How Perfectionism and Toxic Positivity Feed Off One Another
Life coaching for anxious women.
What is toxic positivity?
If you’re a relentlessly upbeat person, you may be wondering how positivity could ever be viewed as toxic.
Toxic implies bad and dangerous, right? You may have labeled people in your life as toxic, or feel like someone gives off a toxic energy. You may have even experienced your own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that you’ve labeled as toxic in the past. Toxic negativity.
We want to steer away from labeling label thoughts or feelings as toxic, or bad, or negative (see here: How to Banish Toxic Thoughts), even though some can be genuinely pretty unhelpful for you and your brain.
Toxic positivity is the the idea that relentless positivity can be equally bad as negativity.
It keeps you from really sharing what’s going on, and really being honest about your own internal experiences. Toxic positivity keeps you stuck in one lane, feeling trapped and unable to escape.
Per Kendra Cherry at VeryWell Mind, “Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. It's a ‘good vibes only’ approach to life.” Toxic positivity means you feel like you can only focus on the good and try and push away the bad.
In terms of perfectionism, where we always want to do our best and are so disappointed when we don’t meet our (very high!) expectations, coming short of our goals feels terrible.
When we have perfectionism AND toxic positivity, we have an internal message telling us “I’m terrible,” or “I’m a failure,” a long with an internal message that “Feeling bad makes me bad,” or, “There’s something wrong with me for feeling this way.”
Here’s where anxiety comes in:
Toxic positivity: Good vibes only!
Perfectionism: I got less than an A on this test. I’m a failure!
Anxiety: Having this thought makes me a bad person, because “good vibes only!” I can’t tell people about this! I have to keep it to myself! There’s something really wrong with me. I can’t let anyone else know about this!
Toxic positivity combined with perfectionism can lead to lots of anxiety.
It increases your stress level to the point that any underlying anxiety gets bigger and bigger, to the point where you can’t keep it inside anymore. And, because toxic positivity doesn’t want you to share when you’re feeling less than amazing, you try and bottle everything up - until it explodes.
Do I need anxiety therapy or do I need life coaching for my toxic positivity?
If you feel trapped, or like you can only represent the good and have to hide the bad, and if it’s becoming overwhelming and obsessive for you and impacting many areas of your life, then yes, I would probably recommend therapy.
If, however, your perfectionism and positivity is unhelpful but not crazy overwhelming - if you’re managing it but noticing that it’s starting to impact you - you may benefit from the more solutions oriented approach of life coaching.
We will work together to figure out the best strategies for moving forward, and explore where you can engage in problem solving, mindfulness, and perspective taking to get out of the patterns you find yourself in again and again.
You don’t have to feel trapped by toxic positivity.
You can still be a “positive” person, who’s real. Who feels genuine. Who doesn’t feel stuck by these internalized, self-imposed limits on what is ok and acceptable to show to the world.
We can move forward without all the stress.
So, let’s talk! We’d love to help you find freedom from this trap.
