A reader asked if I could go into more detail about my gratitude practice since I talk about it so much.
I like to joke about toxic positivity because it's become a lazy label for anything that doesn't validate people who are invested in their own suffering. A few people accused me of it when I talked about my gratitude practice a while back, so I decided to own it.
Let's be clear from the start: I know the word “toxic” is overused to the point of not meaning anything anymore, but toxic positivity is a real thing.
Telling someone who lost their baby, "Heaven needed another angel," is toxic positivity.
Refusing to acknowledge the suffering in the world or dismissing it by saying that everything is happening according to some larger plan or something like that is toxic positivity.
That said, making the best of hard things that are beyond your control is not toxic positivity.
Having a gratitude practice that helps you see the good things in the world is not toxic positivity.
We are all trapped in a cultural narrative that tells us to derive our sense of worth from how much we have suffered or from how much we are suffering.
You will never be happy if you are invested in what keeps you from being happy, so this cultural narrative is detrimental to you and your life. If you are invested in your suffering, this is not the newsletter for you. Don’t make yourself even more miserable, go read something that validates how terrible the world is. There’s plenty to choose from.
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