Toxic Positivity

Greetings All!

It's been a while since I've done one of these personal journal entries and I felt like doing one on a subject that's very important to me, and one that I feel many people don't really understand. I think I'll start this story talking about the movie "Inside Out" I'm going to assume most of you have seen it, though if you haven't it's a good representation of what I'm talking about. A big plot point in that movie is about how Joy wants to make Riley happy and thinks that her being happy will somehow fix what's wrong with her. One of the big moments in that movie is when she finally allows Sadness to take control of the console, realizing that she's the only one who can help Riley by allowing her to finally express what she's feeling. It's a good lesson about how sometimes we need to actually talk about what's bothering us, and not just pretend that everything is fine. For me the most basic definition of "Toxic Positivity" is trying to force someone to be happy when they don't actually feel happy. This topic is related to the whole "bottling up your emotions" that is present in society and especially directed towards men.

In quite a lot of cultures, there's this idea that you have to always "put on a brave face" even when things are going wrong. I'm sure most of us have heard that at some point in our lives. I know growing up as a Latino I was told this on more than one occasion, and yeah as a man I was also told MANY times that men don't cry (especially by my father). I know in recent years we've finally begun to question that idea as a society and I'm honestly glad for that as yeah....holding in your emotions really just leads to problems later down the line. For my dad, it went a bit beyond that though.

I guess I'll talk a little bit about my dad here, he grew up in a poor environment with a father who was an alcoholic and not there for him at all. His mother died when he was young so he never knew her and for most of his life, he struggled to get anything. His father also died shortly after I was born, so I never really knew either of my grandparents on my father's side. He would eventually succeed as later in life he would start his own business and by the time me and my brothers were born he and mom had done very well for themselves and grown the business. I think at some point along the line he must have gotten into some self-help gurus or something like that because throughout my childhood I remember one thing very clearly about my dad. He was ALWAYS talking about "positive thinking" and how it could change your life!

Even as a kid, there was something about that that rubbed me the wrong way. I dunno what it was but my dad's instance that anything going wrong in your life could be cured by simply "thinking positive" never really sat right with me. He was always telling me to smile even when I didn't feel like it, and would constantly berate me whenever I brought up legitimate concerns over things often telling me to "stop thinking negatively". Another thing that really annoyed me was when he (and sometimes my mom) would tell me to smile when I wasn't smiling. Looking back I just didn't like how my dad wanted me to look "happy" without caring about whether I felt happy or not. Related to that, one my least favorite days as a kid was picture day at school. This was the day wear my mom would meticulously pick out what I was going to wear, the night before, and where both she and my dad would fuss over me making sure I looked my best. The worst part was the actual picture because 9 times out 10 they would chastise me about my smile. They claimed I was doing a "fake smile" in the picture which I wasn't trying to do, but I guess according to them looking at the picture I was. I was just trying to do a normal smile because they kept saying it was fake I honestly started hating taking pictures (not just school ones, but other kinds of pictures too. Even today while I don't mind taking pictures, it's not something I look forward too) or even just smiling naturally. Every time my dad would ask me to smile I really wanted to say back, "Well I would but you keep saying I fake smile in my pictures."

This behavior persisted into high school where it did admittedly start to get more annoying. Sometimes you just have days when you don't feel like smiling or when something bad actually happened to you and you want to try and talk about it and understand it more, but my dad's answer was always to "keep smiling and don't talk about negative things." He apparently seemed to think that if you don't talk about bad things then they can't affect you. I wonder now if this is why I got interested in writing. Perhaps as a way to express things, I couldn't really talk about with either of my parents. I suppose I wouldn't be the first person this happened to.

There actually was a small period of time towards the end of high school when I did start to buy into my dad's philosophy a bit. A lot of that had to do with a certain college I got accepted to. This is another thing I haven't really talked much about because....well it's a very personal and painful subject. Though I did actually give a hint about this in a recent chapter where I talked about the Lyft Driver's past. I got accepted to an acting academy that I REALLY wanted to go to and when I got the news it was like...WOW! My dad had managed to convince me that it must have been "positive vibes" or some such that got me into that Academy. At that time there were other things going well in my life too so yeah I'd say my senior year in high school was a pretty happy time, unfortunately, it wouldn't last.

This might be a topic for another time, but long story short I didn't do very well at this acting academy. It was a two-year program and in order to attend the second year you had to be invited back, this was based on how well you did in the first year and well.... I guess I didn't do that well....so yeah I was not invited back.

This as you might imagine was disheartening to me. But my dad being who he was told me to just suck it up and move on. He said I shouldn't feel bad about it and to basically ignore it. But this time that proved to be a lot harder. As the years went by I would try my best not to think about how I failed at the academy and tried to just keep going. But that wouldn't be the only failure I would have in life, there would be others and with each one, I would be demoralized further. This was the time in my life when I started to grow distant from my parents and began dreading spending any time with them. They had both noticed how bad I seemed to be doing in life and were both hard on me for my continued failures. I will say my mom was harder on me than my dad as my dad was still trying the same old shtick of..."think positive" and things will be better. At the time I would just nod my head and agree with him, because there was no point in trying to have a conversation like, "hey I really feel bad about this, and I don't think that thinking positive is going to help me." I was honestly starting to get VERY annoyed with my dad about this. It's why I never looked forward to spending time with him.

Things did eventually turn around, part of that was when my mom and dad got divorced (which is probably a topic for another time). And then shortly after that I started going to therapy and was able to repair my relationship with my mom. Other good and bad things have happened since and I'd like to think I have a better handle on things now than I did back then. A large part of why I had such a hard time was because I honestly didn't know how to deal with things when they were bad. Most of the time I'd just play a lot of video games or eat a lot of food, I didn't know how to handle feeling bad, but all I knew was that I wanted to numb that pain somehow. After going to therapy I've gained some skills to help me more in that regard and I think writing has also helped me.

I would still consider myself on the cynical end of the spectrum, but I'm not so cynical that I would say I'm a nihilist. I would say in general I can be cautiously optimistic about things and while I might not be in the best place in my life now (in terms of finances and overall quality of life) but I'd like to hope that one day I will get there. While i may not smile all the time it doesn't necessarily mean I'm depressed. I think the few people who really know me understand that. I generally want people to succeed and I think it's great if you are happy and in a good place in your life. I might be a little jealous, but I wouldn't want you to fail or for something bad to happen to you I guess I'd just want to be able to feel that same joy myself. Maybe someday I will....

But at the same time, I also want to acknowledge that sometimes we feel bad and sometimes we need to deal with that. It's not helpful to tell someone who's going through a rough patch to just smile and things will be fine. If I'm not feeling good I'd like to be able to say that and would prefer someone responds with encouragement or even just listens to what I have to say rather than telling me to just smile. I also try to do the same, if someone wants to tell me they aren't feeling good I will do my best to listen and provide support to you. I understand that things suck and sometimes you just want someone to listen to you. I also get that while therapy can be helpful it can't fix all your problems, especially ones that have to do with poverty.

I can say from experience that yeah it sucks having to work four different jobs just to survive and if I were in a position where I didn't have to do that, I know for certain I would be A LOT happier. If I didn't have to worry about having a roof over my head that would also make me happier, and while those are concerns I have at present I have hope that someday I won't worry about those as much. And maybe when that day comes I will smile more often. Until then writing helps me to feel better and I do get a good feeling whenever I read a review from someone who says they enjoyed my story. It makes me smile to know I was able to brighten your day with my writing even if only for a moment.

I think that's all I have for now, I hope I continue to impress you....