When positivity turns toxic - part 3

This article is part of an ongoing discussion series on Mental Health and the Church. While each article can stand alone, if you’d like to start at the beginning click here.

When we’re going through a hard time we want to feel acknowledged, heard, and loved (even in the times when it might feel so hard for us that we have a crap attitude at that moment). We want people who will walk with us and love us through to the other side. We don’t want platitudes, however well-meaning; we want genuine connection, caring, and supportive affirmation that will strengthen us and give us the courage to go on.

Yet so often we receive dismissive positivity instead, and it makes us feel unheard, and ultimately, unloved.

So how do we move away from dismissive or toxic positivity to something more healthy?

For that to happen it will need us to be willing to change, to learn how to process our uncomfortable, unpleasant emotions on a personal level and to create environments in our families, churches, workplaces etc. where it’s okay to show emotion and express it in healthy ways. We also need to learn how to communicate better so that we can support each other in our hard times, using something I call supportive affirmation – a skill we can all learn.

I also know that God is willing to give us much-needed wisdom if we ask, and there are also a lot of people with heaps of good training out there who have written some great stuff on this already. Do some research, find out more about the subject. If we do this, if we personally learn, grow and change, then that will be a great start to changing society.

One of the first things we can look at is the whole thing of “If I can’t say what I’ve been saying, then what on earth is left. How do I speak? What do I say?”

Validate feelings, don’t dismiss them

Validating our feelings, and the feelings of others is important, and so is healthy optimism. Yes, there is a healthy optimism – it’s one that knows bad times don’t last forever, and with the right support and help we can move through them and come out the other side. It doesn’t give false hope or false positivity, it acknowledges the toughness of the situation and expresses appropriate responses and support in it.

One of the main ways we can show this sort of support is in our attitude towards others and the things we say to them. Below you’ll see some pics showing dismissive toxic statements and healthier alternatives. You quite possibly wouldn’t use these exact words, because what you use needs to be genuine validation and supportive affirmation that comes from your heart, but what’s written here may give you some ideas of a better way to speak to someone who’s hurting.

All of the supportive affirmations listed above are ways we can lend support and open the door for more conversation to take place so that genuine relationships can be established and developed. People need to know that they are seen, accepted, and heard; we all need that, and when we have it we feel safe and loved. People worldwide are crying out for this and the church should be a place where they find it. Why? Because God is the most accepting. loving, understanding, and open-hearted being there is, and we, the church, are made in His image and are commissioned to show the world around us that reality.

Changing the way we talk to ourselves and each other

With the amount of understanding amongst professional counselors and therapists that’s available to us today – in person, online and through books – we can learn how to process our emotions in a more healthy way. As Christians we have the reality of the God who is the comforter living in us, the One who created our emotions and is unashamed that He created any of them. Our emotions are our allies in life, they feed us vital information, they motivate and fuel us with energy and so much more. Make friends with your emotions, learn how to honour and respect them, and to speak to yourself in a way that is healthy and godly, in alignment with who God knows you are in Christ.

Let’s talk about this area as leaders and congregations. It is not too fanciful to say that the future of the church will be determined by whether we continue to deal with things as we always have done, or we change. The world needs us to show them that there is a better way, a way that is one full of truth, life, and the provision and presence of God in the midst of life’s hardships. They don’t need to see churches full of people who sing happy-clappy songs and hand out glib positivity, yet aren’t honest about their emotions. Hard words, I know, but we are at a critical junction that will see us as the church either become increasingly more relevant, or more irrelevant, to the average person. Let’s accept the challenge that God is laying before us, pick it up, korero (discuss) with Him and each other about it, and work to see change come – change that will benefit all.

Coming next

In my next article, the last of the series on toxic positivity, I want to look at how we can honour all our emotions and develop truly healthy optimism, and the things that give us that sort of optimism as Christians.

For the next article in this series click here.