Hey, guys.
It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet.
And this week's video is sponsored by SmartyPig.
Today I'm going to be going on a little bit of a rant about one
of my least favorite internet phenomenons.
Phenomena?
I think it's phenomena, whatever.
One of my least favorite internet things.
You guys might have heard me talk before about things
like Instagram self-care.
And I'll link to my rant on that in the description.
But it's basically this perception of self-care
that mostly involves just doing whatever feels best to you
in that moment, which anyone who has basically
lived any adult life or faced consequences of any kind
tends to result in an accumulation of not so
great options later down the road.
For example, what might feel best to you in the moment
is blowing off work, and drinking margaritas,
and eating a ton of chips and guacamole.
But what might not feel good is doing that many days in a row,
possibly losing your job, and suffering
all of the ill effects of way too many margaritas and chips.
But that kind of faux self-care advice
tends to apply to a lot of things across the board,
including the distinctly financial,
such as when you're getting advice to treat yourself
via buying things-- many times things
we might not be able to afford, which is how many people,
myself included, get themselves into serious credit card debt
by essentially self-caring themselves
until a collection agency starts calling them
multiple times a day.
I've also talked a lot about the kind of advice
that is constantly advising you to make the most of things,
to be productive, to put higher and higher demands on yourself,
both in and out of your work life,
blurring the lines between the two and basically leaving it
so that you feel guilty for having
any free time of any kind.
This was particularly rampant during the height
of the pandemic and quarantine when people were constantly
referencing the fact that Shakespeare--
I can't remember what this anecdote was because frankly
I've blocked it from my memory.
But it's like, Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night
while quarantining from the bubonic plague,
or something like that.
Anyway, it was like he did a lot with a shitty circumstance.
And I guess the sort of insinuation
there is that you should use the pandemic time to learn
to juggle.
I don't know what that was.
But either way, the internet-- and especially social media
platforms like Instagram and TikTok--
are incredibly good at giving superficial advice.
Usually the kind of life advice that you're getting
is not only coming from someone who
is in a massive place of privilege
to be able to make a lot of these choices,
but it also comes with a level of disingenuousness.
Going back to the dubious self-care advice of treating
yourselves to chips, and guac, and margs,
or a pizza and wine whenever you feel
like it becomes all the more egregious when it's
being offered to you by literal influencer models who
have a 15% body fat percentage, and clearly
almost never indulge in those sorts of things.
It's a similar phenomenon to being
told that only ever seeing your country of origin
is like only ever reading one page of a book, brought
to you by a travel influencer who's literally being paid
by hotels to go stay in Bali.
The internet, and again these social platforms,
often give what can pass for life,
or even psychological, advice that basically boils down to,
do what looks good on a social platform.
We are not only, through these social platforms, constantly
existing in a filtered and skewed version of everyone
else's reality, we're being Loki encouraged
to filter our own reality.
And also being encouraged that when we don't feel our best,
that means something must be wrong,
which is where today's topic comes
in-- the topic of toxic positivity.
This is actually probably, in many ways,
the sort of faux psychological pop-science phenomenon
that underpins a lot of this terrible advice.
And especially with the past 18 months we've just had,
it has become more pervasive and more pernicious than ever.
For example, if you've been struggling
to stay positive over the past year,
you are definitely not alone.
Census Bureau data illustrates that a third of Americans
have shown signs of anxiety and depression in 2020.
And whether or not you lost your job,
you knew or know someone who has been directly impacted
by COVID-19, have been yourself, or just
were simply missing the way things used to be.
Reality was incredibly overwhelming
and still isn't fully back to normal for many of us.
The fundamental circumstances in which we have been operating
are not just not very positive, they are quite literally
difficult for the human brain to navigate on a daily basis.
And in many ways, phenomena like a global pandemic
can be some of the worst to navigate psychologically
because there are ways in which life felt eerily normal.
And yet, more slow-drip ways in which the lack of normalcy
was starting to accumulate in our psyche.
We are evolutionarily adapted for those sort of big boom,
fight or flight moments.
We can deal with isolated moments of panic, or fear,
or anxiety.
But to have to live halfway between certainty
and uncertainty, and suffering a kind
of collective muted grief for 18 months
is profoundly not a normal situation.
And if you're not feeling overly positive or happy
during that time, that is the norm and not the exception.
But the cult of toxic positivity, which you'll
see everywhere from those social platforms to the MLM girl-boss,
you go get it, honey kind of mantras, to reality
shows we watch, to the image of ourselves
that we're expected to display at the workplace,
toxic positivity invades it all.
And essentially, its most fundamental premise
is that our goal in life should be to be as happy as possible,
as positive as possible.
And if we're not feeling either of those things,
then it is within our power.
And it is moreover our sort of ethical obligation to ourselves
to change it.
And even putting aside the idea that for many, mental health
is not a question of willpower, mental illness
is very literally an illness.
And for many people, the experience
of trying to live even a normal--
let alone a positive-- life while dealing with something
like chronic anxiety or depression
is akin to trying to run a marathon with a broken leg.
For many of us, there is also often
a huge disconnect between the extent
we are expected to feel and portray
positivity versus the extent to which it
is even expectable to be so.
At its core, toxic positivity is essentially the enforcement
of blind optimism.
The Psychology Group defines the term
as the quote, "excessive and ineffective over-generalization
of a happy optimistic state across all situations.
The process of toxic positivity results
in the denial, minimization, and invalidation
of the authentic human emotional experience."
And it makes perfect sense that this would pop up in America
most predominantly, as we are a nation that has always
prioritized happiness, even when compared to other countries,
when psychologically, it's actually not
very normal for people to be happy all the time,
or even most of the time.
As humans, we cycle through a huge range of emotions
every single day.
And arguably, from a mental health standpoint,
it is much healthier to aspire to become at peace with
your various emotions and able to manage them
moment-to--moment, rather than always trying to channel them
back into something positive.
Because often, this attempt to sort
of pivot away from the negative, or scary,
or upsetting feelings back into something positive
can actually make those underlying distresses worse.
So if you've been seeing and hearing
a lot of phrases, whether on social media, at the workplace,
in pop culture, or otherwise, like,
everything happens for a reason, good vibes only,
try not to think about it, choose happiness, or look
for the silver lining, it's important
that we not just dismiss those kind of mantras
but also truly investigate how pernicious
they are for the culture, and work to stop them.
Because denying our feelings, beyond just being ineffective
or potentially augmenting the underlying stress,
actually can create feelings of shame
on top of whatever might have been going on
in the first place, and encourage people
to stay quiet about whatever they might be struggling
with because it isn't very positive to just
be talking about your mental health issues.
It's like, "No one wants to hear about dying grandma.
That's a bummer.
Tell us about the cute bathing suit you just bought."
in fact, psychological studies have
shown that this approach of simply suppressing
negative feelings can actually have physiological impacts
on the body.
In general, too, one of the biggest problems
with toxic positivity is how much it encourages everyone
to pursue coping mechanisms that may not work for them.
It might look the most appealing to channel
anxiety, or stress, or fear, or boredom into something
productive and attractive, like learning a new hobby,
or getting really fit, or whatever
else these influencers do to channel
their negative emotions.
But for many people, just getting out of bed
and going about their day is a form of coping and getting by.
I do think for many of us, the pandemic
has taught us that ultimately we have
to be a lot kinder with ourselves about what
it takes to get through a day, especially for people who might
have suffered a loss, or lost a job,
or simply had to work from home 24/7 while caring
for small children.
All of these things profoundly shifted our realities,
while expecting us to keep up an appearance and a productivity
level of a normal life.
And I'm honestly surprised that that experience didn't do more
to dampen down how popular toxic positivity can
be as a kind of messaging.
But in our own lives, both with ourselves and anyone
we might be talking to, it's important to start
replacing that reflexive approach to toxic positivity
with things that actually hold space
for a wider variety of emotions and experiences--
things like, that sounds really difficult. I'm here for you.
It seems like you're really upset, stressed, or feeling
low right now.
Is there anything I can do to help?
That sucks, and I'm listening.
Tell me more about what you're going through.
How can I support you right now?
I'm so sorry you're going through this.
Most people, when they're experiencing a negative emotion
or situation, simply want to have space
to experience it, and not feel like they're
a burden to others.
They don't necessarily need or want you
to offer solutions to the problem.
But they do want to feel as though their problem is real
and understood.
Toxic positivity may have taken over our culture,
and it may manifest in all types of different ways.
And between how pervasive it is in
our personal and professional lives,
it can start to feel unusually normalized for how
psychologically not normal it actually is.
But it's important to remember that this very American
obsession with happiness, and this very social media
driven need to always be portraying
the most positive version of yourself
is not a sustainable answer to any sort
of psychological distress.
And it's also ultimately not that aspirational.
I really think that it's important
that we reframe what we consider aspirational emotionally.
It's not the relentlessly upbeat mommy blogger
who never misses a highlights appointment, even though she
has seven children, (WHISPERING) which is really just the fact
that she has a nanny that she never puts in any
of her Instagram pictures.
It's the person who is capable of sitting
with all of their various experiences
and doesn't feel the need to contort them into a perfectly
imperfect Instagram caption in order
to make them feel relatable and sufficiently optimistic
at the end.
Sometimes it's OK to take a break
from work, or from posting on social media,
or from feeling like you have to explain everything,
or from feeling as though you have
to portray an image of being OK even though you're
going through, let's say, an incredible moment
of grief or anxiety.
Ultimately, to me, what is most aspirational
is someone who understands that the full range
of human experience is going to contain many negative aspects,
both inwardly and outwardly, and that trying to suppress them is
only delaying an ultimate negative outcome that none
of us have to delay in the first place.
We can just surf the waves of our various experiences,
including things like a global pandemic, which
is pretty [BLEEP] negative, if you ask me,
without trying to skip ahead to the happy ending.
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Goodbye.