The Toxic Positivity Trap

Initially, I wasn’t trying to become some enlightened version of myself. I just wanted to stop feeling like shit. I was anxious. Depressed. Stuck in old patterns that made me feel like I was always back in the same miserable place that I just could not get myself out of. I wanted to stop struggling, to stop carrying so much. I wanted to feel light. I wanted peace. I wanted to be happy. To find happy—whatever that meant.

And so I started searching.

I started with spiritual teachings—books, teachers, anything that offered a pathway to peace. I wanted something that could relieve the pain, anything that promised healing and ease—law of attraction, metaphysics, messages from the Universe. That led me to spiritual workshops, trainings, and weekend retreats. I journaled about my early life experiences and my feelings. I practiced breathwork. I meditated. I explored inner child healing and trauma release. I kept a gratitude journal even when I didn’t feel grateful. I tried EMDR. Brain-spotting. Reiki.  Energy work. I whispered mantras and intentions. Created vision boards.

People around me talked about finding your center, raising your vibration, and trusting the process. They told stories of how everything shifted once they aligned with joy.

When that didn’t bring the relief I was looking for, I tried therapy. Then came spiritual growth groups. New age churches. More weekend intensives. More growth groups and personal development programs—anything that claimed it could help me heal what I couldn’t seem to do on my own.

I wanted to believe that if I focused on the positive, if I changed my thoughts, if I stopped feeding the anxiety and depression and started feeding joy and trust, then something inside me would finally shift. I would finally feel free.

But no matter how many spiritual principles I practiced, no matter how many mindset tools I applied, there was a gnawing ache that never really left, a quiet voice beneath that kept whispering: You’re alone. Unworthy. A burden. Can’t trust anyone or anything. Still not okay. These weren’t just stories I told myself, they were truths my body had learned to carry.

All of it—mindset work, spiritual practices, even therapy—didn’t address the deeper wound because that wound wasn’t just about what happened to me. It was about what I came to believe about myself because of what happened to me. And the problem was, I wasn’t working with those beliefs—I was working around them. I was trying to change my thoughts without ever facing the original pain that shaped them. I was layering positivity on top of abandonment, betrayal, and shame—hoping light would dissolve what only truth could touch.

Healing has been commercialized into sound bites and easy fixes. Everywhere you turn, there’s a promise: five steps to inner peace, one mindset shift to change your life, a morning routine to manifest joy. Complex emotional pain gets reduced to inspirational quotes and productivity hacks, while trauma is expected to respond to vision boards and good vibes. This reflects a culture that’s deeply uncomfortable with struggle. In a system like that, continued pain starts to feel like failure. And when there’s no room for grief, fear, or rage, emotional bypass gets repackaged as growth. Instead of moving through our stories, we learn to decorate them with spiritual language and well-meaning clichés. This is the terrain of toxic positivity. 

Toxic positivity isn’t just relentless optimism—it’s the subtle and sometimes spiritualized pressure to look fine, feel good, and move on before the real work is done. These approaches focus on symptoms—my thoughts, my habits, my mindset—without ever addressing the deeper emotional wound underneath. But trauma doesn’t start in your thinking brain. It lives in your nervous system. It’s stored in the parts of you that had to adapt to survive. You can’t override those adaptations with affirmations. And you can’t change what you believe about yourself without first confronting where—and how—that belief was formed. The only way to heal the pain from the wound is through it—not around it, and not by slapping an affirmation or a smile that says “I’m great” on top of it.

Why Toxic Positivity Destroys Emotional Connection

Toxic positivity can become a barrier to real connection. When positivity is held up as the goal, there’s no room for the messiness. Hard emotions—the grief, the fear, the rage, the insecurity—get labeled as problems rather than invitations for closeness. We start coaching ourselves out of our feelings before we’ve even felt or shared them. Or we convince ourselves we’re being “too sensitive,” “too reactive,” “too negative,” and we silence what’s true.

Over time, this creates emotional distance. We show our partners the polished version of ourselves. But the part of us that’s hurting never makes it to the conversation. And if we’ve grown up believing our needs are too much or our emotions are inconvenient, this only reinforces the original wound. We end up performing an artificial version of love instead of actually experiencing it. We become conflict-avoidant. We sugarcoat our pain. We say, “It’s fine,” when what we mean is, “I don’t feel safe enough to be honest.”

The irony is that intimacy requires the very thing toxic positivity suppresses—authenticity. Not the polished, palatable version of ourselves, but the real, messy, and sometimes uncomfortable truth of being human. Instead, we’re encouraged to trade that depth for feel-good soundbites and emotional shortcuts that might be easier to swallow but come at the cost of real connection. Real connection is built through vulnerability.  Through the willingness to be seen in the rawness of our experience, without filtering it to make ourselves and others more comfortable.  It sounds like, “I’m struggling,” or “I feel scared,” or “I don’t know how to do this, but I want to try.” When that kind of truth is allowed to exist in a relationship, intimacy deepens. When it isn’t, we end up orbiting each other with a smile, disconnected, emotionally guarded, and pretending to be okay.

How Toxic Positivity at Work Fuels Burnout

In many workplaces, especially high-performance environments, positivity isn’t just encouraged, it’s expected. Staying upbeat, being a “team player,” not making things too difficult or too heavy, are seen as markers of professionalism. The unspoken message is clear—leave your emotions at the door, keep things positive, and don’t make people uncomfortable.

But when positivity is forced, it stops being a healthy way of coping. It becomes a mask. People end up hiding exhaustion, overextending themselves, and pushing through pain—all while smiling in meetings and sending emails with exclamation points and smiling emojis to signal they’re doing just fine. Toxic positivity in the workplace tells people that struggle is a sign of failure and that asking for support is a liability. So they paint on a happy face, suppress their struggles, and remain upbeat no matter the cost.

For those carrying the weight of trauma or systemic oppression—especially women of color, queer folks, and Firsts—this creates a dangerous double bind. You’re expected to be strong, grateful, and inspiring, while constantly managing how much of your truth is “too much.” Over time, this erodes not only your well-being but your sense of belonging. The workplace becomes a stage, and surviving it means hiding the parts of yourself that are still in the process of healing.

How Toxic Positivity Damages Your Relationship with Yourself

The most harmful effects of toxic positivity are often the ones that happen inside of us. When the world tells you to “just stay positive,” eventually you start telling yourself the same thing. Not as encouragement—but as a demand. You begin to feel like your pain is a problem you should have already solved. You question your sadness, your anxiety, your anger. You coach yourself out of your emotions before you’ve even had a chance to feel them.

Over time, positivity becomes resistance in disguise. You start monitoring your inner world the way you would a performance review.  You say things to yourself, like:  “Is this thought empowering? Is this emotion spiritual enough? Shouldn’t I feel more grateful by now? Healing turns into a job you’re failing at, and instead of offering compassion to the parts of you that are still hurting, you criticize them for still existing.

And that kind of self-surveillance is exhausting. You’re trying to grow, but you’re doing it by overriding your truth. You end up spiritually bypassing your own inner life—gaslighting yourself into silence and calling it thriving.

Real healing isn’t about feeling good all the time. It’s about learning how to feel everything—without shame, without editing, without abandoning yourself in the process.

5 Steps to Break Free From Toxic Positivity and Start Healing for Real

Healing doesn’t happen through feel-good sound bites. It happens in the courageous act of telling the truth about your struggles, even when the world expects a smile and an “I am great!”  It doesn’t come from forcing ourselves into gratitude or faking peace. It comes from making space for the full spectrum of our humanity—and learning to meet ourselves with compassion in the midst of it.

If you’ve been trying to smile your way out of pain, fix yourself with affirmations and mindset shifts, and still feel stuck in the same internal loop, let this be your invitation to pause and:

1. Name what’s actually true. Start by acknowledging what you’re really feeling—without trying to change it. Write it down, say it out loud, or sit with it in silence. No sugarcoating. No reframing. Just the raw, messy truth.

2. Replace the affirmation with affirmation of self. Instead of forcing mantras like “I am happy” or “Everything is fine,” try: “I am allowed to feel this.” “This emotion makes sense.” “I can hold space for myself even here.”

3. Practice emotional permission. Give yourself the freedom to feel what you feel without labeling it as wrong, negative, or unspiritual. Sadness, anger, grief, fear—they’re not failures. They’re messengers.

4. Share something real with someone safe. Say what’s real for you with someone with whom you feel comfortable. Vulnerability builds the connection.

5. Notice when you're performing—and choose presence instead. Whether it’s in a relationship, at work, or in your self-talk, begin to recognize the moments where you're faking “fine.” In those moments, pause. Breathe. Ask: What’s true here? What am I feeling, and what do I need?