At face value, positivity is a good thing. Everyone wants to feel good, so positivity feels good to people. Not so fast. Some of you were traumatized specifically by positivity. Positivity may have even been used as a tool of abuse against you. And so, positivity feels bad to you rather than good. And as a result, you subconsciously boycott positivity. 

Positivity is not a positive thing when it is used to deny, negate, invalidate, suppress, disown, reject and run away from things. When this is how positivity is used, it becomes toxic positivity, which is an extreme form of avoidant resistance. It is a form of willful denial. If you want to learn more about this, you can watch my episode titled: Toxic Positivity (Why Good Vibes Only is Hurting You). If you are around people who use positivity in this way, and especially if you grew up with someone who uses positivity in this way, you will find yourself resisting positivity out of solidarity to yourself. Let’s look at how this might happen. 

1. You may have grown up with or you may currently be with someone who is keeping you in a bad situation and/or who is doing things that hurt you, but that person may be expecting you to feel good and respond positively to them anyway. If this is the case, the ‘blame and shame’ goes onto you, the recipient of mistreatment, for not being able to be happy no matter what that person does or doesn’t do to you, rather than the pressure to behave differently going on them. The full pressure to feel good is on you, despite other people acting as an oppositional force to you feeling good. Think of it like trying to stay healthy despite people putting poison in your water every day or trying to build a sand castle while someone comes and kicks it down every hour. This, is wildly unfair. In this case, just going along with it and being positive, is experienced as not only them getting away with it, but you enabling your own harm.
2. You may have grown up with or you may currently be with someone who uses positivity to negate, invalidate and deny negativity and so, anytime that you voiced your personal truth, such as thoughts and feelings, they were immediately negated, invalidated and denied. When this was the case, you were forced to carry the torment of your experience alone, while simultaneously being sent the message that your pain is your own failure, or is just a choice you are making. This is a form of gaslighting, which is psychological abuse and it caused you to doubt your own reality and wonder if you are really the problem. You ended up feeling shame and guilt for having normal and natural emotions. It destroyed a sense of connection and security in the relationship because you were not seen, felt or heard. There could be no psychological safety around honesty and expression with them. You ended up in deep isolation because what is true about you and for you, was being rejected. And it prevented resolve and healing because emotions must be processed through the body and being, and they can’t be if they are being suppressed. When this is the case, you ended up with two hurts instead of one. You still have the original hurt, and now you have the hurt of feeling shame for hurting and the pressure of pretending you aren't hurting so that the other person stays comfortable. In this case, positivity is experienced as deep isolation, pressure and suppression of personal truth. 
3. You may have grown up with or you may currently be with someone who uses positivity to re-frame everything in such a way that they build their own reality, regardless of the fact that doing so left you alone in the pain and kept them and or you in a painful, dysfunctional dynamic. In essence, the reframing prevented them from taking necessary action. To do this is to make something that is not acceptable, acceptable. It is a form of lying to oneself. You may have had a front row seat to all the hell this caused or is causing. When this is the case, you learned that positivity takes you out of reality and causes serious harm. 
4. You may have grown up with or you may currently be with someone who enforces positivity to hide their behavior towards you from other people and who expects you to be positive to make you keep up pretenses. It is very important to get something and it may be a gamechanger for you. If a person has the behavior of treating you poorly behind closed doors when people are not watching, only to change their behavior and be nice when everyone is watching, then it means they know that what they are doing to you is bad. If you were or are with someone who needs you to act positive and happy, so that other people see them in a positive light, then you learned that positivity hides harm from view. And you learned that positivity is you joining them in that lie they are weaving for the public. And by doing so, the truth and the truth of what is actually happening to you is disappearing behind a veneer that no one will see behind.       
5. You may have grown up with or you may currently be with someone who uses positivity to make you look like the problem, when they are the problem. This is a classic issue in dysfunctional families or dysfunctional relationships where there is scapegoating going on. When this happens, a person uses positivity as a mask so as to look like the good, healthy, evolved one. But because you are reacting to their bad behavior (what they are deliberately hiding from everyone else) with normal human emotions like anger, sadness, or frustration, you end up looking like the source of the conflict. Like the one who is bad, unhealthy, unstable and unevolved. This is weaponized positivity. They deliberately provoke you in private, but as soon as there is an audience, they become the voice of reason trying to "calm you down." They claim they are just trying to "keep things positive" or "move forward," implying that your desire to discuss a real problem is a character flaw or a "low vibration" or that you are obsession with the past. They remain calm, use a sweet tone, and speak in therapy speak or spiritual talk. When you react with anger, anger that is perfectly justified, they point at your reaction as proof that you are the aggressive one. This tactic is designed to triangulate other people against you. To cut you off from your support system. And if everyone is focused on you as the problem, no one sees their dysfunction, including them. When this is the case, you learn that positivity is superbly dangerous and leads to you being falsely accused, losing the closeness and support of others and being scapegoated.   
6. You may have grown up with or you may currently be with someone who only tolerates positivity and who withdraws or rejects you if you demonstrate anything else. You learn that closeness and love is conditional upon you pretending to be happy. When this is the case, you form a huge rejection wound because you learn that the real you is not tolerated and is not wanted. You associate positivity with the pain of conditional love. You may also start to feel like the only thing that is real, is negative things.  
7. You may have experienced medical dismissal. You may have had serious physical or mental health symptoms and they were ignored by doctors or experts who told you to "just reduce your stress" or "you're so young and healthy-looking; I’m sure it’s nothing serious!" or "you need to have a better outlook.” Or "Your labs are 'perfect,' so there's nothing to worry about!” or “you know, the body hears the messages we send it, so how about you send it good messages instead of messages of worry!" When this happens, a refusal to care is disguised as encouragement. If someone does this, they are blocking your path to treatment. This approach can enable irreversible damage that could have been prevented. It breaks the trust that a healthcare provider is someone to turn to for help. It can make it so you did not return to get care from them or another provider because you believed that no one would take you seriously. You started to doubt your own estimation of yourself and your body. It puts the blame of your pain and health condition (as if it isn’t bad enough already) on you, for having a negative mindset. And it puts you in the position of feeling like you have to “perform” to be around the person who is giving you medical care, rather than show the truth of what is going on with you. When this is the case, you learn that you, and anything that you really need other people to help you with, will disappear the minute positivity enters the room and as a result, you won’t get help with what you actually seriously need help with.                 
8. You may have experienced institutional betrayal. This can happen in any group or organization that you depend on (especially one that has a duty to protect you). It happens when that group or organization causes you harm or fails to respond appropriately when you are harmed. For example, you may have reported harm only to be told something like “It wasn’t that bad, look at the bright side” or “you need to stay positive, you aren’t really contributing to a positive culture here.” When this is the case, it destroyed your sense of security in that institution and even in the world. And you learned that positivity is a cover up for harm.      

There may be more ways that a negative association with positivity can be formed. But the most important thing to get is that just like anything else, association makes all the difference. If things like this have been your experience of positivity, then you are going to associate positivity, including positive language with all of the pain you experienced. You will associate it with things like isolation, erasure, danger, abuse, gaslighting, terror and shame. For someone with these experiences, hearing something like "look on the bright side" triggers a threat response. You immediately hear things like “you are the problem”, “your safety doesn’t matter”, “you are alone in this and it’s up to you to get yourself to a better place”, “Silence!”. It is almost like you have an allergy to positivity. And so, on a subconscious level, what happens is that you boycott positivity out of solidarity to yourself. Just the same way that a person might boycott health food if health food was a part of their abuse, despite the fact that health food might make them feel better. When people are put into this relationship with positivity, in response to this pain, they usually end up with four fragmented parts of themselves. One part that is desperate to feel better and get relief (any relief at all) no matter if that is through positive focus or anything else positive. One part that is trying to protect you by refusing to say or do anything “positive” or put any energy into improving your mood because that is what harmed you. A part that was damaged by positivity, who was harmed by it in a list of specific ways. And one part that puts the pressure on you to feel ok and be ok, no matter what is happening to you or in your life. This is the internalized aspect of the person who harmed you with positivity. 

If you boycott positivity because of the pain you have associated with positivity, your “negativity” is actually a survival mechanism, not something that is wrong with you. So, stay tuned and in an upcoming video, I will explain what to do about this.