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Setbacks are a part of life and everyone goes through them. It’s natural to feel upset and to want solutions to overcome the problem. But if you skip the suffering step and head straight into optimism and fixes, you’ll miss an opportunity to gain deeper insight about the problem and learn what’s required to overcome the setback and prevent the problem from occurring again.
There are times when seeking help to navigate setbacks and life’s unwelcome surprises that you turn to someone to help and they respond with trite platitudes that give the illusion of being supportive. These feel good statements given with the intent of soothing emotional distress end up being dismissive and shaming.
Here’s a scenario….
You’re having a hard day in a tough week. Nothing seems to be working out despite your best efforts. You’ve encountered difficulties with a colleague and your attempt to smooth things over hasn’t worked, and you’re still feeling the tension between you two. You’re wondering who else knows what’s going on and if it will influence your standing with them. You decide you need to talk about it with a trusted empathetic friend and get some advice on how to proceed.
You unload your story with your friend and they listen carefully. After you finish, you take a breath. You’re relieved and also curious what your friend will say in response. Your friend says they can see this situation is weighing on you and causing you stress. You feel like they get you. Then they say…
“Everything happens for a reason. Life’s too short to be stressing over work stuff.”
Then your friend tells you what they would do if they were in your situation. You really want to feel comforted by their help because they are being there for you. But you don’t feel good. When you finish your chat, you feel ashamed and guilty for making such a big deal about your issue. After all, the other person at work might also be going through something and that you made things worse, and perhaps you’re being a little self-absorbed. Even though you feel differently about the situation, you’re less clear and more perplexed about the situation than you were before you spoke to your friend.
What happened?
What is toxic positivity?
Toxic positivity is the belief that a person must maintain a positive mindset or feelings regardless of how difficult a situation is in order to overcome it.
Applying positive mindsets or affirmations to bypass uncomfortable emotional states involves rejecting, avoiding, negating and dismissing unwanted emotions in favour of a fake positive version of reality.
This prevents the person experiencing distress from being taken seriously and from being able to make sense of their experience to reach catharsis or resolution.
Worse, toxic positivity can be shaming and add to the existing emotional turmoil of the person in distress.
What are examples of toxic positive statements?
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Think positive/Stay positive/Good vibes only”
“We’re all going through something.”
“You’ll be alright.”
“Have an attitude of gratitude.”
“Forgive people who did you wrong. Forgiveness sets you free.”
“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“Shit happens.”
“I know it’s terrible but It could be worse.”
“Look on the bright side.”
“Happiness is a choice.”
“You can change your mind and change your reality anytime you like.”
“You’re the source of your own suffering so you can be the source of your own victory.”
“Count your blessings.”
“You have no idea how lucky/blessed you are!”
“It’s a blessing in disguise.”
“Be grateful for what you have.”
Some people use these statements to get out of uncomfortable situations that they don’t want to be in because they never agreed to provide support or play the role of a support person. They have little emotional investment in the person in distress and use toxic positivity as a transaction to prevent further exposure to the person’s problems.
Note for readers: What I’m referring to here in this piece is when there is enough of an emotional bond between two people that one sees themselves as capable of offering support to the other in distress.

What makes toxic positivity narcissistic?
If you are new to my work, it’s a good idea to read my definition of narcissism so that you can use that lens to view what I’m describing below. I describe narcissism as behaviours and traits that we all have and show narcissistic behaviour when we feel triggered, threatened, exposed or ashamed. I don’t use the term to label a person and you won’t see me refer to anyone as a narcissist.
While the statements above might be intended to be helpful or supportive, they make a number of assumptions about the helpfulness of the statements. One assumption is that the person in distress needs an action, advice or a solution when they prefer the helper to listen without offering advice. Another is based on the helper’s own experiences of feeling comforted by these statements and expects that they will have a similar effect on the person in distress. Or the helper has religious or spiritual principles that they believe are true.
The person aiming to be helpful fails to acknowledge and seek to understand the other person’s current emotional state and perspective, because the supporter assumes they know what the other person needs or how they feel, and attempts to persuade the person to see things from the supporter’s preferred perspective instead.
This occurs because the person who is in the supporter role is uncomfortable with the emotional state of the person seeking their help and employs toxic positivity to restore their own comfort by rejecting the unwanted emotional state of the person in distress.

What makes this narcissistic behaviour is that toxic positivity can be a form of control to eliminate unwanted experiences or feelings by offering or imposing a preferred narrative or interpretation on the other person who is in a more vulnerable state. They are ‘helping’ with toxic positivity to restore their own comfort, under the guise of empathy and comforting the other.
Some of the narcissistic behaviours embedded in toxic positivity are:
Gaslighting: They invalidate your experience by projecting their preferred version of your perceptions or events that occurred in your life.
Superiority: They assume they know what’s best for you and what you should think and feel instead.
Self-centred: They centre their thoughts, feelings, opinions, experiences over yours and others.
Black and white thinking: They have fixed rules about how the world works and how others should behave or see situations.
Conversation control: They move conversations away from a confronting topic to a preferred version of the topic to either end the conversation or move into a different topic that involves taking action.
Some people don’t notice what’s happening in the moment and believe that the person employing toxic positive statements is being supportive. When they do notice, it’s because they feel ashamed that they made such a big deal out of nothing, which is similar to the effect of gaslighting.
This is also dangerous when someone is in a situation that is truly detrimental to their wellbeing. Toxic positivity can also be used unintentionally to align with a perpetrator, shaming (and potentially revicitimizing) the person in distress but believing that their positive mindset approach is going to lift that person up.
This can also be the case when the person in distress shares the same beliefs that are being presented. They might feel relief during the interaction because they are getting attention from someone who is seemingly helpful or they feel ashamed for losing faith in their shared belief.
Inevitably, the person on the receiving end of toxic positivity will feel shame when the interaction is over that will distract them from exploring the emotional turmoil associated with the distressing situation. This can prolong the suffering rather than alleviate it.
What can be done instead?
Showing empathy when someone shares their troubles is a way to support them to make sense of their experience, gain insight that they can use to resolve their issue.
Empathy is more than being there for someone when they’re having a challenging time with statements such as: “that’s so hard” or “you’re going through such a tough time, I’m so sorry.”
Empathy is the ability to attune to someone’s experience to attempt to understand their feelings, thoughts and situation from their perspective, not yours. It also involves appreciating how they are currently navigating their situation and the way you respond to their perspective makes them feel seen, acknowledged, valued and less alone.
Some of the skills of showing empathy include:
Listening with interest: You convey through your body language and presence that you are interested in them. You avoid interrupting (unless they’ve spoken for a long time and you need to gather your thoughts) and avoid talking about yourself, even if you believe you’ve been through a similar situation. Empathy is all about them, not you.
Attunement: Noticing their emotional state, which might be different to the words they use to describe their feelings. Responding with empathic statements such as “I can see that this is weighing on you despite all the great things happening in other areas in your life.” You can also demonstrate attunement by testing out a hypothesis based on subtle cues. “I wonder if part of the issue is pressure to be happy with what you have while you’re going through a stressful time. What do you think?”
Reflecting: You might summarise to make sure you captured the meaning behind what they're saying, how they feel about their situation and checking in with them if your understanding is accurate. A good summary can really help the person clarify their understanding of their own experience.
Curiosity: Using open-ended questions to help them explore their story more deeply. Examples are: “Can you say a little more about…”. “I notice that you mentioned ‘x’ a number of times. What is it about ‘x’ that’s weighing on you?” “What do you think contributed to the situation?”
Supportive sharing: There are times that being positive is helpful without it being toxic. After they open up to you about their situation and you explore it with them, you can offer to share something that you learned or has helped you in the past in an invitational rather than an imposing way. “Your situation is making me think about something that I learned/heard in the past that I found comforting when I had my own setback. It might also be helpful to you. Would it be ok if I shared it with you?”
The goal is to remain alongside the person by helping them explore and make sense of their experience in a way that makes them feel understood, empathised with and accepted, rather than nudging them to where you prefer them to be for your own comfort. The benefit of supporting someone to gain insight that can lead to resolution far outweighs any well-intended affirmations or advice and the shaming effect of toxic positivity.
How to give feedback about the impact of well-intended toxic positivity
If you’re the person in distress and the person intending to support you with half-glass full, hopeful or toxic positive statements has the opposite effect of comfort and hope, you might be unsure about how to respond. You did after all ask for their support, but what you got in return didn’t feel supportive and you’re now weighing up if you should say something or pretend that it was helpful to avoid offending them. It’s ok to let them know that their intention didn’t have the desired impact. It’s how you do it that matters.
Here are a few examples:
“I appreciate you showing me support. I know you intended to be supportive but what you said doesn’t resonate with me.”
“Would it be ok if I just spoke for a little bit to get this off my chest and you listen without feeling like you have to offer me any advice? I find it really helpful to know someone who cares about me is listening with interest without trying to push to solve my problem. Is that something you’re able to do with me?”
Any one of us can fall for the reasoning that good intent means our actions will be beneficial to others. Unless you know with certainty that your actions had the intended impact, or that the other person genuinely feels empathised with, supported and understood by you because they told you, your self-perception of your helpfulness might not be accurate. People feel the impact of badly executed good intentions.
Strive for real and genuine relating over faux positivity.
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, subscribing and supporting my work,
Nathalie Martinek, PhD
The Narcissism Hacker
Hack narcissism and support my work
I believe that a common threat to our individual and collective thriving is an addiction to power and control. This addiction fuels and is fuelled by greed - the desire to accumulate and control resources in social, information (and attention), economic, ecological, geographical and political systems.
While activists focus on fighting macro issues, I believe that activism also needs to focus on the micro issues - the narcissistic traits that pollute relationships between you and I, and between each other, without contributing to existing injustice. It’s not as exciting as fighting the Big Baddies yet hacking, resisting and overriding our tendencies to control others that also manifest as our macro issues is my full-time job.
I’m dedicated to helping people understand all the ways narcissistic traits infiltrate and taint our interpersonal, professional, organisational and political relationships, and provide strategies for narcissism hackers to fight back and find peace.
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Thank you Lanesha for your comment about forgiveness. I see your perspective about forgiveness and that it's a concept and practice that is meaningful, empowering and comforting to you. The concept of forgiveness is not toxic. But when someone tells the other person who is in pain that forgiveness will set them free, and that other person doesn't hold that religious belief, hasn't had space to fully process and make sense of their distress or have been seriously abused/hurt by the person causing distress, the statement can come across as insensitive and pushing the person to take an action that they're not actually ready to take. Forgiveness requires acceptance of one's reality, feelings and circumstances first to truly be free from the pain. Otherwise, forgiving others when they're still hurtful or if there's still resentment is called emotional/spiritual bypassing and won't provide the necessary learning and inner resolution to prevent being hurt in the same way in the future.
It would be great if all of us can easily let go of our emotional pain through forgiveness but I believe the purpose of our emotions is to feel them and hear their messages until the charge is released and we naturally move into a place of peace without forcing or shaming ourselves or others to get there.
The person who is responsible for wrongdoing is not the wronged's concerns. They have to make peace between themselves and God/their conscience and it's work they need to do themselves and no one else's actions will change that. Forgiving the wrongdoer, in my opinion, is not necessary for me to resolve the issue within myself (with the right support) and my job isn't to bring someone else to salvation through forgiving them. It's entirely on them to work themselves out and reap the consequences of their actions without my intervention.
Is that how you understand forgiveness?
I really enjoyed reading your article. I am a couples therapist. A lot of partners suffer from their partner’s obsession with being positive. It’s a coping mechanism many of us learn in the face of a disconnection and in the face of a partner expressing their upset.