The difference between being positive and being “toxically”positive.

I have recently heard “I am not trying to be toxically positive but…..” a lot in

conversations, and I find it such an interesting thing. Why is it that feeling positive can be seen as toxic? What is the difference?

Positivity is a genuinely flexible focus on hope and optimism that coexists with acknowledging diffcult emotions. Healthy positivity doesn't deny pain, disappointment, or fear; it holds space for those feelings while still holding onto hope and gratitude. Toxic Positivity is a forced focus on encouraging a happy, optimistic state that demands positivity in all situations — including ones where negative emotions would be more appropriate or realistic. It can feel like it dismisses, minimises, or invalidates authentic emotional experience (sadness, grief, anger, fear) in favour of a falsely cheerful facade. Common phrases like "everything happens for a reason,” “ force a pressure to "just stay positive," or shutting down someone's rant with a silver-lining talk before they've felt

heard. If I am honest, I think I hear it a lot because life has become so darn depressing that any sort of encouragement for hope can now feel like we are denying the hard truth of the political, humanitarian, and natural world crisis we read in the news each day. By promoting positivity, you immediately feel like you are dismissing or minimising a true emotional experience. As a hopeless optimist with a deeply sensitive soul, I have been on the receiving end of toxic positivity, particularly when my best friend died, and I found it so sffocating. Feeling like you can’t express genuine emotion without having to have a positive twist on it feels oppressive. When I found the coaching industry, I couldn't believe how aligned I felt with it. To be able to create a space that encourages sitting with true, authentic emotion and thinking how to live and build a positive life around it literally felt like the missing piece in the puzzle.

Real positivity was never meant to erase the hard stuff. It was meant to sit beside it. When my best friend died, what I needed wasn't someone rushing me towards a silver lining — I needed someone willing to stay in the dark with me for a while before we even talked about light. That's the space I try to create now, both for myself and for the people I coach: room to feel what's true, without rushing to fix, reframe, or force a smile onto it. That's the work. Feel it fully. Then build hope around it — not instead of it.