable - your query. You have to tell it what you're looking for in order for it to find it for you. If you don't know what you're looking for then you'll hit a brick wall. If you've ever had a piece of instrumental music stuck in your head you'll probably have experienced this, where there's no way to articulate what you are looking for, no lyrics to search for, and short of having an audio sample to play and use an app like Shazam to match the audio you're otherwise stuck. Whilst that is an option it's not a native feature of Google itself - for now. Google images used to have this problem too but it now has a lens feature that can isolate parts of an image and find matches for it.
This isn't an ad for Google and what it can do though, it's a criticism of the internet in general. We're given the wealth of knowledge that represents the product of human endeavour, but to make effective use of it, you have to know where to begin. Unfortunately every service and resource that I have found thus far that attempts to bridge this gap of understanding ultimately amounts to a product that they are trying to sell to you, with none of these services being realistic about the shortfalls of their service. Sales as a career it's arguable fits the definition of toxic positivity, with a hard sell being the worst form where every single question and answer is spun into something that sounds positive all in the name of getting that deal.
They say in life that nothing changes unless you make a change, the trouble is when you're not happy with your life it's hard to know where to begin. Every self-help book and online resource doesn't sell help, they sell a sense of self that relies upon their product. Objective advice online seems to be lacking; my short term success with counselling seems to have given way to long term stagnation once more. This diet, that diet, this exercise routine, that exercise regime. Eat this, eat that, drink this, drink that, think about this, think about that, drink water, sleep 8 hours, sleep 12 hours, sleep 4 hours, go for a walk, sit down in silence for 10 minutes, see people, avoid people etc.
It really does feel at times like no-one has a fucking clue and that everyone is lying trying to convince themselves they have the answer, they have life figured out, when in reality everyone lives a life with varying degrees of misery, some people are just better at hiding it than others. What if depression is just what happens when you completely abandon that pretence? When you finally accept that yes your life is miserable and there's genuinely very little you can do about except wait it out and hope it passes.
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