Toxic positivity is a trend these days.
Most of us have felt the urge to transcend pain by ignoring its existence. To find quirky ways of gaslighting ourselves into believing that all is well, by default.
Even when it really, really isn’t.
I’m all for thought work, managing our minds, and sometimes choosing what to think and feel about something. But it’s a balancing act and if we go too far, we lose touch with the essence of human experience.
I think it’s refreshing to realise (again) that pain is status quo. Interlaced, of course, with joy, pleasure, and moments of connection and calm.
REM knew this 30 years ago already, “everybody hurts… sometimes… sometimes everything is wrong…”.
We wish to thrive, live-our-best-lives, blossom, bloom and win.
We want to watch the webinar, buy the program, and light up the sky in transcendental technicolour, immune to calamity.
And sometimes we do.
Sometimes we are.
But planes fall out the sky.
People end their lives.
People we choose don’t choose us. There is cancer.
Poverty.
Violence.
Emotional immaturity and trauma scarring make otherwise-good relationships near impossible. Anxiety.
I’ve spoken frankly about a current tragedy in my extended family. My niece’s 28-year-old husband died in a plane crash.
Just three weeks ago, now.
Her world turned black.
Those of us who love her, and love him, carry her broken heart in ours every minute of the day.
I subscribed, last week, to a mailing list on grief. For 365 days, the list owners were to email some sort of daily grief comfort. I signed up because I thought it might help me help her.
I unsubscribed yesterday, when I realised it was a guise for overt Christian evangelism.
“Too soon, and quite mercenary”, I thought.
But there was a mailer that came through that I pondered on.
The author wrote how grief and hardship always surprise us, and offend us.
As though they should not happen. As though my they are out of place in our otherwise pristine lives.
As though death, discomfort and upheaval are outliers.
But this author argued that hardship is actually the norm.
If we’re honest, periods of peace, calm and stability are often the exception.
“Fair point”, I thought.
“Perhaps”.
Erstwhile psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck, begins his secular Bible, “The Road Less Travelled”, with the sentence, “Life is hard”.
He then goes on to say that true acceptance of this makes it immediately less difficult.
We stop wishing for it to be any other way, and this brings comfort to our chaos by normalising it.
So at least we don’t take it too personally. But rather get on with the business of life on life’s terms.
Jung said “neurotic (symptomatic) behaviour is always a substitute for legitimate suffering”. It’s Peck’s argument in different clothing: if we struggle against the pain, we become symptomatic - depressed, anxious, addicted.
We make up things to worry about so we don’t have to deal with The Real Thing.
The Buddhists, and many life coaches, speak of “unnecessary suffering”. Where we not only have our wound, loss, trauma or tragedy. But we ALSO struggle against it, indignant, wishing it away, believing it should be different. We make it mean more than simply “really awful things happen to all of us. It’s just my turn”.
You may have watched “Stutz” on Netflix. If you haven’t, do so immediately. Actor Jonah Hill interviews his own therapist, Phil Stutz, on life, the universe and everything else.
Stutz reduces his core philosophy to be the permanence of pain, uncertainty and work.
In any and all iterations of life, no matter which package you signed up for, whether privileged or underprivileged, pain, uncertainty and work will prevail.
It’s morbid, in a sense, I know. Maybe this post is a touch macabre.
But it’s liberating, too, in that our hearts and minds already know this is true. And we intuitively lean into what is honest and real.
Not sugar-coated bullshit.
We know when we’re being sold a destructive lie by the cult of positivity that seems to preach that bad things don’t happen to people who have their habits, routines and shit together.
But planes fall out the sky.
People get sick.
So what do we do then?
We strive to accept the good with the bad.
We search for grace within the pain. I have a personal believe that where there is hurt, there is healing. I somehow believe there’s always a knitting back together, like a fractured bone. Like an open wound.
There’s always a systemic ‘rushing in to fix’.
Where there is pain, there is a factory-fitted impulse to remedy that pain. There’s an instinct to self-heal. To pursue mental health, even when happiness is not possible.
On the day her husband died, fresh with grief, my niece said, “I’m going to need so much therapy after this…”.
And she will.
But you know what that statement showed: the human spirit.
Even in her agony, she knew she could get a little better.
She knew it might not always feel the way it felt in that instant.
And she knew she would need to be held. To be safe. And to reconstitute.
That reconstitution might be possible.
One day.
That things fall apart, for sure. But they can also fall together. Differently, yes. Damaged, yes. But there may just be a centre that holds.
I suggest we normalise becoming people who laugh, rest, play. But who are also care-ful with, and mindful of the pain and uncertainty in our lives, working on it always, as a discipline and a basic requirement of responsible living.
Beautifully written Debbie, and a very important message. A woman recently shared her story with me – she talked about blaming herself when things went wrong in her life. She felt like she was a bad person because of what happened. And I don’t think she’s the only one who’s felt that way. Thx for sharing. Sending love to you, your niece and family during this very difficult time xox