Instant Genius - What is toxic positivity, and how can you avoid it?

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Being a positive person can be good for your health and social relationships. But can you take it too far? In this episode, we talk to psychologist Dr Linda Blair about what ‘toxic positivity’ is and why it’s bad, how to spot it, and how to stop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. I'm Noah Leach and this is Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass from BBC Science Focus. Having a positive outlook has obvious benefits to your mind, body and relationships,

but can you take it too far? When you've expressed negative feelings to a friend, you may have been told to look on the bright side when that's really not what you wanted to hear. Instead of listening and supporting you, their positivity could be more for their own benefit. We spoke to psychologist Dr. Linda Blair to learn about when positivity becomes toxic and why that's bad for you. She also gives us tips on how to spot toxic positivity in others and how to stop it in yourself to be a better friend.

So Linda, what is toxic positivity for those who haven't heard of it? Toxic positivity is a state of mind that encourages positive, optimistic thinking, but denies anything negative. That's the difference. Some people call it unrealistic optimism, because it's all by itself without its counterfoil. And why do we do it? Why is this something that we tend towards? Well, I think it's pretty recent. I don't think we've always done it. Human beings are predisposed actually to look at the negative before they look at the positive, because otherwise in our history, we would not have survived. Because if you were sunbathing,

rather than running from the dinosaur, the dinosaur would have killed you. So not good. So we think it took off during the pandemic. Certainly there's a book called Toxic Positivity that was published by someone called Whitney Goodman just in 2022. And that's supposedly when the term was coined. But I think whenever there is an overload of frightening,

or negative information or were put into an extremely frightened situation, then it's easier to try and avoid that pain. So we focus on any positive thing we can think of. So I think it existed before the pandemic, but I think it was triggered by that shocking change in our life. That's really interesting. I'd love to unpack that a bit more. Obviously, the what you've just talked about is something that relates to something you mentioned at the Cheltenham Science Festival, so that you said that research shows that if you're too positive, you might miss signs of danger, like the dinosaur coming towards you. Yeah, I'm told not to say dinosaurs, because we weren't there with the dinosaurs, but let's say tigers. But whatever it is, that's right,

there's been a number of studies. There was a Canadian study in particular that was quite clear that people who are unrealistically optimistic, which was the term they used. but that is toxic positivity, were more likely to die sooner than people who were more realistic, who realized there were risks and allowed themselves to acknowledge those risks, as well as having an optimistic outlook. Many studies have shown that optimism is really good for us, right?

I mean, people kind of lord the powers of things like manifestation and doing things like smiling, very simply just smiling or kind of engaging with people in a positive way. So what's going on there? Where do these two things clash? How are we taking it too far? You're absolutely right. When people are optimistic, there's a lot of research,

mostly in the United States, but all across the world there have been studies showing that when you're optimistic, when you have a positive and hopeful outlook about your future and about the world generally, then you suffer less. You feel pain, supposedly less, I mean, that's very hard to measure, but it looks like it.

You heal faster if you've been hurt or wounded. You get back to normal life sooner. So, for example, hospital admission, you would be probably ready to go sooner. You have a stronger immune system, and you report feeling happier with less stress and anxiety. All those things have come from a number of studies. And so you're absolutely right. There's no question about it. The need for optimism has triggered the positive psychology movement, which was started in the 1990s,

which was to focus on that which is good and that which is hopeful about life rather than the negative. But it did not deny the negative. And that's the danger. When you deny the negative, oh, that wouldn't happen to me. So I'll walk out into that burning fire because, I'm, you know, not everybody dies. I mean, you can see how dangerous that would be. So just as with almost anything in psychology, there's a spectrum of too much or too little are not good for you, but just the right amount, a bit like the three bears in the fairy tale, just the right amount.

Yeah, and a huge context that this is coming up in is a social context, so not so much walking into a fire, but how we deal with are the things going on inside us, mental health and how we are compassionate with other people. But before we go on to that, I'd really like to just talk about what you touched on at the start, that this actually came from what is being seen as a really difficult time in human history with COVID first, and then several wars around the world, I'm assuming, has played into that and climate change, of course. So could a positive outlook actually help us get through what is actually quite an over-bearing news cycle sometimes? That's a difficult question. I think to some extent you have a

point. But I'm reminded of one of the studies in Singapore, actually, which showed that if you feel socially accepted, in other words, you feel that other people like you, that is more closely allied to feeling happy and satisfied and good about life than people who are insisting that you think about the positive. So in other words, this again goes back very much like what I said about our bias towards negativity, which is for survival. This goes back to our survival as well. It helped that I did zoology before I did psychology because it gives you a perspective of all species. And back in the time when we were living very primitively, we were not big. We didn't have towels or fangs, and we didn't have ways of repelling danger as much as a lot of other creatures.

Our only way was to hang together. So the best thing for a positive outlook in life, and this has shown up in the happiness surveys every year too, is to feel you belong. The other major part is not to feel helpless. And most of the things you mentioned are things, So initially we say, well, I can't do anything about that. You know, how can I stop a war? How can I, me, one little person on this whole planet, do anything about climate change? Well, if you decide that there is something you can do, however minute, that too, will give you that balance and that extra ingredient for good mental health, for good well-being. So you see happiness, positivity, those are great things, but they're such a small part of the recipe.

Because what toxic positivity is really about is the person who offers it is scared and doesn't want to acknowledge the danger or the potential loss or illness or disaster of someone they care about. So they reassure them heavily because really they're reassuring themselves, look, you're really. really okay. By saying, think of the positive, it's okay, you know, 99 people out of a thousand or some figure like that means that you'll be all right. So temporarily for someone offering toxic positivity, you feel relieved because you've told them they're all right. And hearing our thoughts is a very powerful thing. So they feel temporarily reassured. But anything that we do to reassure, we usually need to do again because we've rewarded ourselves by reassuring ourselves. And so we want more reward. So we do it again. So all it does is make the person more and more

toxicly positive. In other words, ignoring the balance of positive and negative. Now, what about the receiver? The receiver feels, well, they certainly don't get a relief in their anxiety or their stress levels because they know what they're being told isn't what they asked for. And they wanted understanding. They wanted to be heard. They wanted to relieve themselves of this stress because anything inside us hasn't got the same kind of proportion as when we say it and get it out there. It's got better proportion. We can deal with it better. That's why therapy is so successful. That in itself. We just talk about the things we're worried about inside our heads. But also, and I think this is really important in terms of social media, you feel invalidated.

I'm not important. They're not listening to me. They're only caring about themselves. They don't care about me. And that, I think, is a huge problem nowadays. We're in a fast world. Everything seems to want an answer right away. So we don't process it very well, and we just react.

And the reaction is, oh, I don't feel very good now. I'm scared. I want to get rid of that. So it isn't meant, oh, I'll hurt them so I can feel better. Not at all. It's just, I'm uncomfortable, and I would like to be relieved of that. So, yeah, it's selfish, but it's not intentionally hurtful, usually. I mean, it can be.

I think if you find you need to do it a lot, that's probably not a real good sign. That suggests to me a compulsion as opposed to a gift you'd like to share. So the way to get around that is, I don't know how many people know this, but it's one of the therapist's little magic tools, it takes about 20 minutes for a compulsive urge to recede if you don't attend to it. So if you can resist it for 20 minutes, usually you've won. You don't feel that urge. So if you want to post something on social media, set yourself a half an hour before you send it out. And then if you still want to send it out, I think probably it might be okay. That might be a very good way to get started. That's interesting. And what about

if we're having a conversation with someone, presumably, you're not suggesting that we wait 20 minutes before we respond to someone who comes to us with the problem. I think they'd leave the room. Yeah. I think, well, one of my most important things I always say in therapy is, do you want to be popular? Would you like to be liked? Would you like an answer to how to cope with other people? Two words will take care of that. Ask questions. That's all. It shows genuine interest in the other person. And it conveys that you're interested in them rather than yourself right now. So I think if in doubt, if you see signs of agitation in your friend or the person you're with, you can bet that they're not really wanting to receive what they're receiving.

So just clean it up, finish it, and then say, did I make myself clear? Or did I answer your question? Or was that what you wanted to know? I'm just kind of checking here. And that will take away anything that distressed them, I think, as long as you're genuine. Yeah, that's interesting. Let's just pin down some of those things that you've just said. So what are some of those signs that we might look for in someone who is agitated and we're talking to them and perhaps we're giving the wrong advice, the wrong consolation that they need?

What would you expect to see in someone who's experiencing that? It always seems obvious if you're practiced in looking at people, but you can get practice. You don't have to have training. What you look for is less eye contact than usual. So when they look away, they don't really want to receive and visually is the way we work so much nowadays as humans. Really too much, but we do. They look away.

Now, I said relative to how often they look at you because we're all different in how much direct eye contact we make. So it doesn't mean if they look away, if they normally look away, that's not going to help you very much. but if they're looking away more. Okay, so that's one thing. Another thing is perhaps they fidget or always look at the neck and shoulders, big key.

We tighten up, lift up our neck and shoulders when we get tense, not answering you quickly, sometimes hunching down or dropping your head, looking dejected. Those are things you could notice. And what that means is you shouldn't be flying away with what you're saying. So don't hurry. Slow down, gauge the other person, punctuate what you say with questions. My goodness, they'll be grateful to you. And you'll do so much for them, even if you don't offer them any positive advice. You've already really made a difference to them.

I see it all too often in people who are themselves anxious, which is they jump in to the conversation with what that means to them. Oh yeah, I know about that because two years ago, I did the same thing. And off they go. And that poor other person feels totally invalidated. All you did was use that as a platform. You're using the conversation to take your turn rather than to hear me. And so I think really, really important that you react by staying in their world.

How about that? You try and look at things from their point of view rather than adding your experience. that's the nicest thing you can do. And you may feel later, oh, crumbs, they don't know much about me and I didn't get a chance to talk about this, that or the other, but it'll be less bad than how good you'll feel about their pleasure. Yeah, well, that's a really interesting part of it, I think, for me, this balance between pessimism and optimism, because obviously, we talked before about how good for you optimism is, but positivity is also great for social relationships for making friends and for building a kind of reciprocity and kind of happiness and joy.

So is there a risk of sacrificing these when we are being honest, when we're kind of putting the truth and honesty and possibly pessimism first? I don't think you can generalize. I think that depends on the situation. I think you have to gauge that because, of course, I was just talking here for maybe five minutes as if you didn't have a care in the world. And of course, you'll have things you want to talk about, too. So it's a question of turn-taking in a balanced way.

So you need to give the other person a chance to feel that they can help you by listening, too. But the timing, I cannot say, well, you should always do this or you should always do that, because you have to gauge that. And the better you know someone, the easier it is to gauge that. Also, though, however, the more important it is not to get it wrong. But it's very interesting. The study in Singapore suggested that when people felt socially invalidated when the other person was pushing toxic positivity on them, was that they felt worse when that other person was someone they didn't know well, a sort of office co-worker

or something like that, which I find very interesting. I'm not quite sure I understand it, but I just found that an interesting observation. That's really interesting. And I'm glad that you brought up some kind of stranger like an office co-worker, because I did actually want to ask you about the workplace, because it's quite a different field, isn't it, from when you're sitting down and having a one-on-one conversation with your friend. Actually, we do see that in workplaces, there is a real drive to be constantly positive about growth and about progress and all of this stuff. So how does it shift? Do all the same principles of toxic positivity stick? And how can we spot it in the workplace?

And does it have the same implications and impacts? I think sometimes it can be worse, partly because of that Singapore study that suggested that if it's a co-worker or someone like that, it makes you feel less validated than if it's a good friend. And I suppose you don't feel you can say anything to a co-worker in the same way. My first reaction to that is that probably that's best handled if there's good management. In other words, that there is easy access to completely confidential HR. you could go and say something, and that HR or managers or whatever do have clout so that they can say, we're going to have 10 minutes every day just before lunch break where we just sit quietly and say one nice thing about somebody else, or something very calm, you see,

like that, rather than pushing positivity. When coworkers discuss items, it's important to say, look, this is difficult, but, But I can see the good side. So you start with something which gives it balance in the more neutral or negative sense, even though normally you would think, oh gosh, I'd rather start positive. I don't think so. I think give people a chance to feel it's okay to be worried about this issue or that issue. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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And how do you greet people when people ask you how you are if you're not feeling great? What do you say? Sometimes as a joke, I did actually try as a joke when someone said, how are you doing? I said, oh, I'm terrible, thanks. And they don't hear you. They go, oh, good. Because we just don't process. It's almost like waving.

You know, it doesn't have any meaning. And I guess what I tend to do is I say, well, you know, pretty good at the sunshining or something that is positive. But I'm a bit tired if I am. I would say that. But I wouldn't say it in order for them to have to unpack all my problems. I would just say it in passing. I think I would then say, how are you, quite quickly, because it would be unlikely that I would want to unpack it. But I wouldn't usually lie. I don't think I find that comfortable. So I don't

think I would say fine if I wasn't. I'd say, okay. Actually, I just talked to someone earlier today, and I said, how are you? And they said, well, not too bad. And I said, that too went on too long. What's going on? And boy, we went right into it. She was having some health problems. And she was fine after just telling me what they were. I didn't have any answers. But once she was allowed to say it, she felt a lot better and probably feels a lot more like a whole person. I hope so anyway. Well, that's interesting there. I mean, if you are feeling a pressure to be positive and to suppress your negative feelings, like actually things aren't going very well for you. What should you do? How should you cope with it and talk about it more healthily? And crucially,

and I guess this is a kind of second question barreled into one, but how can you talk about it more healthily and openly without just bringing yourself down? And I mean this in the, from a kind of healthcare point of view and a welfare point of view, but without it also impacting other people,

you know, I don't mean to say that you shouldn't bring people down when you're feeling down because obviously that is part of a social responsibility and what friends want to do for each other. But obviously you don't want to actually cause other people negative health issue. by bringing them down.

You're absolutely right. There's some other research, not so well known, but it shows that if you unload your negativity, you feel better. But if most people feel comfortable doing that all the time, the whole community feels less good overall. So, yeah. So it isn't just all great to dump. I think the best answer is called Morning Pages.

and that isn't about other people. You start your day without other people. The first thing you do in the morning, this is supposed to unlock creativity, but I find it just lifts mood like nothing else. You sit up in bed, you don't even get out of bed, just set up in bed, grab the notebook which you put by your bed the night before,

and you fill the page with anything that's on your mind. It usually is pretty negative, but sometimes it's positive. Sometimes it's a dream. Sometimes it's, I don't know why I'm writing this. But when you get that emptying out, you will find within days, in a few days, that you will be noticing the positive more easily. I don't quite understand why, but certainly Julia Cameron, who wrote the artist's way and suggested this method, she is convinced that you become more creative as a result, and I think you become more positive.

So if you'll start out by dumping the bad stuff, closing the notebook and getting on with your day, I think that will do more good than any technique when you actually meet another person. Try it anyway. I really do suggest people try it. And what about therapy, things like cognitive behavioral therapy? Because obviously that's kind of designed to help rewire things a little. So is that something that you'd recommend if someone feels like they're not actually able to see reality and they're constantly just telling themselves, oh, it's all fine.

We all know those people. Boy, yes. And it has increased the number of people who are distressed for all number of reasons. I'm hesitant to get you to run for therapy because, first of all, there's not enough resources right now. So you want to not be discouraged by finding that it's a six-month wait or something horrible like that. So I think try something like the morning pages. Try something like getting a best friend and saying, you know what, we're each going to have 10 minutes in this conversation to dump. You can try that.

You can also try doing more exercise. It's extraordinary how powerful aerobic exercise is, not anaerobic, not the kind that leaves you so you can't even talk. But just a walk. Being outside, you get extra endorphins. So you can try some of those things. If none of that works, and in particular, if it's interfering with what psychologists call the ADL, the activities of daily living, in other words, you can't get to work or school very often, or you don't have any appetite, or you're gaining weight because you can't stop eating,

those kind of things. And it goes on for a couple weeks, then yes, I think some cognitive therapy or a good counselor would be very useful. Now, what would they be useful for? Partly getting the problems out of your head so that you can make sense of them. And a lot of times, once you can see them in proportion, because they're not huge in your head running around in circles, you know that feeling. It's like clouds overwhelming you.

If it comes out, you can see it. You can start to use your powers of logic, which are very strong in human beings nowadays, and see if you can do something about it. Another thing is cognitive reframing. In other words, the therapist would help you reword your problems so that they're, A, more realistic and B, suggest the possibility of a solution. So instead of, I feel terrible all the time, it's in the morning, it's difficult to get up. So I think what I'm going to do is give myself some kind of thing to look forward to, like my very special favorite kind of coffee. I'm going to have a couple. I'm going to have a couple. cup at that first or something like that. So that's cognitive reframing. There's also something called mirror talk, which a psychologist can teach you, which is to look in the mirror and see the most important person that gives you advice yourself and talk about the issue with yourself. It sounds

ridiculous, but you often end up laughing, so that's great. That lets off a lot of anxiety, but it also helps clarify a problem. As I said, exercise. Therapists will help you form an exercise program, which can be targeted to the right time of day to lift your mood at the time of day when it's hardest for you to lift it. Breathing, we teach particular breathing techniques. So there are lots of things you can learn from therapy, but I don't like people to think that they can't solve their problems. They can try first. And if they're having a struggle, then get some help, sure. And most particularly, obviously, if you're having dark thoughts, you would most definitely go to your GP straightaway.

If you were thinking about harming yourself or others, you must definitely go and get some help. And your GP will almost certainly be very responsive to that. I'm not trying to trivialize it. I'm just trying to help those of you listening to feel empowered yourself. And if that doesn't work, then simply to hold the hand of someone else while you still go on, because you will have made some progress. That was Dr. Linda Blair, talking about why too much positivity can be bad for you.

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