Kat McAdaragh

The toxic positivity epidemic and authentic emotional processing

I was having coffee with a friend last week, telling her about a difficult period I’d been going through—work stress, family drama, the general weight of existing in the world right now—when she interrupted me mid-sentence with a bright smile and said, “Have you tried just thinking positive thoughts instead?”

I’m pretty sure my eye twitched.

Not because she meant any harm. Not because she doesn’t care about me. But because in that moment, her well-intentioned advice felt like being told that my very real, very complex emotional experience could be solved with the psychological equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a broken bone.

“Just think positive” might be the most unhelpful piece of advice in the history of human communication, and yet somehow it’s become the default response to anyone expressing difficulty, sadness, or legitimate concern about their circumstances.

The Positivity Police

We live in a culture that has weaponized optimism. Somewhere along the way, we decided that negative emotions are problems to be solved rather than information to be processed. That if you’re struggling, you’re not trying hard enough to be grateful. That if you’re sad, you’re choosing to focus on the wrong things.

This has created a kind of emotional surveillance state where expressing anything other than gratitude and enthusiasm feels like a moral failing. God forbid you mention that you’re tired, stressed, or worried about something—someone will inevitably remind you that “attitude is everything” or suggest that you “choose joy.”

The message is clear: your emotional experience is wrong, and it’s your responsibility to think your way of it.

But here’s the thing about emotions: they’re not optional. They’re information. And when we constantly override that information with forced positivity, we miss crucial data about our lives, our relationships, and our circumstances.

The Gratitude Trap

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not anti-gratitude. Appreciating good things in your life can be helpful and grounding. But gratitude has been hijacked by the positivity industrial complex and turned into another way to shame people for having complex emotional responses to difficult situations.

“You should be grateful you have a job,” someone says when you mention that your workplace is toxic. “At least you have your health,” they respond when you’re struggling with relationship problems. “Think about people who have it worse,” they remind you when you’re processing any kind of disappointment or loss.

This kind of comparative gratitude isn’t actually gratitude at all—it’s emotional bypassing disguised as wisdom. It shuts down authentic processing and replaces it with guilt about having feelings that don’t fit the prescribed positive framework.

True gratitude can coexist with legitimate struggle. You can be grateful for your job and also acknowledge that your boss is impossible to work with. You can appreciate your health while also being heartbroken about a relationship ending. You can recognize your privileges while also honoring the very real challenges you’re facing.

The Spiritual Bypassing

Perhaps the most insidious form of toxic positivity comes wrapped in spiritual language. “Everything happens for a reason.” “The universe is conspiring in your favor.” “You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.” “This is just the universe teaching you a lesson.”

These phrases sound profound, but they’re often used to avoid sitting with the genuine difficulty of human experience. They suggest that if you’re suffering, you’re somehow missing the spiritual point. That enlightened people don’t struggle because they understand the bigger picture.

But spiritual growth doesn’t mean transcending human emotions—it means learning to be present with them. It means developing the capacity to hold both gratitude and grief, hope and fear, trust and uncertainty. It means understanding that some things suck, and finding meaning doesn’t require pretending otherwise.

When someone is going through a divorce, telling them “everything happens for a reason” isn’t spiritual wisdom—it’s emotional dismissal. When someone loses a job, suggesting that “the universe has a plan” doesn’t honor their very real anxiety about paying rent, it minimizes it.

The Violence of Forced Optimism

There’s something violent about being told to think positively when you’re in genuine distress. It’s a form of emotional gaslighting that suggest your internal experience is wrong, dramatic, or self-created. It implies that if you were stronger, wiser, or more spiritually evolved, you wouldn’t be feeling what you’re feeling.

This is harmful when it comes from people of authority or influence. When therapists, coaches, or spiritual teachers push positivity instead of presence, they’re essentially telling people that their emotions are problems to be fixed rather than experiences to be witnessed and understood.

The result is that people learn to disconnect from their own emotional reality. They start apologizing for their feelings, minimizing their struggles, and forcing themselves to perform happiness even when they’re falling apart inside.

What Actually Helps

When someone is struggling, they don’t need your optimism—they need your presence. They don’t need you to fix their perspective—they need you to witness their experience without trying to change it.

Sometimes the most helpful thing you can say is, “That sounds really hard.” or “I can see why you’re struggling with this.” Or simply, “I’m here.”

This doesn’t mean wallowing in negativity or encouraging people to stay stuck in victim mode. It means understanding that emotions need to be felt before they can be processed, that problems need to be acknowledged before they can be addressed, and that healing happens through experience, not through thinking your way out of everything.

The Difference Between Hope and Toxic Positivity

There’s a difference between hope and forced optimism. Hope acknowledges current reality while maintaining faith that things can change. Toxic positivity denies current reality and insists that things aren’t actually that bad if you just adjust your perspective.

Hope says, “This is difficult, and I trust we’ll find a way through it.” Toxic positivity says, “This isn’t actually difficult if you think about it the right way.”

Hope allows for complexity and uncertainty. Toxic positivity demands simplicity and certainty.

Hope meets you where you are. Toxic positivity tells you where you should be.

The Right to Feel Bad

One of the most important things you can do in our positivity-obsessed culture is claim your right to feel bad sometimes. To be sad about things that are sad. To be angry about things that are unfair. To be worried about things that are concerning.

This doesn’t mean becoming negative or pessimistic. It means honoring the full spectrum of human emotion instead of trying to live exclusively in the pleasant half.

Your feelings are not moral judgments on your character. Being sad doesn’t make you ungrateful. Being angry doesn’t make you toxic. Being worried doesn’t make you faithless. These are normal human responses to living in a complex world where difficult things happen.

The Integration Process

Real emotional health isn’t about maintaining constant positivity—it’s about developing the skills to hold multiple truths simultaneously. To be grateful for what you have while also acknowledging what’s missing. To appreciate your progress while also recognizing where you still struggle. To find meaning in difficult experiences without pretending they weren’t difficult.

This integration process takes time and requires space to actually feel what you’re feeling. It can’t be rushed with positive thinking or bypassed with spiritual platitudes. It requires presence, patience, and often the support of people who can sit with you in the mess without trying to clean it up.

Permission to Be Human

If you’re someone who’s been told to “just think positive” about a situation that genuinely sucks, know this: your feelings are valid. Your struggles are real. Your emotional experience doesn’t need to be optimized or corrected or spiritualized.

You have permission to be sad about sad things. You have permission to be angry about unfair things. You have permission to be scared about scary things. You have permission to feel your feelings without immediately trying to transform them into something more comfortable for other people.

This doesn’t mean staying stuck in negativity or refusing to look for solutions. It means giving yourself the space to be authentically human before jumping to forced positivity.

A Different Kind of Resilience

True resilience isn’t about maintaining a positive attitude through everything—it’s about developing the skills to be present with whatever arises. It’s about learning to surf the waves of emotion rather than pretending the ocean is always calm.

This kind of resilience comes from practice with difficult emotions, not from avoiding them. It comes from learning that you can feel bad without being bad, that you can struggle without being weak, that you can have problems without being a problem.

The Gift of Witnessing

When someone you care about is struggling, resist the urge to fix their perspective or offer silver linings. Instead, practice the art of witnessing. Sit with them in their difficulty without trying to change it. Reflect back what you hear without trying to reframe it.

This kind of presence is actually more helpful than any positive thinking advice could ever be. It communicates that the person is worthy of love and support even when they’re not feeling grateful or optimistic. It creates space for authentic processing instead of performed positivity.

Sometimes the most positive thing you can do is stop trying to be positive and start being real.