Smothering Problems With Positivity? Here's Why That's Bad

I’ll never forget the day I got the text.

I was at work, sitting at my desk and thinking about dinner (I can usually be found thinking about dinner). When my phone pinged I had no idea that the universe was about to tip on its axis. 

It was a message from my friend, Kate. 

She’d just seen her doctor. 

She had breast cancer. 

Dinner that night consisted of takeaway fish and chips around Kate’s dining table, while we, her closest friends, told her over and over that everything was going to be okay.

We continued insisting that everything was going to be okay, when her chemo began. 

We said it again when she started losing her hair.

And we said it again when despite months of painful treatment, she received the news that they hadn’t got enough of it, and she’d need a mastectomy.  

She was 38. 

We all thought we were doing the right thing. 

We were reassuring her. We were thinking positively. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

But Kate was becoming more and more distressed.

With the mastectomy looming, I was sitting at home one night watching an episode of Sex and the City. 

It was the season where Sam gets breast cancer. 

I watched Sam sit across from her friend, Carrie, while Carrie did her best to reassure Sam that everything was going to be okay. 

And then Sam did something I wasn’t expecting.

She reached across the table, held Carrie’s hand, looked her in the eye and said ‘Please. Will you let me talk about how terrified I am?’ 

Realisation hit me like a ton of bricks. 

I paused the episode, picked up my phone and called Kate.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

And I listened while she told me how every time we’d tried to squelch her fears, this had only squelched her voice.

How, by trying to be positive, we’d dismissed her pain and her legitimate experience.

And invalidated her perfectly valid feelings.

Instead of easing her pain, we, her closest friends, had unknowingly pushed her into a place where she’d felt frightened, ignored and terribly alone.

Positive Thinking 

Now, don’t get me wrong, positive thinking certainly has its place. 

Like when your sister is about to sit her driving test. You’re cheering her on and telling her she’s going to do well. In that moment, her world is full of possibility, and a positive perspective could really impact her performance.

Or when your friend is stuck in a pattern of negative thinking. It can help to gently shift their outlook into a more neutral space at least, so they have a clearer head space from which to make decisions.

But there’s a time and a place. 

Because sometimes, what a person needs most is to be heard. 

To have someone bear witness to their pain. When we don’t hold space for them in this way they can experience abandonment, loneliness and shame. 

And the feelings don’t go away either. They just burrow deeper into the body and over time can turn into depression, anxiety and physical illness. 

But we like to fix things don’t we? 

We like to have solutions.

We like to feel we have certainty. 

Control.

For some of us it’s just too terrifying to acknowledge that life can sometimes be like finding a scorpion in a box of chocolates. 

Something ugly, life threatening, and entirely unexpected that’s landed in your otherwise perfectly planned day.

Instead of acknowledging the scorpion, it can be tempting to wrap it up in ribbons and pretend it’s chocolate. 

But it’s not chocolate. It’s a f*****g scorpion.

And pretending otherwise isn’t going to stop it from stinging you.

Happily Ever After?

As it happens, Kate’s cancer did go into remission.

But her story didn’t end there, because stories rarely do (screw you, Disney). And her road to recovery has been emotional as much as physical. 

Not long ago we celebrated her 10 year cancer-versary. 

We celebrated her remission. We held space for all that’s happened in the last decade. And we felt a tinge of sadness for the things that have been lost.

Because things have been lost.

And no amount of positive thinking will change that.

(There was also Prosecco and cake)

But when we acknowledge our true feelings, we take steps toward letting them go and moving on.

So maybe, allow yourself to let go of this idea that we have to be positive all the time? Isn’t it exhausting trying to put everything into neat, little boxes? 

Sometimes life is messy as hell. Let it be a mess. Conserve your energy for the things you can control.

Because there will be tidy times too. And they’ll be all the sweeter for the mess.

So, feel your feelings. All of them.

Take the good with bad, the rough with the smooth, and any other overused metaphor you can think of. 

And hold space, if you can, for others to do the same.