Life Uncut - TOXIC POSITIVITY - Take your good vibes and shove it

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Hey Lifers!Yes it's Thursday but we are delivering you our big, juicy, meaty Tuesday episode today! (blame this weeks episode switcheroo on the fact we thought Laura was going in to labour - valid excuse 😂) but boy do we have a positively good one for you!After Laura's pregnancy scare we talk a bit about... well..... pregnancy and touch on the really wonderful news Dan Andrews recently shared around miscarriage and the solace this change in legislation will bring to grieving women and families.Britt is sharing her egg freezing journey with us all, then it's time for some accidentally unfiltered stories.On the menu today - TOXIC POSITIVITY!What is that you say? Well we are glad you asked!The phrase “toxic positivity” refers to the concept that keeping positive, happy and upbeat are the only feeling you should have and is the right way to live your life. It means only focusing on positive things and rejecting anything that may trigger negative emotions. We are currently seeing this everywhere in life. Sounds great right!?The fact is, when you deny or avoid unpleasant and negative emotions, you actually make them bigger .We unpack that and more so strap in folks.Find us on Facebook at Life Uncut Podcast and on Instagram @LifeuncutpodcastIf you loved todays episode please hit 5 stars, leave a review and share the love, because, well, we love love.And also that is what helps us grow so please and thank you we love you. xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. Have you forgotten your name? you've had one week off and you've forgotten your name not even I had four days off come on and I'm Brittany hi Brittany and this is life on cut I'd just like to let you all know I'm very sorry that I wasn't there on Tuesday's episode um I was a hundred percent convinced that I was going into labor yeah she's actually not even joking so I walk in the door to do the record at night and everything's fine she messaged me she's like hey like still come up in an hour I'm

like great on my way i walk in the door and you can hear the noise and matt's face is white like a possessed donkey on all fours donkey and then we yeah we all the three of us in this is the relationship that it is the three of us thought that laura was going into labor for two hours so of course the obvious uh and you know the obvious thing to do then was for me to be going into labor and for britain matt to record a podcast okay so in our defense we were like laura go to the hospital like i think this is early signs of labor this is not normal and she's like the podcast must go on she's like i'm gonna sit here and watch you whilst i'm in labor record the podcast together so for anyone who doesn't actually know what we're talking about because

you missed tuesday's episode basically matt my partner he he and britney didn't ask uncut episode instead and look I mean I know we're making jokes about it but like this isn't my first rodeo it's not like this is the first time I've been pregnant it wasn't just like weird Braxton Hicks cramps I was getting like proper really painful contractions and I called my midwife my midwife was like are you sure you don't just have gastro there is one very important element that's missing and that is the gas part you know I've done it before where I rocked up at the hospital and it turned out to be gas that wasn't this it was something else but anyway it all kind of like subsided after three hours timing the contractions and everything yeah and they were like 15 minutes

apart it was all very intense last night here but anyway we still managed to deliver you the podcast we got you an episode out on Tuesday and I'm back and I still have a baby inside me and I do not I did not go into pre-term labor so yeah we do want you to know that when we do go rogue and things like that do happen and we're out of normal scheduling it's always for a genuinely good reason we don't just do it because we're lazy and we can't be bothered to do something it's always because something there's some sort of chaos in one of our lives which does happen and we just try to find an alternative so we can still deliver you something so that is why Tuesday's episode happened the way it did we thrive in chaos so we always bring the goods guys honestly imagine

what we could achieve if you and I were organized well that's just funny in itself isn't it i know i mean i know i've complained about it a little bit on past episodes but you know strap onto your knickers guys because i'm gonna complain again strap on to your knickers what are you strapping on like a pad strap your knickers onto yourself i don't know put them on just whatever maybe there's someone out there listening to this not wearing undies right now i bet you there is i bet you were gonna get a dm in about 15 minutes that says yeah i was listening to this without my undies on okay anyway second pregnancy sucks that's all i wanted to say well it's been very different for you hasn't it yeah like the first

time i was such a like a i was just so glowy pregnant in my little element i found everything so easy i was still exercising i just didn't have any i didn't have any cramps my boobs didn't hurt my back didn't hurt my hips didn't hurt yeah you were like a beautiful supermodel mermaid no let's not get too no but you were you were like that pregnant woman that like floats you know the ones that don't walk they float down the street everyone's like oh she's so beautiful pregnant and now I look like a possessed donkey like I said just everything kind of has gone a little bit skew with this pregnancy like everything hurts a little bit more everything's like it's you know it's just been used it's secondhand now well the thing is too when you're pregnant the first time

I mean I'm really stating the obvious here when you're pregnant the first time you weren't running around after a toddler you had this whole other aspect that didn't exist yet so now you have an extra full-time job on top of everything I also didn't have the podcast then either because we kind of started that just after Marley was born this is true so you've taken on your two jobs has increased exponentially so I feel like once we really nut this out we can see why life's crazy so anyway that is kind of where we're at I still have 10 weeks left of this pregnancy like I'm 30 weeks now um or 31 weeks look who knows I've got to check the app look we're we're getting close but we've got 10 weeks left so last night would have been a real disaster had it actually turned

out to be pre-term labor but it wasn't it was probably just gas speaking of pregnancy this is like a little bit of weird side tangent but it's something that I wanted to quickly touch on on the podcast I saw something on Facebook the other day Dan Andrews put up a post in regards to miscarriage and like you guys know if you've listened to our episode for a while I did a really big well we did a really big but it was my story I guess we did a really big episode on miscarriage quite a few months ago and I read this statement that Dan Andrews had put on Facebook two days ago and it really really touched me and so I want to share it with you guys if you haven't seen it yet basically what the Australian government is going to do is parents who have experienced early

pregnancy loss can now apply for a commemorative certificate from birth deaths and marriages it's a small thing but i hope it helps and this is the statement that dan andrews put out and they like probably made me cry when i read so it's more just about finally acknowledging that it is a big loss and it is a life and it gives you a way to i guess find some sort of closure yeah and i think everyone deals with it differently like i mean i personally wouldn't have gone down the path of getting a certificate or a commemorative certificate like that's not something that I felt like I needed but there would be so many women out there who who feel like it's just not it's not validated by anyone you know there's no it's like this thing that happens to you and

then you just get on with your life as though it never existed but it did exist and it was a little life and it's just a really amazing thing I think that like the government is taking a step to say like women need to be recognized in this suffering or women need to be recognized in their loss and it gives people that ability to be able to take that step and I just read it and it really touched me and I know that there are so many women who listen to this podcast who have experienced miscarriage because so many of you have reached out to me and I thought this might be something that you would want to hear as well we really are moving forward in leaps and bounds isn't it it was only not even within the last two years maybe we weren't even speaking about it people were just

suffering on their own they wouldn't tell friends and family there wasn't a lot out there publicly and I feel like in the last few years we've made it okay to talk about we've made it okay to sit in your sadness and sit in your loss and tell friends and I think it used to come from a place where you didn't want to put your grief onto someone else you didn't want someone else to make you didn't want to make someone else feel uncomfortable or you didn't think they would understand which a lot of people won't be able to understand because they haven't been through it I haven't been through it so I couldn't understand yours but I could still understand loss I can still understand pain but then it's that thing that like, they're not talking about it. And this is what we got into

when we did that episode. They're not talking about it is what breeds shame and it's what breeds guilt. And it's what makes people think, well, there's something wrong with me. So I just thought that this was a really beautiful statement and it's actually interesting. This has just happened as a real sort of synchronicity. Today's podcast topic that we're talking about is toxic positivity. And the very first time we ever talked about toxic positivity was when we talked about it in that episode and how often people and family and friends and when you do talk about having miscarriage how people always say oh this wasn't the right one or you know this baby wasn't meant for you there must have been something wrong with it they try and justify your sadness or justify

your loss where really you just want someone to sit in that with you or let you feel through it yourself so we're talking about toxic positivity today and yeah we're going to break it down as like a bigger topic that's well and truly outside of the whole realms of miscarriage but just that was like a really natural and organic segue which I wasn't expecting but there you go in terms of segue oh god Britta's about to tell us tell me something outrageous no speaking of like segueing I guess this is sort of on par segueing a word no it is now can you segueing somewhere well yeah I think you can I'm gonna go segueing over here yeah I'm gonna say I'm yeah I'm going segueing continue with your segue no but whilst we're talking about the whole um everything to do

pregnancy and miscarriage fertility I am going to share my own little journey with you guys because I love you all and you're my family and speaking of trying to dissipate the shame that is associated with anything to do with women trying to fall pregnant or IVF or miscarriages that's what we're here for we want to make everyone feel like you are not alone we want to make it more okay so i am going to take you guys on my egg freezing journey this is when this is when it would be really great to put the clap on like have a sound effect on the podcast so no we did the fertility episode with dr cheryl foir a couple of weeks ago now and i was literally hooked to the episode i learned so much um we had so many of you running saying

how much that episode helped you and how much you got from it. And we love that. But the fact of the matter is I left that episode, I left that interview and I literally booked in to do it. I was like, this is something that I feel very strongly about. And I felt like I had to start the process straight away. So I did. So I guess I'll just, it's not going to be a long process. It's actually quite short once you get going. So it's not like we're going to be talking about this for a long time, but I may as well tell you what it's like as it happens so that you guys are very aware you literally go and get a referral you go and say you want to freeze your eggs you go and get a referral and they're going to give you a referral for a blood test and an ultrasound

and all that is doing is checking your egg count and your follicles they just want to know before you even start what level they're at so I've done that but I haven't got my results back yet the sonographer said my follicles were great she's like there's plenty of them they're great but I haven't actually gone back to the doctors to get the results that will be next week but it was actually quite funny so I went to my ultrasound I'd booked in and it was in the city and it was the only day I've actually had to leave Bondi in a long time that I've booked something that I cannot miss like everything else usually I'm like I could postpone it but this is like I couldn't and it was the day that my car broke down this week I had no way to get there I was running

really late so my best friend Renee very kindly said I'll take you to the ultrasound so she came in with me and now because it's fertility I didn't know this but you get a support person yeah it's like when you go and have an ultrasound when you're having a baby you can have one person in the room now yeah so Renee and I walk in and they're like oh is this your support person so I was like yes yes this is now I've got a photo a really beautiful photo on my screensaver I'll just show you it's me and Renee and it looks like you guys make a beautiful couple we look like a couple so I'm pretty sure this I'm pretty sure everyone there thought we were a couple because we're we're very close we're very touchy touchy feely um so I think I didn't realize at the time

but I think they thought we're a couple so then we walk into the room to have the ultrasound and Renee sits in a corner on a chair and they're like oh you don't have to be that far away come come closer so she I know exactly where this is going so Renee gets up and like comes and sits down she's like oh okay so she comes and sits down like literally next to my tummy like holding my you know like it's a pregnancy thing and I'm like cute love this for us she's doing the scan and everything and Renee's like having great time then she's like okay time for the internal so what happens is you have to get an internal ultrasound to really check the follicles and count them and Renee and I just like sort of look at each other and I just look at her with these eyes you know

when you're your best friend you can talk to them like you're like without words you're like is this cool so like with my eyes I'm looking at her and she's like my massive ultrasound dildo in front of you are you okay with this I'm jealous that I wasn't there you should have come I feel angry I feel robbed so Renee's sitting there and I was like yes let's do that then and Renee's like and she's just moving this big white thing up and she's like I'm just gonna give you she did the ultrasound and everything so then at the end she's like we're all done I'm just gonna give you guys a minute and i was like she definitely thinks we're a couple renee's like mate i have gone above and beyond for you i just held you sat through this while you got an internal vaginal ultrasound

scan now she thinks we're a couple rib so my question is did renee leave the room while you cleaned yourself up because i know what it's like when you're just covered in lube after having an internal from an ultrasound were you like oh just look we're already there now no we're already we're so far past that like we have been yeah that's actually the funny thing was it wasn't even that unusual like none of us felt uncomfortable we were just like look I just looked at it with my wiggly eyes I was like is this cool she wiggled her eyes back she was like this is cool and then we just did it also it shouldn't be uncomfortable like I mean it's not like you're doing something that's sexual in there like it's something that's for your own health and

what I love like what I get so excited about is the fact that like we did that podcast on fertility and so many people are now going and getting their eggs checked it's not awkward and I was totally fine to do it on my own like I went there to do it on my own everything was planned for me to do it on my own but I have to admit and I will say this to anyone that's thinking about it it was really nice to have someone in there doing it with you because it's daunting and it can be sad there's part of you that's like I can't believe I'm just walking down this track now and there's a part of you that's going to think I can't believe I have to do this especially that I have to do this on my own so it was really nice that I feel like the it was the universe's way of just

like, if I just crash a car and then make a straight for ultrasound, then we know our best friend will step in. But it was in hindsight, a really nice thing to have someone there in the room going through the process with you. But isn't it just a testament that you can like feel empowered and make choice in something and be like, cool, I'm going to take control of my own fertility, but then also simultaneously be allowed to feel a little bit sad or a little bit like, oh, this isn't exactly what I thought I was going to be doing. Like, you know, it's both of those feelings can live simultaneously it doesn't mean that like you shouldn't still feel empowered and proud of yourself but you're also allowed to feel a little bit like ah all right we're doing

this like cool and making some choices well yeah and the other thing is um you guys know for anyone that's like an og life uncut listener you know that we've constantly made jokes about me being emotionally void and like not not feeling my many emotions well part of this is going off the pill now i've been on the pill since i was 15 i had to go off the pill it's been six weeks oh my god i have cried a stone cold bitch is melting she's she is long i am like a puddle i cry over everything and i didn't know i always thought i was like a low-key sociopath but i just like couldn't feel anything but i feel everything now and you reckon that maybe being on the pill has stunted your ability to kind of like 100 because what happened yeah because your hormones

go insane when you come off the pill because now my body doesn't like so the first month this is what happens your hormones go a bit nuts because they've been suppressed and they've been artificially like monitored for more than half of my life everything just feels more sensitive i will look at a child patting a dog and i'm like it's so cute and i'll start crying i watched a christmas watched a christmas movie with my sister wait until you're pregnant well i think it's the same thing i think it's like it's just this out of whack hormone thing but anyway so yeah i just cry all the time guys if you see me down the street crying I'm probably fine she's Brittany's absolutely fine probably just sorry dog do you know what you're gonna end up dating the next

person and you're gonna be like I love this man and we're gonna get married and spend the rest of our lives together because you're not gonna be like emotionally shut down and push him away after four days maybe you're gonna be like holy shit this was it I just haven't been able to connect with anyone I've actually been in love with every single person I've ever met I just didn't know I just had the bloody what was it marvel on 25 yasmin getting in the way of my emotional connection. Okay. So before we jump into toxic positivity, which is the topic of today, it's time for our favorite part of every episode. And that is accidentally unfiltered. Do you want to hit it off? I will hit it off. Okay. It starts with fuck my life.

So my partner and I went out. I feel you girlfriend. Yeah. You've got me there. That's enough. My partner and I went out together last night for some drinks. All of a sudden I started to get some really bad cramps it wasn't period pain though and I knew that straight away it was just gas I could tell so I went to the toilet and it was so painful the pain is what I imagine the ring of fire would feel like so I ran out to my boyfriend and we just went straight home I was like we need to go right now I didn't fart in front of him but I really really needed help then I just remembered seeing this video I'd watched a little while ago on how to relieve gas from little babies no it's the one where you lay on it's the one where you lay them on their

back and you move their legs around like they're riding a bike you pedal their legs yes and then you squish their legs into their belly yeah you move their legs around like they're pedaling a bike and then you push their legs to their chest so i asked him to do that for me i was just so desperate i was crying from the pain so he did and then i shat myself while his crutch was on top of mine he laughed i cried dead how do we get so many farting and shitting stories like why is that the benchmark it's because it's so relatable because all these people now are realizing that they've had this missed very very unfortunate moment but they're realizing that they're not the only ones having these moments but imagining your boyfriend on you

peddling your legs to do a fart that's bad enough but then you shout yourself but what did you think was going to happen like what was going to be i mean i think she thought you just fart the best end goal was that you're gonna fart on him like because like when has anyone seen the farting baby videos like you literally stand you hold their feet and you pedal them and then you push both legs back into their belly which i'm sure it only works on babies and people who have really really really bad gas it evidently worked on her and she's a grown-ass woman i have two actually i don't have two i've got one which is like the most innocent and lovely accidentally unfiltered that we've had in a really long time and that i also have and i can't believe they said that oh i love

when you're bringing that one back in i'm just here with the goods all right so i have one this is very innocent and it's very sweet they're always so they're always poo inappropriate they're always sex and poo and dildos and condoms that's the good stuff anal sex anyway it's been a while since i've said animal sex on the podcast so here we go just the other day it was black friday sales and i went into my favorite shoe store which is in one of the busiest shopping centers i tried on a few pairs of shoes and then I noticed a really cute pair of sandals on the floor next to a shoe box that obviously someone had just tried on so I picked them up they look like they were my size I can see this and I tried them on here I am walking around the shop in these cute as

pair of shoes that I'm 100% going to buy as soon as I can find the price tag when all of a sudden this lady in her 50s calls out from across the store which is heaving with customers excuse me why the hell are you wearing my shoes I had literally put on another customer's pair of shoes that on closer inspection weren't even new that is actually though that is such an innocent thing to do I think that would happen all the time no I reckon surely do you know what I wear my shoes until they're literally falling apart nobody would ever mistake my shoes for new shoes in a shoe shop well no I don't want to wear mine I wear those like big wreaths that like strapped around your ankle like you know but you made them cool well i feel i like them but i have

some of my friends pay me out but i don't care it'd be my best life i'm living my truth and i'm wearing my reef sandals i just like also how birkenstocks came back in style like they were like 15 years yeah but they were like such loser shoes and then all of a sudden a couple of hot people on instagram started wearing them and everyone was like i need to get birkenstock well that's why i'm gonna keep wearing my reef king i'm bringing them back in you guys might remember a while back we had a section on the podcast which just kind of like fleets in and fleets out whenever people send us some really really good quotes but we did do a section for a couple weeks there which was I can't believe they said that and yesterday we got this message

over dms on instagram and I was like this one really takes the cake for me Brittany this one was specifically addressed to you right it's gonna be a red flag no it was this is for Brittany but i'm sure that you can both sympathize okay i once saw a psychic who told me that my soul is destined to be alone and that i never found love in all my previous lives and if i found love in this life it would be the first time my soul has ever been in love i paid 150 fucking dollars for this great insight excuse me now i die alone and never find love and happiness Who do you imagine? Who says that?

What is wrong with this? This is why I won't go to a psychic. Oh, okay. I've been to a psychic. What do they say? Actually, this is a funny story. I went to a psychic. I don't know why this problem happened to me twice.

Oh, I feel so alone. No, my friend, I was like, I've been to this psychic. She's great. You should go to her. You know what? Fine. I'm in this weird transition period of my life. I'd been broken up with my long-term partner and I was dating

and i wanted to move see i want to do all these things so i was like fuck it i'll go to a psychic so i went to the psychic she came recommended and she she was asking about my love life and she's like i'm feeling that you are unsettled and i was like yes like literally because every single person who comes to you is feeling unsettled yeah exactly the reason why they come here but then she's like i feel like there's two people in your life two men and they actually were like but men that i was like i didn't know which one i wanted to date which is the first and last time it's ever happened to me so she says i'm gonna help you she's like close your eyes so i was really into this so i closed

my eyes she's like the two men that you have feelings for are on a boat but they can't swim and i was like oh shit i'm gonna have to save someone aren't i oh god there's a hole in the boat and the boat is slowly sinking you can only save one who do you save and i was like bro i actually opened my eyes and I was like I would save both of them because I'm a good human she's like you can't you can only save one and I'm like this is not what a psychic does anyway it was this big bullshit saga about trying to save one and I was like maybe this is a really deep way and maybe I'm supposed to meet someone that's on a boat or like I was trying to like find an end to it Brittany's like there's a third man coming with a super yacht but then I went back a year later

to the same psychic and she did the exact same thing word for word and then I was like this is bullshit I was like you're just repeating she's forgotten that it was me it's obviously just her spiel that she does to every single person well I also had a very very similar experience from a psychic so maybe it was the same one I looked you guys have actually we've had people write in being like you need to get a psychic on to tell like your fortunes fortunes futures I don't even know give us like the lucky lottery numbers I'm really skeptic about it like I find it really difficult to be open to it but I have gone and spoken to psychics usually when I've been in a period in my life where I felt like there's a fork in the road I needed to choose something and I couldn't

make that decision on my own and I wanted someone to like appease my bad decision making but the thing is even if it's a placebo that's sometimes why we go it's like sometimes you want someone to just say yeah you're doing the right thing totally or you want someone to like answer the questions for you almost I'm not discounting it like I do think that there are some people out in the world that do get feelings they do speak to people in another world they do get these feelings with people's past lives i do think there are those people but i think there are so many people taking people for a ride for sure like you have to be very skeptical you have take everything with a grain of salt unless they're really hitting things that are impossible to for them to know but i do

think laura that that is a good idea i think we should if any of you guys know a really good psychic but I mean they have to have proven themselves to you you have to they haven't had to have said something to you that was so crazy that you're like this no one else could know this we want to know who that is because I think it'd be really fun to get them in on an episode I mean I'm open to it I definitely know that there are things in this world that like don't have rhyme or reason and that you know not everything is logical and that people have can tap into things that I certainly can't like I have full appreciation for that however I'm still skeptical when people try and tell me what they can see about my life like I'm a bit closed off to what I think however

I don't know if any of you guys remember this but this was from my season of Batch on one of my mine and Matt's single dates we had to go and see a psychic that was like our single date that we had I don't remember that so we sat down with a psychic and the psychic said oh you guys look like you have a lot of physical chemistry but like I don't know if there's anything more there other than physical chemistry and I was like oh we'll see flash forward three years you're not even having sex anymore physical chemistry gone now he's not here for the physical chemistry you got it wrong that woman who was the psychic on our season has been back over the last three seasons as like a different role so she was the love coach on one episode and she's she's

literally just an actor that channel 10 hires and i felt so betrayed when she came back as a love coach in the second season i was like that's our psychic dressed very different with a different name i recognize her let's be optimistic oh a different name different name oh i was gonna say let's be optimistic maybe she went and studied further like maybe she has multiple professions yeah like what we do no she had a different name and a different wig she was an actress are you sure it's the same person oh my god you just blew up the bachelor franchise don't believe anything on tv guys it's not real oh it is you're in love oh yeah yeah yeah okay guys it's time to get into the real meaty part of the episode and we mentioned at the

beginning today we're going to talk about toxic positivity now what is toxic positivity do you ask i ask the same thing it's not a term do you ask who is asking no i just asked whoever wanted to answer me you're like i asked this i thought you knew and you'd prep for this episode well no because I knew I did I that's why I brought it up but it was a term that I was thrown around by my sister and it's like I always knew what it was but I never knew it had a proper label and I'd never gone into depth I'd never studied it and researched it and I never knew just how bad it could be I never knew how prevalent it could be now a lot of you probably haven't heard of toxic positivity that's okay because I'm going to tell you what it is toxic positivity refers to the concept that

keeping positive and keeping positive only is the right way to live your life it means only focusing on positive things and rejecting anything that may trigger negative emotions so essentially all those things on instagram all those people that are always saying good vibes only keep your chin up you'll be okay tomorrow's a new day you've got this that's all fantastic we all love a bit bit of a pick me up and a bit of positivity but toxic positivity is the idea that that is the only way to live your life. And if you're ever feeling down, you're not allowed to sit in that emotion. You're not allowed to explore that emotion. You're not allowed to put it out publicly that you're having a hard time, that you need help, that you want to talk about something

deeper that's going on with you. And we're seeing this so much in a lot of aspects in life, but so much on social media right now. And that's why we wanted to jump in and have a little flesh out chat today. Well, I guess also like we live in a society, especially because of Instagram, where we put happiness on a pedestal and we talk about happiness so much like you should be happy you should stay positive because you know if you're it's like almost like if you're happy like you're enlightened but it's not possible for happiness to exist on its own like happiness it exists amongst all the other emotions that we have in the world you know like grief and sadness and fear and anxiety all of these feelings are just as relevant and prevalent as happiness and I think that like

it's impossible to just be happy and stay positive all the time without the shade that comes from those other more slightly negative emotions but not necessarily emotions that you should always shy away from because there are situations in life there are days there are times there are things that you will experience where all of those negative emotions are completely valid and when you are presented by someone who almost dismisses the way you feel or dismisses the situation that you're in because they want you to be happy that's when toxic positivity comes into place so an example of this would be imagine like going to your girlfriend about something that's happened in your life like maybe you've just lost your job maybe a pet has passed away

something that is significant but it could also be something that's not as significant you could just be having a really shitty day right which you're entitled to have and we're all entitled to have imagine going to someone who you care about and saying like this has happened to me and I'm feeling pretty shit about it and their response being oh you know what it's so fine you're totally going to find another job in a couple weeks time like don't even worry about it and therefore not allowing you the time to be at least that little bit of like fear feeling that fear or feeling that anxiety instead of saying hey this situation is really shit I'm really sorry this has happened to you do you want to talk about it it's like you're being denied the ability to

have those emotions at all well the thing is okay you lose your job yeah you might find another job in a month but that doesn't take away from the fact that right now you've lost your job and right now you're scared about where your money's going to come from and right now you're worried that you might not get another job what it does is just not let you actually experience a completely normal human emotion like you just said laura we're expected to be happy all the time in we are taught that happiness is success happiness 100 is success but no one can go through life without feeling at a roller coaster of emotions you're to get to where you are to be who you are to be successful you need to experience failure we're all going to experience failure we're all

going to experience pain at some time but it can actually be really detrimental to not let yourself sit in that and feel it and toxic positivity can take a few different forms so I'm just going to tell you a couple of them it can literally be a family member who chastises you for having any form of frustration instead of asking why you're upset they'll say get over it it can be a comment like oh look on the bright side be grateful for what you have okay so you don't have a job but you've got someone that loves you like you should be grateful for that I think that be grateful for what you have one is really massive like that's the one that sticks out to me as like a real sort of I mean red flag and this whole idea of toxic positivity because it's like you can be grateful

for what you have in life and still be sad about something that you didn't get like those things can coexist at the same time but by like denying someone the right to feel sad and telling them that they should only be grateful all the time just means that that you're trying to shut down somebody else's human reaction to a situation yeah and don't get me wrong I'm a big advocate I do think it's really important to remember what you have all the time but that's just to put things back into perspective in your life it's not to take away from the fact that you're not experiencing a loss it's literally just to say you know what I do have a lot to be grateful for it's still just to try and I guess plateau uh you might have really bad things

happen in your life you might have really great things in your life it's just to bring you back to a happy medium and be like you know what I can get through this you can still be sad but you're like I do have a lot of good things that I'm working towards and I'll try and redirect my focus some other things are and this is everywhere on Instagram and Facebook and social media it's all these perpetual memes and these Instagram pages that are just constantly in your face about being happy the good vibes only changing your outlook on on life I have unfollowed pages like that I used to follow them because I love them I used to be that person that used to want to throw out all these great quotes the older I get now and the more life experience I get I'm happy

to share the downs of life and I we share them on the podcast that's why we started it because we were like you know what we want people to realize that it's okay not to be okay it's okay to go through all these really really really hard times and to be able to talk to someone about it and Laura and I are really good with letting each other feel bad feelings and letting each other feel upset and letting each other sit in that and we don't try and always say you know you'll be fine look on the bright side tomorrow's a new day we actually are like fuck that's fucking shit I think that's what I said to you I genuinely think that's a learned experience though because like I don't think I used to be like that I and and this didn't my my reaction to trying to help

someone or trying to like give advice when someone would tell me that something was wrong particularly friends I have learned in my age and in my experience what is a better way to approach situations purely because when something bad has happened to me and I have received those words back from somebody else it's made me feel like shit so what I mean is is like back in the day when my girlfriends would say to me oh I'm really upset about x y and z it would be my natural preset to try and fix it and be like oh it's this is okay because you've got this and like you should focus on these things and I was definitely the person who would try and mask what they were going through not not because I didn't care about the way they felt like of course I could recognize

that I was sad but I wanted to fix it like there was a part of me that was like oh let's if I can you know fix this problem or I can like make you see the good things in your life you're not going to be so sad. But sometimes as a friend and sometimes in all aspects and all relationships that you have, you don't need to fix a problem. You just need to allow someone to feel sad. And when someone comes to you to speak to you about something that's happened to them, they're not expecting you to have an answer. They're just expecting almost a sounding board. And I, and I know that I've already mentioned this in this episode earlier, but like I learned that lesson when I went through my miscarriages and what happened with me for anyone who hasn't

listened to that episode was I spoke to a really close girlfriend of mine about it and she very quickly wrapped the conversation up and I really wanted to talk to her because I was I was really struggling at the time and she said you know what this baby wasn't meant for this earth there was obviously something wrong with it so like you should be happy that you know this happened because obviously the baby would have had problems and I was like fuck yeah of course I don't I don't want to have a baby that has you know health issues I don't want a baby whose life is going to be hard but I still want to be able to be sad about the fact that this has happened I don't want you to tell me to not be sad right now I just want to have my feelings validated and that was probably

the first time in my life that I had experienced toxic positivity really directly back at me without without really thinking about maybe I had done it in the past and like I know that she didn't do it as an intentional thing. And I know that, that her absolute intention at heart was because she felt uncomfortable by me being sad. And that's what we do in our society. I think we have created an environment and we've created relationships where we are not comfortable with other people's pain and other people's hurt. And it makes us feel a bit like, Oh, what are we going to do now? And so we have this instant default to try and fix everything. And sometimes you just don't need to fix things. It's definitely a learned behavior. And it's definitely, like you

said there's never any ill intention behind someone that says things like you know you've got all these other things to look forward to tomorrow's a new day that's definitely not ill intentioned and I think that's why it's so important to talk about it now it's because people do want to just take your pain away they want to brush any discomfort under the carpet nobody wants to sit there and have an awkward conversation while their friends crying and not know what to do but it may not have ill intention but it's very dismissive and that's the thing that 100 we wanted to unpack on this is this idea that by not validating it you're dismissing it and you're not giving a voice to that person's sadness and and it also means that they can't move through

it as quickly as what they would want to or what they might be able to if they were actually able to feel those emotions properly i remember you told me you had your first miscarriage i remember you told me and i just went fuck that fucking sucks and that was literally the only thing that you can say and that was it because i was like because there's nothing else to say in that situation like nothing you can say and I haven't experienced it so it's not like I can relate it to myself and there was actually a really interesting study that was done in 2018 and it was around emotional acceptance and one of the quotes that came out of this study is that if you are always trying to be positive you if you were like I have to be happy 100% of the time and no other emotion

I'm going to give life to or give value to then what that does is actually create something called meta emotions and it's basically like feeling an emotion about an emotion so if you feel like you're having a shit day and you're sad or you're sad for no reason like maybe you know we all have days where sometimes something has gotten to us and we just feel a bit low and yeah things in our life are great and maybe we don't feel justified to have a low day because like there's way worse things happening to a whole lot of other people out there but then you end up feeling guilty or you end up feeling disappointed on top of that original feeling that you have so you feel bad about the fact that you feel bad one of the most prime example that we've seen of toxic positivity

which I think like everyone will be able to identify is Donald Trump and how he has handled coronavirus and him running around being like everything's fine there's no problem here like you know we're beating it everything is great this like constant projection that everything is awesome when things are not awesome really invalidates one people's fear around it it also invalidates people's loss. Like hundreds of thousands of people have died in America. And it means that like these, the people who are suffering and the people who feel fear are being told that they're silly for feeling that because everything is great. I mean, you take anything Donald Trump says with a grain of salt, right? But I mean, when someone who's like in a leadership position

and they are showing toxic positivity, it's like, I think that that's when it can become really dangerous. And we also see it in other aspects as well. I think a really good example of it we hear about a lot of people who have cured themselves through whatever medical ailment it might be whether they have cancer or they have a terminal illness and they've decided to go off medicine that has been tried and tested and has all of the research studies behind it because they want to embrace maybe some more natural healing but also this positive thinking and this idea that being positive is enough to be able to heal our bodies and actually put us back onto like a path of health and maybe there is an odd case out there where something has happened

where that person has been healed. But I guarantee you that for every case where somebody has been healed from positive thinking, there's going to be a hundred other cases where someone has passed away because they haven't gone down the path of what's been advised them with traditional medicine. So positive thinking can actually be really dangerous as well. You know, sometimes these negative feelings that we have are our body's warning system that something is, something is wrong, that there is other things that you need to take into account in your life. And that's what gives you balance it's what warns you against danger what's what stops you from like making terrible decisions and just walking blindly into everything is roses and everything is amazing

well this idea of it's fine it's fine everything's fine i'm fine i'm fine it's the most common statement isn't it how are you going like no i'm so fine it's fine oh you lost your job yeah but it'll be fine it's fine what this does is can actually exacerbate negative feelings purely because you're not letting yourself work through your deep-seated issues. Like we all have things that we need to work through, but if you cover those up with a blanket and pretend they don't exist, they're going to fester. They absolutely will fester and it will come out and be very detrimental. There's a woman called Natalie Detillo. She's a clinical health psychologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. And I just thought she explained it really well.

She says, think of it as having a few too many scoops of ice cream. It's really good and it makes us feel better but then you can overdo it she said then it makes you feel a little bit sick but then imagine trying to shove that ice cream into somebody's face when they don't feel like having ice cream or imagine if they were like dairy intolerant and you're trying to shove this ice cream into them it's going to make them it's going to make them feel shit they're going to feel sick for eating too much ice cream they're saying she's saying it's the same thing with all these really positive memes about not letting yourself sit in your emotions and i just thought that was like a really interesting way of saying don't shove it onto someone all the time we know this

we know this through relationships we know this through like so many of the other conversations we've had where like if you push something down and you don't recognize it it'll only come up bigger later and down the track right like we see this in relationships if you don't talk about the problems you're having if you don't communicate those issues have open dialogue where you feel better you feel recognized you feel seen and then you and then you can move forward from it those problems don't go away they don't just dissolve because you've been super positive about it they come back and they rear their ugly head and they're 10 times worse because they're being compounded by this neglect as well but I think like this conversation is really interesting

because I do think as a society the language that we use like when you said I'm fine like this idea of saying I'm fine I think we use language that doesn't really allow people to talk about their feelings because we are like we said earlier so concerned about making people feel uncomfortable and another prime example of this is like every day we do it with we do it in shops we do it with people that we see on the street like we do it in very casual conversations we say hey how you going and we expect the answer to be I'm fine I'm good you never expect someone to say to you actually I'm not feeling great I'm having a really hard day so then why do we ask it why do we ask such a casual question about how someone is when we really don't actually care about the answer it's

because it's become this polite well it's a pleasantry it's a greeting almost now how are you is almost we're not we don't actually want to know how they are no it's a great it's like a greeting you're not gonna walk into Gloria Jeans and be like oh actually I'm having a really fucking hard day like my boyfriend just broke up with me I lost my job and I'm feeling pretty sad you want to talk about it can I get a coffee let's sit down sometimes people do that and then you're like whoa I didn't want to actually know how you are you are paying $3.40 for a cafe latte you are not paying for therapy session but I think like this is something that we can be conscious of because language is really important and the language that we use allows someone to talk

about their feelings or it stifles someone's feelings and if someone is having a really really hard time and we're like hey how you going and they have to be like I'm fine when they're not fine like that can add to it as well and it's not something I really thought about until I was actually in my own store the other day and I was having this very like trivial transient conversation with someone where I was like you know all the niceties and the pleasantries but I was like thinking about this topic because obviously we're going to be talking about it and I was like why do I ask that why do I say how how are you when I clearly don't care about the answer it's food for thought isn't it but I I don't know where we would go with a greeting other than

hi how you going hi I hope you are having a great day no I hope you are having a great day like i like the idea of it but maybe it's impractical but it's only impractical because we've made how you're going so common 100 absolutely so i want to tell you just about this study because we love studies here at life on karma we're well researched this is a well-researched oiled machine guys i just find it really interesting there was a 10-year stanford study and it found that denying negative feelings as a coping mechanism was linked to high levels of depression so those people that didn't let themselves feel their pain that didn't let themselves have any negative emotions that constantly said i'm fine was linked to higher

levels of depression another study in 2011 found that people actually felt more sad when others expected them not to feel negative emotions such as sadness well it's that thing right when you okay if i tell you look at this drink bottle now don't think about the drink bottle you can think about anything else but that drink bottle when you try and tell your brain not to think about something when you tell your brain not to do it you are going to focus on it 300 times more so like if you're telling yourself you know what don't be sad about that breakup you can just get on with it you can exercise you can just ignore it and the pain will go away it doesn't go away sometimes things happen and you have to sit in that pain and the only way out of it is through

it and we do feel that yes there's going to be times where you can mask it with doing different activities. You can mask it with partying. You can mask it with drinking. You can mask it with going out with a hot guy and having really great sex. You can mask. Are you tagging me? So you can mask emotions, but the only way to really kind of get through to the other side is actually feeling the spectrum of feelings that you have. And no feelings are bad. I think the important thing to know is that everything has an equilibrium. So long as that being positive and being happy is something that's on your equilibrium. So long as that's 50% of your life and then you have all the other emotions that are scattered around for the other 50%,

then I think that that's a really healthy balance. But to think that you have to be happy all the time is just this most absolutely outrageously unrealistic standard that we've set for ourselves. It is so brought on by social media as well. And one thing that I personally see is like mummy bloggers and how unrealistic parenting looks like on social media and how I and I know it's not real but I see it I think other people are just fucking killing it and then I look at my shithole of a house and how nothing works and my kids constantly sick and there's clothes everywhere and I think I'm failing because I'm not living in this perfection of bliss and I think all of this stuff ties into this real ethos of toxic positivity that ends up making people feel

worse about themselves not better rant and rant no I completely agree but the one thing I took out from that was um when you were like when you're like I put the drink bottle here and I'll tell you don't look at it and all you can think about is looking at it it's like when you tell I've written to my friend down the street the other day this guy and we're just chatting and the harshest guy I have ever seen was like right behind him and I just I stopped mid-conversation and I was like oh my god don't look but the hottest guy ever is behind you and immediately he whips his head around he goes where and I'm like and the guy was half a meter away and he looked blatantly at me I was like you just fuck I just I gotta move out of Bondi now thanks look

what you've done but it's like when someone says to you like don't touch it don't do it don't look at it you all you want to do is be like I need to look so bad all you want to do it becomes like the main the main focus that's why you can't say to someone hey there's someone really hot behind you of course they're going to turn around I just really like this one quote that I want to throw in before we get into some ways to deal with toxic positivity and that is recognize that how you're feeling is valid no matter what and it's okay to not be okay so don't beat yourself up about it if you're having a day where you know what you are struggling it doesn't make you ungrateful it doesn't mean that you don't appreciate all the other wonderful things in your life it doesn't

mean that your life isn't wonderful it just means that you're allowed to feel everything that you feel we all want to feel better than we do if when we're feeling shitty but you can't put that pressure on yourself to constantly be on a high so first of all just recognize it just be like you know what I feel shit and that's okay similarly if your friend has come to you and said that they feel shit you need to let you need to recognize that as well you need to acknowledge that you need to say you know what I'm so sorry you feel shit what's happening what's happening in your life what can we do about it and it's going to take you down a whole nother conversation with them on what you can do to help them and just let them don't take that away from them because that's

what it is it's literally saying you're not entitled to feel that when this person obviously has just said I fucking feel that like this is what I'm feeling things are I mean I feel like when you read them and when I tell you them you're gonna say like yeah these all seem very obvious they these are all very obvious things it's just that we don't do them we don't allow ourselves to do them and we don't do them to other people but it's literally keeping the attention on the other person if they've come to you with their problem don't relate it back to you don't say well I know when I did this and I know when I lost my job that is nice but right now you can get to that later right now it's about them it's about the job that they've lost and they don't want to know how you

got through and succeeded and now have this wonderful life they just want you to listen to them and validate their feeling ask what they need let them let them tell you their problems ask them what they need validate their feelings you could say things like what will be the most thing i can do for you um i understand this situation is really hard sit in your feelings feel it you feel shit feel fucking shit validate it yeah and it's like they all seem so simple but you don't have to like slap your face and get yourself out of it and go for a run and be like yeah i love life like sit in your bed and cry if you want if that's what's if that's what your body needs right now this year 2020 has been a real year of toxic positivity where people are like

use this time to start a new business and do this and do that maybe like this conversation would have been great for the very beginning of the pandemic when there was all of this like let's try and look on the bright side of things but sometimes when you're like working from home in a tiny one-bedroom studio and you have a child that's no longer going to school like there's just so many aspects where you're like it's not possible for me to use this time productively right there's so many things where you like and I was seeing on social media where I was like the Gwyneth Paltrow thing where she's like make sure you use this time to better yourself like we're never going to get a time like this again in our lives and buy my $15,000 vagina candle

and steam your vagina but I was like I hope we never have another time like this in my life like I need to go to work in my office I need to be able to send my kid to daycare like I need those creature comforts that a pandemic doesn't allow me to thrive in which I'm sure a bazillion other people felt exactly the same so my my big pointer is remove people from social media whose lives seem so perfect and who are so positive and so polished that it makes you feel shit about yourself because that is a whole other form of toxic positivity and it's not that you're being invalidated but it's the comparison that everybody else's life is perfect and great and everything like radiates on this high frequency of happiness and then you don't match up to that and I think

that that is something that we experience all the time with social media is this idea that like we're not quite enough what's our favorite saying isn't it comparison is the thief of joy that's your favorite sand baby but i really like it too i love it but it's the truth it absolutely is the truth so i think like it's always good to do a social media clear out cleanse your life of that bullshit and just like get some real people who are authentic and genuine and show the light and they show the shade and they show the shit and they show the great stuff that's what you need i hope this has given you some food for thought and i hope you've sort of having a look at your own life and your friend's life and and think about the way you react to someone that comes

you with a problem next time you might be a little bit more hyper aware of the way you speak to them or the way you deal with a situation um that's what we wanted to do we just wanted to bring your attention that you might not have realized that you were even doing it or you might not realize that there are people in your life doing it to you but now you know what I want to wrap this up with a quote that I like because I know I you know I love to finish on a high that's so deep it's just a short one but um positivity love and laugh and we're gonna stick it on the wall with some driftwood positivity must live alongside compassion oh I love that I read that as well actually when I was doing my research is it because I wrote it in the notes no I read it

in the article that you read it from yeah positivity must live alongside compassion I love that they go hand in hand do you want to unpack that a little bit not really I think we just did in the whole episode didn't we positivity lives alongside compassion you can't have one without the other i know let's just leave the quote as the quote well we hope you all learned something thanks for coming to our ted talk all right guys you know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light of each and every single week britney you look like you're still thinking about it so i can go i've got it all right what is your suck okay my suck was my car breakdown at midnight after a really long shift

and it's going to cost me thousands of dollars and I've been three days without a car now, hands down, my suck. You're speaking so quickly. I did that on purpose because I was just trying to get my suck out. Okay, just so you guys are aware, Brittany owns like the bougiest of bougiest fucking cars.

She owns a Range Rover and it broke down. And when she called me to tell me, she's only had it for a year and a half. When she called me to tell me that it broke down, I was like, I owned a Hyundai Excel that I ran on literally the smell of gas. I didn't even put any water in it. I didn't put any oil in it.

I didn't put anything in it. for probably six years and I was certain it was it never blew up the thing was like the most reliable car I've ever owned I think it cost me about five thousand dollars I had that car for so long until I ran it into another car um minor technicality minor minor detail but like how does a Range Rover how does a Range Rover break those things tell you they're like hey something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong yeah seven weeks beforehand I've got the same questions why is it broken Range Rover if you're listening slide into my dms no I had a jeep that I bought for five grand it was like one of my first cars um like you just said it just lasted forever I

didn't do anything to it it was the oldest car it was so so good and then I went and treated myself and look what happened anyway that's my sock my suite was we need some dating stories we need some like good romance I need uh you got you you got um blasted by an ultrasound device in front of your girlfriend i mean all of the above can i have all over no my sweet was um i went to breakfast the other day and um someone bought me a cookie from bennett street dairy it doesn't take much does it that's it i was like what i was just like it was a really kind gesture like i was just in a line they bought me a cookie not they didn't know me it was just like you know i'll get that for you and i was like oh that's so cute so now i've got to pay it forward hot guy that wasn't even trying

to get my pants I don't know if I believe that I feel like he was trying to get in your pants and you didn't pick up on the sign I'm pretty bad at that he was like can I get your number and you were like oh I'm number seven in line waiting for my coffee what like my bumble video exactly anyway that was mine you tell me yours okay my suck oh look I'm gonna sound like a real complainer but like I already told you that I felt like I was going into labor that was pretty sucky that was sucky Matt had gastro most this week which I know you guys know because you listened to last episode Marley also had gastro and then I did the stupidest thing I left my phone on top of my car oh yes you did so I was getting out of my car the other day and

I like I just had lots of bags and I had Marley and I put my phone onto my car and then I went inside and I left my car on the street and about four hours later I was like oh where's my phone can't find it must be in the car go out to my car this also is kind of my sweet as well go out to my car and there's a note on my car and somebody had found my phone sitting on top of the car they had left a note but it just meant I had to drive like several suburbs away to go pick it up which is really not even a suck it's a sweet that is like completely a sweet I found my phone after losing it for hours that's actually a very funny that you left your phone on the roof of your car I do it all the time I have left my phone on my car for an entire day at the office and left it

parked on oxford street and nobody took it that's amazing now you're lucky that's actually real that's a good deed you've got to pass a deed on too now because they did that a good deed for you do i have to go buy a hot guy a cookie yeah and then get his number for me anyway guys that is it for this week's episode i'm sorry that we had to do the little switcheroo this week and that we brought this out on the thursday but you still get the same content variety is the zest of life maybe this really put a spring in your step today variety is the zest of life is that this is that the saying I don't think it is no it's um it's the something of life it's the spice of life well it could be the zest as well guys Laura does have one other thing that I'm just going to remind her

of that she wants to say okay so this is like a little bit of housekeeping this made me a bit sad and I'm sad to end on a low note but I'm gonna I want to share it with you guys because I know that this is something that's happened as one of those situations in life where you just kind of don't think about how your actions might like lead to somebody else feeling bad. Okay. Basically we absolutely love and adore all of you guys who have been organizing meetup groups and you've been doing life on cut meetups all across Australia. It's incredible. Nothing makes us happier. Honestly, it fills us with so much joy. We cannot freaking wait until there's one organized in Sydney because we may come and crash it one day. But, um, I got a message from somebody who had

organized a meetup in I won't say where because I don't want to make this a big thing about who didn't come or anything but they'd organized a meetup many people had RSVP'd and then on the day of the meetup nobody actually cancelled or didn't say that they were coming but literally nobody but one person showed up and they wrote to me and they were quite upset about it they felt really rejected and and like you know we talk a lot about ghosting on this podcast we talk a lot about how we treat our romantic relationships but I think just in this instance there's this probably just this thought that like oh well like it doesn't matter if I don't RSVP or I don't cancel because somebody else is going to go like they're not going to miss just me but obviously

what's happened is that everybody's had that same thought nobody has messaged on the day to say that they weren't going to come and nobody showed up so this is just a reminder that like we don't organize these meetups we don't have control over them but we really love that there's something that's inclusive where everybody feels like they're able to make friends that have common goals and they have common like ideologies and we just really hope that everyone continues to feel supported in that so if you do say that you're going to go to a meetup and you decide that you can't go for whatever reason life gets busy spanner in the works just write a message just send a little text they can't come it goes for any part of life like would you ever do that

if you were going to meet up your friend for coffee would you just not go no you'd send him a message like i don't i i don't know i'm big on this and i know it's not malicious that this has happened but just you know let people know if you change your mind because someone was really sad about it and it made me really sad that like that could happen as a byproduct of this podcast so I just wanted to bring that to everyone's attention I don't want to end on a low no we want you to keep meeting up but just make sure you go anyways that is it from us if you haven't joined the Facebook group it's life uncut podcast if you want to send us some dms for our ask uncut episode or if you want to send us an accidentally unfiltered story then please send it through

to Life Uncut Podcast on Instagram. Or, and I can't believe they said that, or any other random story. Send us your fucking crazy stories, guys. Or, guys, we do want to be adding some new little segments in, like for a semi-little revamp come 2021. So if you guys have any little ideas or something funny that's happened to you, feel free to swing them our way because we want to keep this evolving. We want to keep it to things that are relevant to you

and things that are actually happening to you because that's what makes everyone else feel better about their life. And you know the drill. tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your sister tell your cousin tell just everybody and share the love because we love love