Hope Doesn’t Have to Smile
When life gets hard, advice often shows up fast. Quick cheerful sayings. Reminders to focus on the good. Gentle (or not so gentle) nudges to stay positive no matter what. Most people mean well. Still, when things are really rough, being told to cheer up can feel like being told your feelings are the problem. This post looks at toxic positivity, why it tends to backfire, and what real hope looks like instead.
What toxic positivity is
Toxic positivity is positivity for its own sake. Feeling good becomes the goal, and finding a way through the actual problem gets skipped. It often comes as a platitude, a short and cheerful line that ends the conversation instead of opening it. Sometimes it’s a dismissal, like a reminder that other people have it worse. The term became popular online, and research on it is still young.
Toxic positivity has a mirror image. Some days the message is that everything is fine. Other days it’s that everything is a dumpster fire and nothing will ever change. Both skip the same step: looking for a way through. Real life usually sits in the messy middle, where things are hard and there may still be something we can do. We’ve written before about how joy can show up in the middle of storms without pretending the storm isn’t there.
Why toxic positivity backfires
Pushing hard feelings away tends to make them heavier. In one set of studies, people who usually accepted their difficult feelings, without judging themselves for having them, had better mental health over time. Part of the reason seemed to be that accepting a feeling helped it pass more easily.
Accepting a feeling is different from accepting an unfair situation. You can feel your anger about something and still work to change it. In that research, the benefit came from accepting feelings and thoughts, rather than from accepting hard circumstances.
Feeling bad about feeling bad tends to add a second layer of pain. Toxic positivity often adds exactly that layer: now you’re sad and failing at being happy.
Real hope is more practical
In research, hope is more than a good mood. One well-known way of studying hope describes three things working together: a goal, a path toward it, and the energy to keep moving. When one path is blocked, hopeful thinking looks for another. Other people can help us see paths we can’t see on our own.
That’s the big difference between toxic positivity and hope. Toxic positivity hands you a feeling and skips the path. Hope starts with where you are and asks what the next step could be.
Hope also works better when it’s honest about what’s in the way. Research on goals found that only daydreaming about a good outcome can drain the energy to reach it. Picturing the goal and the main obstacle, then planning around that obstacle, tends to help more.
What helps more than cheering up
When researchers asked people who were grieving what support actually helped, two answers came up most: time with someone who had been through something similar, and chances to talk about their feelings. Advice and pressure to move on were among the least helpful.
That sounds a lot like peer support. A peer doesn’t need you to perform being okay. They can sit with the hard parts with you, and when you’re ready, help you look for the next step. On days when your own hope runs low, you can borrow some of theirs.
What if things turn out okay?
Hope doesn’t have to look cheerful. It can look like getting through today, asking for help, or letting yourself picture one small way things could go right. That’s where our series question comes in, the one a nurse practitioner who works in trauma therapy shared: What if things turn out okay? You don’t have to believe it yet. You can leave the door open a crack.
A question to sit with: When has someone made room for your hard feelings, and what did they do that helped?
Sources
- Ford, B. Q., Lam, P., John, O. P., & Mauss, I. B. (2018). The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/pspp0000157 → “In one set of studies”; “accepting feelings and thoughts, rather than… hard circumstances”
- Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249–275. → “a goal, a path toward it, and the energy to keep moving”
- Oettingen, G., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2019). From feeling good to doing good. In The Oxford Handbook of Positive Emotion and Psychopathology. → “only daydreaming about a good outcome can drain the energy”
- Wang, G., Wang, Y., & Gai, X. (2021). A meta-analysis of the effects of mental contrasting with implementation intentions on goal attainment. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 565202. → “tends to help more”
- Lehman, D. R., Ellard, J. H., & Wortman, C. B. (1986). Social support for the bereaved: Recipients’ and providers’ perspectives on what is helpful. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54(4), 438–446. → “two answers came up most”
