Learning to be Tragically Optimistic

The cure all for toxic positivity...allegedly

I’m on a Wellness committee at work and last month I was tasked with writing a blog post on Toxic Positivity. We’d all been allowed to choose our own topics, and I wanted to talk about one that hides itself as a wellness/self help guide but can actually be pretty harmful when dealing with mental health. But as I working on my post, I learned about tragic optimism and became intrigued¹ with its concept.

But let’s differentiate between the two first.

Graphic from VeryWell

What is Toxic Positivity?

Toxic positivity is defined as “the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset" (Very Well Mind). This may not sound like such a bad thing, keeping positive in the face of adversity, the problem is that a lot of toxic positivity can actually harm individuals (and self) and can cause feelings of guilt if a person isn’t able to remain positive in a difficult scenario. Commonly mistaken for optimism, toxic positivity can negatively affect a person’s mental health, because a lot of toxic positivity is about avoiding feeling difficult emotions and instead trying to consistently put on a positive, sunny disposition.

Some common examples of toxic positivity include:

• saying things like “Just Stay Positive, Good Vibes Only, Everything Happens for a Reason, Happiness is a Choice”

• Hiding behind said positive mantras to keep up the appearance of coping well

• minimizing others/own feelings because they make you/others uncomfortable

• shaming others/self for not having a “positive attitude”

I think we’ve all experienced examples of toxic positivity in our lives, whether from others or we may have inadvertently been enforcing it on others. A lot of the toxic positivity phrases mentioned above are used by the New Age Spiritualism movement,² the phrase “Good Vibes Only” (which has since become synonymous with toxic positivity) can be found on a number of different merchandise to own,³ and especially during the pandemic when the world was scared, isolated, many of us depressed and suffering with mental illness there was a push to find happiness wherever we could.

At one point during the pandemic when the bubbling system was introduced⁴, the small group I was in wanted to go around the circle and list one positive thing we had experienced during the pandemic. But when it got to my turn, I couldn’t give one. I understood we were just trying to find a small bit of light in a dark time, but I couldn’t find any. In 2020 I was supposed to go on a trip to Dawson City, read aloud at a local literary festival, and have a play performed in a festival, all things I was very much looking forward to that had gotten cancelled.⁵ I, like many, was mourning the things I hadn’t gotten to do that year. Nearly every day of 2020 I lived in constant worry of my chronically ill sister or my “technically” senior dad getting Covid and knowing that even if I masked and distanced and waited patiently for the vaccines to come out, my family could still get sick because of someone else not caring. I was scared, I was sad, and overwhelmingly angry, and I didn’t want to pretend like I had something to be happy about.

I understand why my friends wanted to look for the positives, it’s natural, I think, to try and find the good in a bad situation. It’s easy to get stuck in a negative mindset, to see the world as a bad and terrible place and to get stuck in the muck of it.

But that’s where tragic optimism comes in.

What is Tragic Optimism?

I was intrigued by the phrase when I first read it. It sounds very goth⁶, and I appreciate that.

Tragic optimism gets its origin from Viktor⁷ Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who after spending years experiencing severe trauma came up with the term which can be defined as, “the belief you can still maintain a happy, contented, and hopeful life in the midst of tragedy,” (MasterClass).

I won’t go into detail on my own trauma,⁸ but I’ve definitely had my own moments of struggle coping with it all. So Frankl’s idea of learning to live a happy life in the midst of trauma was intriguing to me, especially when the trauma appears to keep on coming and it won’t stop coming. How can you cope and learn to be happy when things either stay the same or get bumpy again? How can you be happy without veering into toxic positivity territory?

Masterclass explains that one of the biggest differences between toxic positivity and tragic optimism is that tragic optimism focuses on accepting the bad and difficult things that have happened instead of avoiding them. Instead of seeking pleasure the way toxic positivity does, tragic optimism asks us to understand the “‘tragic triad’ of pain, guilt, and death,” and learn to accept that they happened and will continue to happen and are a part of life. Tragic optimism asks individuals to go deep into negative feelings and emotions to better understand them, prioritizing “authenticity over an inaccurate self-image” and learn from the pain in an attempt to understand and accept it as a part of life.

I’m not saying tragic optimism is perfect. Like everything, it has the chance to be forced into the mainstream and perverted. It would be easy to turn this idea into something simple, into just accepting bad things happen and trying to find peace in that. And with a lot of trauma peace can’t be found easily, maybe not at all. Trauma hurts, and accepting that trauma happens doesn’t magically make it stop hurting.

There’s a lot more about tragic optimism I need to read up on, but it’s a concept I’m willing to work on and try practicing in my own life. Because life is hard. Everyone has experienced some form of trauma and adversity, and the world can be a hard place to live in. It can be selfish and cruel, violent and stifling, disappointing and infuriating. But it’s a part of life, just like laughing and smiling and all those joyful moments are.

Sources:

Bartlett, Justice. “‘Positive Vibes Only’ Is Toxic: The Danger of New Age Spiritualism.” Elephant Journal, www.elephantjournal.com/2020/01/compassion-is-not-convenient-it-is-not-business-as-usual/. Accessed 5 June 2023.

Cherry, Kendra. “This Is Why Toxic Positivity Can Be so Harmful.” Verywell Mind, 15 May 2023, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-positivity-5093958.

Muzyka, Ekaterina. “Woman with Sad Unhappy Face Holding Mask Fake Smile. Vector Illustration in Comic Retro Pop Art Style.” Https://Www.Dreamstime.Com/Stock-Illustration-Woman-Sad-Unhappy-Face-Holding-Mask-Fake-Smile-Vector-Illustration-Comic-Retro-Pop-Art-Style-Image79050442, Dreamstime, https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-woman-sad-unhappy-face-holding-mask-fake-smile-vector-illustration-comic-retro-pop-art-style-image79050442.

Perel, Esther. “How Tragic Optimism Benefits You .” MasterClass, 2 Dec. 2022, www.masterclass.com/articles/tragic-optimism.

1. OBSESSED

2. Which has its own problems that would take its own post to talk about.

3. Gotta love toxic mental health strategies being capitalized on!

4. Doug Ford really didn’t know what he was doing at all during the pandemic, and he still doesn’t, but Ontario voted for him anyways (in case it wasn’t obvious, I didn’t).

5. Two out of three of those things have since happened, and that ain’t bad.

6. Cue G note that starts My Chemical Romance’s “The Black Parade.”

7. Sometimes Victor.

8. It’s long and boring and ordinary for me now. I think every person has their own amounts of trauma which they’ve learned to cope with. I have mine; you have yours, and we learn to live with it. Tragically optimistically perhaps?