Episode 213 -- April 28, 2022

Positivity has become quite the buzzword over the past few years. The phrase "Stay positive" is constantly being pushed on us, whether it's a bumper sticker, printed on t-shirts or said in almost every pep talk. Positivity can, of course, be an effective coping skill, but there's a danger in making it the only tool in the box. We can't pretend that our pain isn't real, or minimize it as no big deal. In early recovery, feeling all our feelings—especially the hard ones—is new to us. Toxic positivity offers an unhealthy and false sense of reality. We need to learn how to be okay with not being okay all the time.

In her book The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward, Tracey Cleantis delivers practical advice on how to heal from our losses and let go of the things and relationships that no longer work for us. She offers a roadmap for accepting sadness, facing the possibility of letting go of a dream that isn't working, and setting realistic goals.

In this excerpt, Cleantis shares her personal experience of balancing real grief and authentic positivity. Her story gives us permission to let go of the pressure that comes with pretending everything is okay. We cannot use optimism to ignore how things really are. Once we acknowledge emotions like grief and sadness, we can work through our feelings and move on to the next happy.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

Positivity as a Means of Avoiding Reality

The problem with always looking at the bright side and ignoring the reality of the situation is that we have to employ a fair amount of denial along with denial's ugly stepsisters, minimizing and rationalizing. They are kind of the shapewear of emotional life. You put them on so that you can look better and cover up what really is going on. Have you met them? I have. They are on my speed dial. We are close personal friends. They like to send me instant messages and tell me that my pain is not that big of a deal compared to some other people's pain, and that I should just suck it up and stop complaining. You've probably sung their favorite songs, too: "Everything happens for the best" or "I shouldn't be sad as I have my health, and there are people much worse off than me." People minimize and rationalize even as they are clearly and undeniably in the midst of active grieving for a genuine loss: the realization that something that was vitally important to them simply isn't going to happen. They feel that they don't deserve to express their pain (because they shouldn't be feeling it), and therefore they repress it.

Being told or pretending that your pain isn't that big of a deal is never helpful. Your pain is your pain, and it hurts you—it hurts, and it sucks to have put your heart and soul into making a dream a reality and have nothing to show for it but a pile of receipts, a divorce decree, some headshots, or a bankruptcy.

The people I see in my practice have had all kinds of dreams. They wanted their marriage to work so badly that they endured all kinds of bad behavior and self-esteem-sucking situations. They wanted to be an actor so much that they sacrificed ten years waiting tables, and all they have to show for it is one commercial for a gas-relief medication and a bit part in an off-Sunset production that no one has ever seen. They were so sure that they were going to have children that they let all the other good, strong relationships in their life wither on the vine. Their business was going to be such a success that they were willing to go bankrupt trying to make it work. These people, still clinging to a dead dream, use positivity and optimism as a means of not looking at things as they really are. The cycle they are stuck in now—the never-give-up cycle—can be exceedingly damaging. Continuing to try—even as it hurts their relationships, their mental and physical health, and their finances—is only possible if they can cling to the delusion that "if I only believe hard enough, my dream will come true."

When people tiptoe around talking about the nature of their grief, I find that I just want to throw my arms around them and tell them that it's okay, that they are safe here, and that this is a place where they can drop the clichés and spew their anger or scream or sob and take off their emotional shapewear or do whatever it is they need to in response to their pain. I tell them, "This is a place where your feelings are okay, and not just the positive kind... the ugly and messy and stinky kinds are really welcome here, too. Feel free to express whatever you're feeling: You can cry until you howl, until your face looks like an abstract watercolor painting, and until you have used up all my Kleenex." That is not something that people who have been long pursuing an impossible dream hear a lot. The attitude that most people want to see in those grieving a dream is positivity and blind-eyed optimism and glass-half-full thinking with a chaser of can-do spirit.

Other People's Good Cheer Patients employing the "It's Not So Bad" school of coping were probably raised by some version of my mother. My mother is a bit of a self-described Pollyanna. Her favorite phrase was "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I know she developed her "think positive" and "look on the bright side of life" attitude as a means of dealing with a difficult life, but I can tell you that there were times when I turned to her during hard moments in my life, and I just wanted to hear "This sucks big time" and not "Turn that frown upside down. Everything happens for a reason." There are plenty of things that don't happen for a reason, and being told that they do feels a bit like having sunshine blown up your sundress, if you will.

As someone who worked her tushy off to make a dream come true and had it all come to naught, I know all too well that feeling of being compelled to take care of other people and not overwhelm them with your grief. I was really good at that. Whenever I would tell someone that we just failed at another IVF round, I would muster all the cheeriness I could manage and end the sentence with an upbeat aphorism. I didn't do this because I wanted to; trust me, I didn't. I did it because when I told the truth about my pain, people would tell me that horrible thing that someone on a reality TV show said, or even something worse. Their response was always some version of "Stop your whining and stay positive. It will eventually work out." I used to think that people said that just for me, that they were really and truly trying to encourage me, and while that was often the case, I do believe that something else was often at play, which is other people's fear.

My belief is that when people hear about a dream that didn't come true, they panic and start to think of all the things they yearn for and all the things they are striving for, and they have a flash of fear that these things might not happen either, no matter how hard they try. We all know somewhere deep inside the truth that not everything is in our control. It's a scary thought, and so when your pain pings that place deep within someone, they often lob back encouraging words—"It will all work out okay in the end! Don't give up!"— and by uttering that one phrase, they have eliminated their own anxiety, or at least pushed it back down to the place where they keep hidden all their fears about their marriage, their career, and their own lives. No matter how other people react to your decision to take care of yourself and let go and move on, please remember that you are not responsible for their fears. Recognize their response for what it is, and then go on feeling the grief that you feel.

About the Author:
Tracey Cleantis is a marriage and family therapist with a private practice in Valencia and Pasadena, California. She holds a master's degree in counseling psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and has studied at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles.

© 2015 by Tracey Cleantis
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