Toxic positivity can harm more than help; real optimism embraces both hope and hardship

“The grass is greener on the other side; you just need to look!” This is what we are often told when we share emotional distress or setbacks. In moments that call for listening, people usually offer well-meaning words of motivation instead. Anecdotes that spark motivation or optimism, phrases that seem reassuring, tend to overlook the discomfort of sitting with the actual problem. Even in conversations meant to help, optimism is often offered more readily than understanding. While seeking therapy is one of the most effective ways to navigate a mental health crisis, compassion, acceptance, and empathy matter just as much in the immediate moment. Being heard without being hurried towards positivity can itself be grounding. 

Invalidating authentic emotions

It is the tendency to push the negative emotions away that psychologists describe as toxic positivity. “Toxic positivity invalidates authentic human emotions,” says Dr Anitha Bharathan, consultant clinical psychologist. “It originates from the constant pressure to be cheerful, strong, grateful and unaffected. This minimises the emotional truth rather than supporting it,” she adds. Unlike healthy optimism, which allows hope and distress to coexist, toxic positivity demands a constant state of forced emotional strength. Dr Bharathan notes that it often develops because people feel uncomfortable sitting with the emotional pain, whether it is their own or someone else’s. From childhood, messages such as “be strong”, “don’t cry”, or “others have it worse” groom individuals to suppress discomfort rather than confront it. A lack of emotional literacy further prevents people from validating feelings, making “stay positive” the default response instead of empathy, she says. 

When sadness is labelled as a ‘negative emotion’, conflict is dismissed as toxicity, or constant self-sacrifice is praised as virtue, emotional reality narrows. Boundaries blur, and discomfort is treated as failure rather than part of being human. Psychologists caution that this has consequences beyond language. Forced optimism can deepen emotional injury by placing the burden of recovery on someone who is already struggling. When affirmations are chanted without comprehension, they fail to comfort and instead show the gap between feeling and expectation. This gap is often due to the generational social conditioning that teaches people to suppress distress rather than acknowledge it, explains Dr Bharathan. At that moment, phrases such as “happiness is a choice”, “positive thoughts attract positive energy”, stop being encouraging and start to feel like a quiet dismissal. “Acknowledgement is the most important indicator of healthy optimism,” says Dr Shikha Soni, clinical psychologist, “Healthy optimism gives a person a choice. It does not dictate what they ‘must’ do,” she says. 

Learning how positive psychology is applied is often framed as a search for “self-fulfilment”. Decades of research on positive psychology also challenges the belief that happiness must be constant, including economist Richard Easterlin’s work on income-happiness, which suggests that money improves well-being only until basic needs are met. Youth, too, is not a guarantee of happiness, with older adults often reporting greater psychological stability than those much younger. Even experiences that are culturally coded as joyful, such as parenthood, carry stresses that can complicate emotional well-being. When therapy and clinical help are available, it is best to use them during times of mental distress, notes Dr Soni. 

Need for balance

Positive thinking, in this sense, does not concur with constant happiness. Instead, it attests well-being as emerging from connection, the ability to savour moments of pleasure, and the cultivation of gratitude. “I wish people would stop believing that staying positive is the only sign of strength. Like yin yang, balance is necessary,” believes Dr Soni. What is often lost in popular narrative is this distinction. When these ideas are flattened into slogans, affirmations, or motivating phrases, they risk becoming instruments of pressure rather than support. Happiness, then, becomes curated in controlled environments, not flourishing naturally and thus is fleeting.