Chief Editor's Note: The Dangers of Treating Bullet Holes with Band-Aids

Have you ever had a day that just wasn’t going your way? Or perhaps to quote The Rembrants, you’ve felt like “–it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year—?” I would bravely assume that if you’ve spent the past year and a half on planet Earth, it’s a very safe bet you especially know what I’m talking about. These days feel like every little mishap and grievance adds up to the mental pile of garbage, dangerously full, you’ve kept forgetting to take out on your way to work or school or to the shops. Now let me ask you something else –have you ever, after exasperatedly venting your shit show of a day to your colleague or friend or even family member, received a response that went something along the lines of – “look  for the silver lining!” or “It could always be worse, there are people much worse off than you”, or my personal favorite “You need to stop being so negative, think positive for a change!”?

Yeah, there’s nothing like a little helpful dismissal of your negative experience to make that mental tower of garbage topple all over your mind. A response like that is a sure-fire way to toss the rotten banana peal onto the heap of rubbish you’re already carrying around, only for it to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I don’t actually know what happens to the camel after that –the idiom does not tell the tale—but I would imagine the poor thing would need some serious help, more than just positive thoughts and silver linings. The same goes for your mind; cleaning up a mess like that will take serious work and effort, you can’t just pretend it away with lollipops and rainbows and puppies…ok puppies might help for a bit, but even they are not a permanent fix.

I for one will admit that there have been many times even during this academic year alone where I’ve felt like one more overtly positive, tone-deaf, and let’s face it, outright dismissive response to the truly trying and exhausting times I’ve had, might just be enough to make me explode or turn into the incredible Hulk so I could smash buildings and trash cans and, I don’t know, maybe chuck a park bench into the Töölö bay.

You don’t have to look further than your Instagram feed or Facebook for the onslaught of inspirational quotes and posts that keep telling people to ‘just keep going no matter what’ and to acknowledge ‘good vibes only’… As positive as these encouragements may seem, they can really perpetuate the stigma around negative feelings –which, by the way, are a natural part of life. The thing is, sometimes the expectation of 24/7 positivity, as innocuous and valiant ideal it may sound, can be extremely toxic.

Now I’m not saying positivity or being positive is a bad thing. Well…that depends; if we’re talking radiation, then yes, positivity is very bad. If we are talking about attitudes or moods, then no. In all seriousness, I think there is nothing wrong with trying to maintain a positive outlook on life. In fact, I think positivity is a wonderful thing. However, it is not something that can or should always be expected to be felt.

In simple terms I like to think of it like this; there is no good without bad and there is no positive without negative, they need each other to define themselves—two flip sides of the same coin. And this coin, in a world like ours, cannot stay still. It will spin, it will be flipped, it will roll under the kitchen table and it will land wherever the circumstances take it. There is no guarantee it will always land positive side up.

When you’re having a miserable day, it is very likely you are feeling many negative things and the point here is that the way you feel is not positive at all. You might be feeling any negative emotion from being annoyed, sad, or frustrated to plain ol’ angry. Look as you might, the situation may not have a silver lining to the rainclouds that soaked through your clothes on the way home, there might be no pot of gold—never mind the pot of gold—there might be no rainbow to cheer you up after you’ve peeled off the freezing clammy clothes off your back. And as you sink into a hot bath and call your friend to rant about the day you’ve had, the last thing you want to hear is how grateful you should be that your trip home wasn’t worse than it was—after all, you did not get hit by a car or twist your ankle in a pot hole. Because honestly, no, no you did not, but you did have an awful experience and you wanted to feel heard and validated. In fact, you might be feeling like complete shit and somehow this kind of over the top positive attitude that tries to force the good into every situation, even into ones it truly is nowhere to be found in, convinces you to feel shitty for feeling shitty. Now, that just sounds like eating a huge bowl of stupid for breakfast—Not exactly a nutritious choice for the most important meal of the day.

So, what’s wrong with this picture then? Why do we not want to hear these responses that encourage us to count our blessings and to seek out the positive even in negative situations? Shouldn’t we be glad the people we’re opening up to about our miserable experiences are offering positive advice? Unless…the advice isn’t actually that positive after all. Turns out, when a person feels sadness or anger or any number of negative emotions, they typically would like to be met with empathy, understanding, and validation. What they don’t want to hear is advice that tells them to ignore what they’re feeling and to adjust it to the polar opposite. Namely, because this type of response sends a message that whatever negative feeling you’re going through, is apparently not the desirable way to feel. But that begs the question, desirable to whom?

Telling someone to just ignore their emotional distress by suggesting “hey, why don’t you just try to focus on being happy”, is approximately as useful as putting a hello-kitty band-aid over a bullet hole and telling the patient to just walk it off…It will most likely only do more harm than good. –Now, this is what can be referred to as toxic positivity. These seemingly encouraging and positive sounding responses to people expressing negative emotions are actually not positive in their influence at all. They encourage people experiencing very natural emotional reactions to suppress and inhibit the very complex and far reaching emotional response they are exhibiting. That, if anything, is toxic. Not all advice that includes the word ‘positive’, such as, “just try to think more positive thoughts,” is positive advice. In fact, it’s not even good advice. It doesn’t actually solve the problem at hand at all, just suggests you slap some pink frosting on it and off you go.

Moreover, a study conducted by Gross and Levenson (1997) on the effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion finds that suppressing negative emotion doesn’t (surprise, surprise) actually alleviate or relieve the negative feeling. So, there goes the whole ‘just think positive’ mumbo-jumbo. What more, Gross and Levenson’s findings indicate that inhibiting emotion can actually end up diminishing one’s cognitive performance. What this means, is that directing brain power into shoving your negative emotions deep down, can leave you with less brain power to deal with some other critical parts of your life. Not to mention, Gross and Levenson’s findings also report that the constant inhibition of certain emotions and the mental and physical responses that come with it, can lead to eventually not knowing how to deal with negative feelings at all. It can also lead to not being able to perform what Gross and Levenson describe as the “essential behavior” of expressing emotion. I don’t know about you, but to me this sounds pretty worrisome. Especially considering the tough times we as humans with human emotions and experiences  are going through, the dangers of toxic positivity, even if delivered with no intended ill will, should be acknowledged as they can cause tangible harm to very real people.

This issue of BTSB, as always, features a wide variety of carefully crafted content and skillful writing. One of the articles I consulted on focuses on the well-being of us English students and SUB-members during Covid-19. In the course of compiling this article, we launched a questionnaire that gathered a lot of data and when reading the responses we received, I couldn’t help but admit that there are a lot of us students who are not feeling very well. –And we’ve been dealing with not doing well for over a year. This combined with the essentially non-existent concrete support for students in higher education and the incessive echo of voices from various levels of authority and society telling us to “just keep going” and telling us to think about “how this is a unique generational experience” made me want to dedicate this Chief Editor’s note to saying –to hell with toxic positivity.

So, if you’ve been feeling that pile of mental garbage adding up and taking space in your mind, please remember, you don’t have to keep stuffing negative emotions into a can that’s already overflowing. Not that I’m declaring myself as any kind of authority, but I do hope that what you’ve read in my Chief Editor’s note today will give you some reassurance that this overtly positive outlook that society bombards us with, is not healthy and not realistically achievable. Negative feelings are a natural part of life, and you are allowed to communicate your feelings without being rejected just because they don’t fit into the mold of toxic positivity. You deserve to be heard. You deserve to feel understood. And you deserve to be met with empathy, instead of empty words of toxic positivity.

We here at BTSB hope that our articles will bring you some kind of feelings as we proudly present this issue’s batch of the many voices of our dedicated editors:

 If you’re interested in delving deeper into the situation us English students in higher education are going through, head on over to Emma Mileva’s article titled ‘a year of SUB pandemic’. On the other hand, if you feel like something that will take your mind off the very real life issues of the world around us, we’ve got you covered with fantastic poetry that will transport you to lovely sceneries and ethereal thoughts titled ‘April’ by the wonderful Robi and ‘from the beaches of Laru’ by our very own Missy Haug. If you’re craving poetry but nature scenery is not your cup of tea, don’t worry, we have something for everyone –do check out Henna Houttu’s deliciously devious poem on having a secret. Oh, and here’s a kicker if you’re not sure how you feel about poetry, just go ahead and check out Sini’s article on her journey with poetry! And last but certainly not least—I know I’ve been talking a lot of smack about silver linings in this Chief Editor’s note—but in her article titled ‘Silver linings Corona book’, our very own Annika O’Connor writes about what it’s like to look for them because you feel like it and not because you’re told to.

Here’s to hoping our issue could make you feel a little bit less alone and a bit more validated and heard. And remember, down with toxic positivity!

Sources:

Gross, J. J. and Levenson, R. W. (1997) ‘Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion.’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(1), p. 95. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.106.1.95.

Artwork by the author.