Toxic positivity happens when someone tells a cancer patient or cancer survivor to just be positive all the time to the exclusion of all other feelings. Feelings happen on a spectrum. Feeling them all is healthy.

We need to stop telling people how to feel. If we don’t acknowledge how we feel we cannot process our situation fully. When we tell someone to just be positive there is a bit of shaming in that. While I tend to be an optimist, I can be understanding of someone having a lot of different feelings. That is normal.

It is not normal to paint everything in a rosy light all the time. If the house is on fire and the flames are pretty we may need a reality check. If the house is on fire, it is ok to be scared or angry or worried. Those are normal feelings.

Have you experienced toxic positivity? Did you recognize it when it was happening?

Continue the conversation in the facebook group Surviving is JUST the Beginning or follow me on Instagram.