Buzz
Recognizing the good in life helps us appreciate its beauty, but as with anything, there’s such a thing as too much positivity. This concept includes what’s known as toxic positivity, where the focus remains solely on the positive, disregarding the negative aspects that are also a part of life.
“The emotions that you are feeling, that we feel, when we deny them, double down. They burrow. They fester. They metastasize. Not only do our feelings double down and grow, they invite shame over for the party,” said Brené Brown, author of books such as The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead, in a recent podcast.
Demonstrating empathy encourages others to do the same
Everyone experiences grief, both big and small. Whether it’s a child missing a birthday celebration or someone putting themselves at risk every day by going to work, there is a lot of fear, anxiety, and pain in the world right now, and it’s understandable.
We are enduring a global pandemic. Uncertainty looms over our safety, as well as the well-being of our loved ones. Many of us also face concerns about job security, the possibility of being laid off, or how we will manage to pay our bills this month.
Along with the major worries, there are also the smaller griefs. We all mourn the events that were canceled, from parties to graduations and weddings. We all worry about the safety and health of our friends and family members. We’re collectively facing a world that feels unsafe.
When we try to push all of this aside to focus only on the positive, we reject these fears. We downplay them, which denies both ourselves and others the chance to process what’s going on. We also miss an opportunity to connect, empathize, and share in each other’s griefs and anxieties.
As Brown highlighted in her podcast, when we attempt to rank suffering—whether it’s the child who missed a birthday or the adult who risks exposure by going to work each day—we do so under the assumption that empathy is a limited resource.
“When we show empathy to ourselves and others, we foster even more empathy,” says Brown.
A missed birthday party may seem insignificant to us, but to a child, it could feel like a major loss. An adult who faces daily exposure at work may still have a job, but that offers little comfort when they’re concerned about their health or the well-being of their loved ones at home.
Each of us is grieving in our own unique way. As grief specialist David Kessler mentioned in a recent interview,
“Your task is to experience your sadness, fear, and anger, regardless of what others might be feeling. […] When we let our emotions happen naturally, they do so in a way that helps us regain power.”
Recognizing problems provides us with the chance to address them
Only acknowledging the positives, while ignoring everything else, also brings the risk of nothing ever changing. After all, how can we even begin to fix a problem, if we won’t even acknowledge its existence?
These past few months, we’ve seen an enormous amount of goodness in people. From the researchers who are developing vaccines and testing out treatments, to the healthcare workers who are risking their own health and working long hours to care for their patients, we have seen an enormous amount of ingenuity and humanity on display these past few months.
In addition to this good, we’ve also seen a lot of issues which have amplified the pandemic. We’ve seen a failure in widespread testing, which is critical for containing the spread, and will be essential for when we open up again. We already have states that are opening up without the necessary infrastructure for limiting the spread, which is estimated to lead to more cases and more deaths.
On top of all that, the U.S. is an anomaly in that we don’t have mandatory paid sick leave, and we have a large number of uninsured or underinsured people, which means there are a lot of people in this country who can’t afford to miss a day of work or go to the doctor.
On top of all this, we’ve got an economic crash, with 30 million unemployment claims in the past six weeks. There are a lot of people in this country who, in addition to worrying about a deadly disease, are worried about how they will pay rent and feed their family. This pandemic has exposed a lot of structural issues within our society.
It’s important to recognize what’s wrong with a situation. After all, if we don’t acknowledge the problems, how can we ever hope to resolve them?
