CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Toxic Positivity

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

This week on The Calling Home podcast Whitney will discuss Toxic Positivity in honor of the paperback release of her book on the topic. She’ll explain that toxic positivity is the act of dismissing or invalidating negative emotions in favor of a positive outlook, often leading to suppression of genuine feelings. This can be particularly harmful in family relationships, where it can create a surface-level connection and teach children to suppress their emotions.  Click here to get “Toxic Positivity” on paperback.  Visit Mindhappy.com and use HOME15 for 15% off first monthly subscription! Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow the Calling Home community on Instagram or TikTok.  Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice or other medical advice or services, is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider, and does not create any therapist-patient or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home’s Terms of Service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. www.ca.com. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to The Calling Home Podcast.

I am so excited to be here with you today because the paperback version of my book, Toxic Positivity, is out now. Those of you that have just recently found me through my work about adult family relationships and calling home and this podcast, I did write a book two years ago called Toxic Positivity. and it's been out for the last two years and now the paperback is officially out with a new beautiful cover and I'm so excited to be giving this book New Life and to bring this concept backed and to introduce it to my podcast listeners.

If you've never heard the term toxic positivity, I want to introduce you to what that is and also talk about how it shows up in families because this is really the first place that I I saw toxic positivity happening, and I talk about this throughout the book. And I think there are so many different ways that we use toxic positivity within our family relationships. And it keeps us stuck and it keeps our relationships like very surface level in so many ways. And I think it's one of the main ways that we teach our children and ourselves and our partners to suppress their emotions and to keep how they're feeling quiet because they are supposed to be feeling happy and good and smiling and be positive. So I want to read you a part from my book that I think

explains this well. Positive thinking has been packaged and sold as the cure to all of our problems. From good vibes only bumper stickers to scroll after scroll of prettily designed Instagram affirmations to life is good t-shirts and gurus promising your only one positive thought away from happiness. We are constantly told that looking on the bright side will help us avoid difficult experiences and feelings. And this is a book that I was writing on Instagram and in my office for years without even knowing it. I wrote this book for people who want to know how they can support themselves and others. And it's really for people who are exhausted from trying to pretend that they're happy all the time at work at home with their friends and on social media.

They're tired of good vibes only, being forced on them at every turn, and being told that everything happens for a reason. I wrote this book for the people who haven't been able to manifest the perfect life, and I wrote it for the humans with too many feelings and too many thoughts. I wrote it for myself in a lot of ways, and hopefully I wrote it for you too. Happiness and positivity have become both a goal and an obligation. At every turn, we're told that we need to be grateful or more positive. If something goes wrong in your life, it's because you had a bad attitude or you didn't try hard enough. And I am in awe of the ways that toxic positivity has woven its way into so many aspects of our lives, including our family relationships.

And so initially when I started talking about toxic positivity, I had a very strong reaction to this. And I get it. The word toxic is like inflammatory and it's been attached to a lot of terms, you know, like toxic masculinity. And now it's like, everybody's like, oh, everything is toxic, even positivity. And you kind of get eye rolls. And I used to get like really crazy threatening DMs when I started talking about this like in, I don't know, 2019. And now, of course, it's a much more widely used term. And it's something that people recognize. But if you've never heard of toxic positivity. I want you to know that, of course, positivity is not toxic. It becomes toxic. And it becomes toxic when it's used in conversations where someone is looking for support, validation,

or compassion, and is instead met with a platitude. Or when positivity is used to shame people into feeling like they're not doing enough, working hard enough, or that their difficult emotions are invalid. That's a big one that we see. I see that online a lot from like social media. media influencers and stuff, to shame ourselves for not being happy enough or positive enough, to deny our reality, to gaslight or silence someone who has legitimate concerns or questions, and to tell everybody that everything in their life that is bad is their fault. And that's something I talk about a lot. And the book is like really this dark side of like manifestation culture and positive thinking

culture and the secret and how we've really been conditioned to believe that we are only one positive thought away from an amazing life and we're only one negative thought away from blowing up our own lives. And of course, positivity is helpful and it's impactful and you should work on your thoughts, but it is not this like magical pill that we've been sold. And the thing that I always like to remind people of is like, if positive thinking worked, it would have worked by now because we have thousands of books and influencers and podcasts and like all this stuff that is literally centered around making your thoughts more positive. And we're just getting more miserable. So something is missing here. And at its core, toxic positivity is both well-intentioned

and dismissive. So we often use it to end the conversation in a lot of ways, right? Like you've probably done this where you're listening to someone or even you're listening to someone or even you're listening to yourself. And the person's complaining or you feel like they're looking for solutions. And so you just give them kind of this like short like quip back of like, well, you know, everything happens for a reason. It'll all be fine. It'll work out. And you just want the conversation to be over. And so you try to do it in this way that makes you appear nice and thoughtful, but it doesn't really get received that way, especially if you've ever been on the receiving end of something like that. And we also use it to convince people that they can be happy all the time if they just

try hard enough. We want to always appear positive and carefree. You know, of course, there is data that we like being around positive people more. They're easier to be around. Of course. It's a reality. If someone's always acting happy and positive and smiling, they don't need a lot from you. They don't need support. They don't need help. They don't need or comfort and like that's it's a lot less demanding on our relationships and there's something to be said about like wanting to be surrounded by people who are trying to enjoy life and make the best out of life like this isn't black and white where it's like okay someone can just be negative and down all the time around me but it's about how can we see some of these shades of gray that where people

are going through really difficult things in life that that's part of like being in relationships with people, is learning to meet them where they're at, riding these seasons of life with them. And often, we want people to do that for us. But when we're put in a position where we have to do that for them, we are like, oh, my God, this person's bringing me down. Like, they're so negative. I can't deal with this. And that's not really fair. That's not how life works. We also use toxic positivity to sound well-intentioned or kind when we are avoiding taking responsibility or when we are trying to deny or avoid a situation. There's a part in the book where I talk a lot about things like racism, ableism, sexism, all these different isms that like we use positivity

or these phrases of like, well, it's not as bad as it was then. You should be grateful for how things have changed, you know, to kind of make people just like slip back into compliance or feeling grateful for what they've got so that they stop asking for more. And that's a problem. So in the book, I talk about a character named Allie. And I wanted to introduce you to Allie because she is one of the clients that I worked with while she is a composite of a client that I've worked with, so there is no identifying information being used here, but she's someone that I thought really captured how these types of platitudes and dynamics and how toxic positivity can influence your family culture. And so she was one of the most important inspirations

and sources for this book. And Allie apologizes a lot in session. And this is something that she learned to do whenever her mother was upset. She apologizes for feeling, for not remembering something, for burdening me with her life. And whenever she does this, I try to, you know, joke and say, like, you can share your feelings here. Like, if you can't, where can you share them? This is therapy. It's my job to be here with you. And I am consistently having to reassure her that she doesn't have to worry about my feelings. But this is really, like, in her nature and deeply instilled in her. She's always worried about someone or something and is rarely able to attend to herself, even in therapy where the attention is devoted to her. And getting her to focus

more on herself and less on others is like this dance that we're constantly doing. And Allie's chronic apologizing and deep levels of insight like stem from her constant need to manage her mother's moods. Her mom can be erratic, demanding, and highly critical. And as a child, Allie absorbed the blame for a lot of her mom's struggles. And she always fought to try to make things more peaceful at home. She's learned to shut down all of her distressing emotions because there literally isn't room for them. And her mom's mood still to this day fill the room and she can feel it. Like, Allie is very sensitive to this. Allie's mother is on one extreme end of the emotional expression spectrum, right?

She feels fully and her feelings become everyone else's problem through her behavior. She doesn't know how to self-regulate. And because of this, Allie has learned to live on the other end of the spectrum. She's become a master at pretending. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom

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Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. She stuffs down her emotions and she acts like everything is good all the time and neither one of these extremes is helpful or manageable in the long term but Allie and I are really working together to try to find a way to get her to the middle

and help her get in touch with and express some of those challenging emotions that she feels are negative. And this is one of the ways that growing up in a home where you have a, emotionally volatile person in the home who expresses a lot of emotions that you view are distressing can contribute to this culture of toxic positivity because you can identify with that person as they are so expressive, their emotions are so big, they're so overwhelming, and I'm being

prerentified and having to take care of my parent that I want to learn to never appear like that. I want to learn how to only show good quote unquote emotions, happy feelings. I want to learn how to not burden anybody with my feelings. And you take on this persona of like, nothing can get to me. I'm always happy. I'm always positive. I'm always fine. And all of this falls under this umbrella, you know, of toxic positivity. And there's a couple of key ways that toxic positivity shows up in families. And some of them are in these phrases, right? Of like, family is everything. She can't be that bad when you're talking about like a family member. He can't. can't be that bad. I could never cut my mom out of my life. I could never cut my sister out of my life. I love

her. Blood is thicker than water. You should be grateful for everything your, you know, grandmother has done for you. She did her best. It's this constant need to dismiss and put a positive spin on anyone's suffering that is related to their family. And so if you find that, you know, you're listening to this podcast because you've had struggles with your family relationships. And you find that every time you bring this up to other people, you are met with some type of platitude like this. This to me is toxic positivity in relation to like our families. And everyone wanting families to always be this happy, good place. When was the last time you actually sat down and did something creative? Founded by an ex-Amazon executive, Mind Happy takes a creative approach.

approach to mental health through psychology-backed activities, sparking everyday inspiration and joy. They send you curated boxes every month to help you put away your phone and fight burnout. Visit mindhappy.com and use the code Home 15 for 15% off your first monthly subscription. So I want you to take a moment to think about how toxic positivity showed up or continues to show up in your family. And this might be something that you want to like come back to and journal about later. But are there any things you are expected to tolerate or to act like they're not happening or to be happy about? Is gratitude pushed instead of accountability? Are you told to be grateful for certain things in spite of bad things that are happening? An example of this might be

if you had a parent who was very emotionally unavailable, emotionally abusive, and you were told, well, they provided so much for you and you should be grateful for that. And so there is no ability to hold space for both of these realities that I can be grateful for what my parent provided and that they were a good provider and also feel like, you know, I was really hurt in a lot of these ways. And I deserve recognition for that reality as well if you want me to be grateful. for this other thing, right? They don't cancel out each other. Do people avoid talking about their problems in your family? What happens if they do? Is there an expectation that you will perform or present a certain way to the outside world? This is a big one. Like this idea that like you have

the perfect family. Everyone is dressed a certain way. Everyone presents a certain way. They're achieving. They're doing things. We don't talk about the stuff that happens behind closed doors when we're out in public and maybe you always felt like I have a completely different family when I'm at home than what people see, you know, when we are out in the world. And that's really dysregulating and overwhelming and it can be very difficult to live with. And this idea that like you should pretend to be a certain way and present in a positive light, but then at home, things are very negative and distressing is also a way that this shows up in families. And so another way that toxic positivity influences our family relationships is through the ways that we talk about dysfunction or issues in the family.

We really want to believe that family members will always treat us well and that they love us. But this just isn't the case for a lot of people. Maybe it's not the case for some of you listening today. When estranged family members or victims of abuse are forced to look on the bright side or accept toxic behavior, because it's family, we further victimize and isolate them. And we expect that we will be able to recognize the abuse we endured and set boundaries, you know, but we also need people to recognize what's happening to us in order to do that. Because if everyone's telling us like, well, it's your family, it's okay, you know,

but you need to have them around or it's important or family is everything, when you're being abused by your family or you're being consistently hurt by them, it's going to take you a lot longer to do something about that or to recognize it. We also really try to force, you know, adults to be grateful to their parents for their childhood no matter what. And there's always this like undertone of like, well, it could have been worse or it wasn't that bad or you should have seen my childhood, you know, And it's true that, like, there are going to be cycles that I did not break and that my child is going to have to break in his own family one day if he decides to have a family or even just

in his own life. And for me to say, well, it could have been worse, you didn't have my childhood, wouldn't be helpful and really would be so dismissive. Instead, we can kind of come from this place of like every child has some wounding from their childhood some more than others and everyone is just trying to look to understand themselves. And when we try to like put a positive spin on everything, it stops people from further understanding where they came from, why they are the way they are, and what they can do about it. And it keeps people stuck, keeps them feeling unheard and misunderstood.

And no one likes to feel that way. And I think we make a lot more room for gratitude. when we first approach situations with curiosity and seeking understanding, right, of like, why did it feel that way for you? What do you think was going on in your home or in your family? What is still going on that is leading you to feel this way? One of the biggest takeaways that I want you to get from this episode is that we have to work on the ways that we support other people when they are struggling with their family relationships. And I know that we still need to work on this because I see some people in like my

comments section, my DMs emailing me constantly still saying some of these toxic positivity sayings of like it could have been worse. You just need to forgive and forget. Weaponizing of spirituality, of religion, using toxic positivity to keep people feeling like they are not allowed to express what happened to them unless it is absolutely the most traumatic thing you've ever heard of, and they're not allowed to seek understanding and validation. And when you learn how to meet people in that space, they actually become a lot more positive because they feel hurt and they feel understood and they feel like you're at least trying

to get it. And so they don't have to like double down on their efforts to convince you of why their pain is valid. And I have seen this as a therapist consistently over the last decade or so that like when I get people the space to just tell me how it is, and I can just sit there and be like, wow, okay, tell me more about that. What was that like for you? What did that feel like? They kind of move into this place of like, okay, you think that what I went through is real. And so now I'm going to be able to take the next step to move forward and to learn how to heal. But when someone just approaches you and you immediately go into this thing of like, well, it wasn't that bad, it's your mom.

you should really forgive her. Like, you need to be nicer to your family. They tried really hard. That person shuts down. They can't move forward. They can't find a more positive outlook because they don't feel safe anymore. They don't feel understood. And that is really challenging.

And it actually, I think, ends up with people complaining more and trying to find other ways, like I said, to convince you to see their pain and that their pain is valid. So here are some things. that I think people want to hear instead. That must have been a tough decision to make. I know that you are doing what's best for you. I support your decision. I won't ever judge you for making that choice. I'm here if you ever want to talk about it. All of these phrases are really just rooted in you believing in the other person's agency, their feelings, their meaning that they're making out of this situation and that they have the ability to figure things out

for themselves and that you are going to be there to walk that path with them. You're not telling them estrangement is amazing. I think it's the best thing. No one thinks that. It's more about like if you've had to make this difficult situation with your family, I trust that that's coming from somewhere and that you have a reason to make that decision and that it's not my life. and that I can't tell you what to do, but if you are important to me, I am going to try to understand why you made that decision instead of trying to get you to see the world from my perspective and my experiences and why I have this positive outlook about my family and I have these types of relationships with my family. My book, Toxic Positivity, is now available

in paperback anywhere books are sold. And if you haven't read it yet, I hope that you will and that you find it helpful. And I'd love to hear more about any types of toxic positivity that you have seen within your family. Please let me know if you've read the book and we will link it in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being here today. And I hope to see you again next week. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.