Oh, There's a NAME for That: Toxic Positivity

I was tooling around on Facebook the other day, and a friend of mine put up an article that made me feel so understood, so heard. It was an article by Sara Schuster, on Toxic Positivity from The Mighty (go read it!).

The piece had three things that snagged me -- a useful chart that caught my eye; a short animated video on empathy in the words (and voice of Brene Brown, who is fast becoming one of my heroes, although I guess I'm late to this party); and content that echoed something I've been irritated with for a long time.

Here is the chart:

Graphic from the above article, created by Whitney Hawkins Goodman, LMFT of the Collaborative Counseling Center

As I neared the end of our fertility journey, I became ever more aware and bothered by what I felt was "The Cult of Positivity." These are the (somewhat) well-meaning things said by people who typically have found success themselves, eventually, and who want to cheer you on in your quest. However. Nothing makes you feel lonelier than when you are honestly wondering what you did to warrant such utter horrible luck in every aspect of family building, if you can keep going, if people will understand if you CAN'T keep going... and you are faced with the following: 

• None of that negative talk! What you put out comes back to you! Keep it positive! 
• Just stay in the game and IT WILL HAPPEN! 
• Been there, done that...it's all worth it in the end! 
• Did you go dairy free/go sugar free/spend your every last dollar on whatever vile herbal concoctions are purported to work/make yourself an acupuncture pincushion several times per week/get massaged in just the right way/wear the right color underwear/keep the right kind of crystals about you? 
• If only you would pray more/go to church/put your trust in the Lord, it would all work out (if it's meant to)!

It doesn't feel helpful. It doesn't feel like you are being listened to. It definitely doesn't feel like empathy. And it often comes from people who have been successful their way, who feel they have the answer, who have the joy you are seeking and don't want you to miss out on the best experience of their life, who feel like if only you think or do as they did that you will have the same result. 

And if you don't? If you are feeling sad, or hopeless, or god forbid you are considering the possibility of resolving childfree, of leaving the merry-go-round from hell that is slamming your body into a wall hoping you'll make it through to "the other side," which is terrifying for them, but also for you because you've been conditioned to believe it's the worst possible alternative because it meant YOU GAVE UP HOPE? Then you feel like a failure. You feel like you let people down. You feel like if only you could have been POSITIVE enough, then maybe it would have worked out. If only you could have been more patient, or tried harder, or kept the faith, or, my favorite, opened your heart just a little more, you could have had the prize. But you went down the dark path, and so maybe it's even a little your fault that you didn't end up a parent. 

This is all total hogwash. I am a huge detractor of the idea of "thinking it true" (something at one point I was told to do), of this theory that you put thoughts out into the universe and that is what bounces back to you. I'm rubber, you're glue, that sort of thing. WHAT AMAZING POWER that assumes human beings have. Imagine, if all you had to do was put a highly focused thought out there into the Universe and it would come back to you, all shiny and gift-wrapped! Imagine, if all your worst fears, all the thoughts that EVERYONE HAS, could come true just by thinking them, by letting them out of the Pandora's Box of your mind? I would have been brutally murdered or in a terrible car accident probably about 1,000 times. At least.

Which brings me to the "at least" part of the discussion in the article, the bit by Brene Brown -- "at least" is one of the worst ways to start a sentence, maybe seconded by "You just have to..." It is something that says, "I am uncomfortable with your feelings, you aren't being positive, you're sitting in the muck and it makes me feel odd, so I'm going to remind you that THERE IS MORE BAD CRAP THAT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, and you should be GRATEFUL for whatever it is you're dealing with, because it could ALWAYS BE WORSE." 

Yeah, no. 

I love the ideas presented in the article, that just acknowledging feelings and sitting with someone in pain, that THAT is what is most helpful. Not judging, not "but what if you" if you are talking about a decision you're making related to your difficulty (stepping off the striving machine, stopping treatment, leaving your marriage, NOT leaving your marriage), but just being there and listening to the pain. Sitting with the pain. Validating the pain without opinions or fix-it suggestions. 

It's hard. I'm trying to be better about this myself, to stop the impulse to offer suggestions and rather just listen, just say, "This sounds so hard. I'm sorry you're going through this. I'm here for you. Tell me all about it," or variations thereof. I love that Brene Brown says that human nature is to judge, to even take delight in judging someone else's choices or decisions. It makes it easier to acknowledge that you are only human if those thoughts come into your head. They just have to be stopped before they come out of your mouth. 

I fell victim to this a while ago, with a friend who had gone through a crisis in her marriage and worked through it, and was commenting on another friend who was gathering the courage to go through a divorce that started with the husband dropping a bomb and leaving in a pretty horrific way. The first friend was like, "Maybe she can fix it, maybe it will work out," and that probably stemmed a lot from her own experience. Someone else in the room and I were like, "Oh hell no, that sort of thing happens and there is no coming back from that, she deserves better, how could you stay in that situation? She needs to get out!" And both of us were speaking from our own experiences, for me, leaving someone who was not treating me with respect in any way and a result of leaving was the best marriage I could possibly ever imagine...so how could you do something different? This situation was different because the person in question wasn't in the room and we weren't offering this advice directly, but it was interesting to look back on it and think, all we were doing was offering up solutions that were based on our own experiences, things that had worked for us, and if someone disagreed, well then they had to be judging our own choices, no matter what side of the issue we were on.

What would have been more helpful, probably, would have been to listen to the person who was hurting, to resist the urge to put in gems from our own experiences, and just be a sounding board as she made her own decision, based on her own thoughts and experiences. I feel like if you're listened to and you can weigh out all options, and you've received support in a way that doesn't feel like being swayed into one option or another, then you typically will make a decision that works for you. 

It may sound weird to be so against the Cult of Positivity, to hate those "inspirational" farmhouse signs and trite soundbites that make you believe that you have far more control over outcomes than you truly do. Acceptance and empathy are far more valuable to me than the hollow positivity of the toxic kind. It's one of many reasons why I'm so, so grateful to have childfree resolution mentors in this space, people who made these decisions and choices earlier than me, and who can give the perspective of one for whom this resolution worked out. There are so many more voices out there urging you to keep going, to never ever ever give up, to keep the faith -- because they themselves "made it happen." Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don't, and it would be awesome if there could be acceptance not just from me, but from others, that the choices I made and the path I traveled may not have gone how I'd hoped, but it was a perfectly fine way to take a corner. I know I am way happier now than I was a few years ago, at the end of the striving.

Or I could just try not to care what others think about my choices, which is far, far more easily said than done.