This article was adapted for CTRR from its original 2020 posting on nicolecliftonblog.wordpress.com

Our culture LOVES to keep things positive. There are so many shirts, mugs, social media posts, etc. that say things like “radiate positivity” or “good vibes only.” Being positive and optimistic isn’t always a bad thing; clearly there can be great benefits to it! 

However, there is a time when positivity actually can become detrimental; it’s called “toxic positivity.”

Toxic positivity occurs when a person can only engage with feeling happy or positive (sometimes even to an extreme!) at the expense of being unable to engage with other emotions that are often deemed negative. When this occurs, a person may actually become intolerant of those emotions in themselves and in others, despite them being a normal part of the human experience. 

Toxic positivity may sound like, when something hard happens to someone:

• “Well, everything happens for a reason!” 

• “You just need to focus on the positives!”

•  “It could have been worse!”

•  “There’s always a silver lining!” 

Or if you come from a faith background, like me, you may have heard things like: 

• “God is in control.”

• “This is all in His plan; you just need to trust it.” 

• “God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good.” 

• “Just pray and surrender it to the Lord.” 

• “You just need to spend some time in the Word and God will give you peace.”

• “God is probably just trying to teach you something right now so it can be used for His glory.”

Unfortunately, we often say these things while people are still in the middle of their pain. What the phrases above often sound like to a person who is hearing them is quite different. Instead, they may hear things like: 

• “You’re overreacting.”

• “You need to get over it.” 

• “You’re too much and you make me uncomfortable.”

• “Your authentic reality isn’t welcome here.”

• “You’re not trying hard enough to feel better.” 

What I came to learn was that in addition to understanding toxic positivity, there was a religious version of this called spiritual bypassing. 

Spiritual bypassing is like toxic positivity in that it has an intolerance for emotions that are perceived as negative (such as sadness, anger, fear, vulnerability, etc.), and so as a way of discharging that emotional discomfort a spiritual phrase is spoken, a Bible verse repeated or a Christian song is offered to disconnect from that challenging emotion. It is a way to escape or bypass truly feeling emotions or wrestling with challenging thoughts. People often use these expressions of their religion to insulate them from having to feel or think about things that create discomfort. 

However, many of those emotions are actually just normal parts of the human experience and so, while spiritual bypassing creates temporary relief for some, it also leaves people ill-equipped to fully engage with their humanity, negatively impacts emotional intelligence, leaves them without other healthy coping skills, and keeps them from being able to deeply connect with others. 

For me personally, there were certainly elements of spiritual bypassing in Christian spaces throughout my life, but the most concentrated was when I worked at a Christian university for most of my 20s. Whenever I presented my frustration or disappointment about a decision—be it something that would negatively impact me/my team, or even big-picture decisions for the department that were not serving our marginalized (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, etc.) students well—I often received responses like “Well, that’s just the way things are and we need to trust God with it/release control/see what He’s trying to teach us.”

By this point, my deconstruction journey had already begun (even if I wasn’t calling it that yet) and every time I received a response like this, it enraged me and broke my heart. I just didn’t have the language for it at the time for why it impacted me so deeply. If I spoke up too often, others made me feel like I was the trouble-maker: negative and cynical and bringing the team down. It was often implied that my feelings were getting in the way of me being the “leader I could be.” My anger towards injustice and wanting to advocate for others came at a cost; I saw it as an asset, and instead it was treated like a liability.

When I finally heard someone (my therapist, surprise surprise!) say to me “your anger is a part of you that loves you”—it broke me open in the best way possible. 

For years, I was told directly and indirectly that my anger was an inconvenience and just made things worse. When I came to know that my anger could also be my truth-teller because she tells me when something’s wrong, when I’ve been hurt, when a boundary has been crossed, injustice is occurring. etc.—I felt validated and whole. I know now that she is my fire and she does not deserve to be extinguished. She has important things to say and it is imperative that I listen to her and can integrate that into how I can respond to the circumstances in a wise and healthy way. 

So many of us have experienced toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. As we are on our healing journey, some of that journey may include grappling with these concepts and how they showed up in our own lives, families, religious spaces, etc. Even if the intentions of those people may have been good, the impact often is minimizing and invalidating the emotions of others. It fosters disconnection from ourselves and those around us. 

Is it possible to move through our feelings and learn from our pain? Yes, I absolutely believe that……AND people have to get there on their own; we cannot hurry them to that place just because we feel uncomfortable. 

People have to feel their feelings and go through their own process in order to arrive at a place of learning and wisdom. When we don’t let people do that, we actually end up causing more pain and damage. And, when we minimize or shut down the emotional experiences of others, we make ourselves less of a safe place for the people in our lives to talk about how they’re really doing. 

Ultimately—we cannot avoid vulnerability, sadness, anger, anxiety, or loss just because we want to stay positive. Can we be positive sometimes if that feels like an authentic expression of where we’re really at? Absolutely. We still need laughter, joy, and play. We can still practice gratitude. This is both/and reality, not an either/or. All of our emotions are a part of what it means to be fully human and all of our emotions can provide important information about our inner world that can lead us to healthier relationships with ourselves and with others. 

Nicole Clifton, MA is an associate practitioner at CTRR. She supports individuals navigating faith deconstruction, healing from purity culture, LGBTQIA+, religious trauma and adverse religious experiences, life transitions, boundaries work, identity, chronic illness/ableism, and body image. Find Nicole on Instagram at: @nicoleclifton_inyourcorner

Learn more about working with Nicole here.