A bit about toxic positivity (and not about cannibalism)

Dear James,

this is a letter (way too long, just as you like it😉) about psychology, dangerous delusions, toxic behaviour, a pixar movie and a plane crash. It is not a letter about cannibalism, so don’t confuse it as such. I furthermore promise not to mention the grossest socks, I have ever heard of. You’re welcome. 😁

This morning I went on a lovely walk through YouTube. I was in a good mood, had high hopes and so I clicked on a video, that lands in my recommendations every other day. And I actually found something in there, that sparked my curiosity. It was the term toxic positivity that crossed my path in a surprising way and it opened a door with a lot of memories, emotions and opinions. So please, my friend, join me on my dive into that rough sea.

I heard the term first in a video about survivors of a crashed plane in the Andes and their struggle to stay alive - yes, that famous one, where they started to eat their dead. I will try not to make this letter too much about that tragedy… but is it a bit hard, because there are mountains involved…. Well, in this video from the great “Ask a mortician”-channel – I can recommend it, it is full of knowledge about death and the funeral industry and also packed with interesting and wild stories 🥳💀🤓 – the term toxic positivity was more used as a joke, because it was a bit of an understatement for that particular story, but it sparked my interest nonetheless. As you know, I am not a great fan of those popular personality tests, that tell you, if you think more introvert than extrovert or how agreeable you are – and don’t get me started on those that suggest that analytical thinking and creativity are opposites! They might be a tool for self-reflection, but other than that… well that is another topic… But how people react to threats and harsh truths – that is something, that tells you, what kind of person you have in front of you. And I have to add, that the pandemic revealed way to much about this personality trait in people I encounter on-and offline, than it fits my taste. But back to the plane crash. The survivors of the initial crash found themselves in a horrible situation. Some had died in the crash, some had horrible injuries, and they were far away from any civilization, way up high in the mountains. They didn’t have food, only some snacks and some bottles of alcohol and no clothes that matched the weather. The crew members were all dead, except for two, but they both were about to die. One was stuck in the cockpit with the broken radio rammed into his chest. Before he died, he told the others, that there are no flares on board and that their only chance for getting help, was to find the missing tail of the plane, where batteries could be found to maybe fix the radio. They only looked for an hour, because they were too exhausted to look for longer. The passengers of the plane were an university rugby team, so most people up there were 19 to 22 year old boys and men. They had two medicine students that had to do horrible tasks of putting things out of injured people and strapping their guts in with tight knotted T-Shirts. There was one woman who was a bit older and she became a nurse who would help everyone emotionally to get them through. But the leader that formed wasn’t her, it was the team captain, who took that position. And here we come to the too much positivity part.

Staying hopeful in a hellish scenario like this is of course important. If you can’t manage that you will probably lay down and never get up again, just freezing to death in the night. But the team captain went over the edge, his positive thinking turned into a denial of reality and that nearly cost their lives. He was in an “everything is fine”-mode and explained that they will be rescued shortly. God will not let them die – yes, they were very religious and from a Christian University – (how he explained the deaths of the others though is a riddle for me, but yeah, religion is not famous for logical storytelling). But others in the group had the thought, that they should maybe think ahead, just in case, they wouldn’t be rescued that fast. Who were those people, I pretend to hear you asking? You know it already, right? The medicine students and the “nurse”, of course. The people, who were into fixing reality, rather than just fantasizing: “This will all turn out for the best! I will not lift a finger…”

That is an interesting personality-trait and it is an important one to look at. In general - I think you might agree with me – humans are not so great at picking leaders that will benefit them… I will leave this here without naming examples. But on the other hand, humans seem to love having leaders. The great strength of humans as a species is – besides being able to transfer knowledge – the capability of organizing, I would argue. Being a good leader in happy times does not seem that hard, being a good leader in threatening times, that is the challenge. For me it is clear that I want the leaders of organizations of all kinds – from a club to a state – stay in reality, no matter how grim, rather than shy away and building up fantasies. Because shying away and ignoring reality puts even more threat into dangerous situations. But also for smaller troubles, personal problems for example, ignoring reality is dangerous in my experience. It can calm you down for the moment, but the longer you ignore reality, the harder it will hit you. Because reality does not care, how you feel about it. It just happens and it will not spare you just because you “always think positive”. The same way a virus does not care about your beliefs. If it gets into you, it will start to wreak havoc. It does not care, if you believe in it or not. And if you are stuck on a mountain and you have no food supplies, you will starve or freeze to death. To prepare for not being rescued is a good idea, no matter, if you believe that help is on its way or not…. right?

Well, here comes in more poison from the “everything is fine”-brigade. The team captain was against any sort of alternative to his ingenious “we just wait”-plan. By the way, I don’t want to be too harsh to the captain, they were all starving at this point, they had not much water, only what they were able to melt out of snow – my brain doesn’t work well, when I forget to eat lunch, so I would be bonkers probably, if I would be still alive at that point. That he wasn’t a fan of the idea to start eating the dead, is easy to understand – no one liked that idea. But he was also against ideas of climbing down the mountains, looking for help, trying to do expeditions – he was so much into his “everything is fine”-fantasy, that he seemed to see every other idea as a threat. I think, we can agree that this is indeed toxic behaviour – a poison strong enough to kill them all.

Really no one was pleased by the idea to eat human flesh in order to survive. I have to admit that I have great respect for the person, who took the first step. Three people went to cut tiny pieces of skin from one of the bodies. They didn’t tell, who it was from, let it dry on the roof of the crashed plane and then – I am sure with great disgust – they swallowed it. Everyone of the survivors clearly said, that they would want the others to eat their dead body, if it would mean, that they can survive. So, they assumed that the dead ones would state the same, which is fair enough in my eyes. But this letter is not about cannibalism (weirdly it is not that interesting to me, who would have guessed?).

There was one guy named Nando, who they had thought were dead at first, but obviously he wasn’t. After a few days, he felt strong and he wanted to go around to look for help. But as said, the team captain was against it. I can imagine that this could have ended in a bad fight that no one needed, but then something happened, that turned things around. They managed to hear radio. They couldn’t manage to send a signal, but they could hear radio. And so it happened that they had to hear, that the search for them has been discontinued and that they were all pronounced dead. That was the end for the team captain’s positivity. It was a hard message to receive for everyone, but he fell the deepest. He could no longer hold his construct and broke.

To end that story, two weeks in, they were hit by an avalanche at night, that killed 8 people – team captain and nurse included. But in the end, Nando and the second strongest guy managed to climb a summit. The lookout was not that promising, but they decided to go to the two snowless mountaintops, they saw in the distance. It took them a few days, but they finally found a man on a horse, who brought them to civilization. And shortly after, all the others were saved as well. 16 survived in the end from the 40 passengers. They were saved 72 days after the crash… 

Later it turned out, that plane crashed, because the pilots thought that they were much more west, then they actually were. And the survivors thought the same. They thought, they were in Chile in a complete wild part of the Andes, but actually, they were in Argentinia, only 30 km or so away from an (empty) hotel. Walking and looking saved them in the end. And eating the dead, yes, that as well.

You can watch the whole story here (and also learn about the grossest socks ever 🤢 This is a warning.)

The behaviour of the team captain reminded me of some people’s reaction in the pandemic. “It is only like the flu”, might be legitimate for normal people to believe at first – normal people, not people in power positions, whose job it is to protect citizens…. – but staying with that view, after seeing that the virus spreads faster and is more deadly, is denial. It would be nice to be able to say: Yeah, so? Just let them! But we all saw, how dangerous this is in this situation. Losing your head completely in conspiracy theories, losing the trust in your own ability to judge information correctly, so much so, that you get caught in the feeling, that there is no way to ever know truth again, to ever feel safe again – and then you end up blocking any effort to actually safe people in real life. From denying to take the vaccine to the horrible, horrible sickness of attacking and threatening medical staff, because their truth can not exist in the same world as your fantasy. This aggressive anger against people, who accept reality and don’t support your “all is fine”-fairy tale, might be a clue, that behind all this madness, fear is the fuel that keeps that fire so hot.

So, I started thinking about, where else I encountered this pattern. And I was ready for a walk in my memories, when YouTube suggested another video. This time it had toxic positivity in the title, but it was also not really about that, it was about the movie “Inside out” from Pixar, that I haven’t seen by the way. In the video a psychotherapist and a filmmaker watch the movie together and then talk about it. If you are not into spoilers and you burn to see that movie, you should not read the next paragraph. I mean it! Oh, you don’t care about spoilers? Me neither to be honest. So, come along:

The main character of the movie seems to be the feeling of joy in the inner emotional world of a young American girl. This girl is happy, so joy is the leader of the whole bunch of emotions. As such, she believes that she is the most important emotion, the goal of all goals, and thinks, that the girl needs to feel her through and through. There is a scene where she tries to cheer up Sadness and in her - well - self-obsession, she can’t acknowledge the importance of sadness. But the girl moves to another city and has to leave her friends behind. She tries to stay positive, to be joyous. And Joy is all in on that. But when shit happens and you can not accept that it is shit, joy becomes a lie. And this lie does not help in processing events. So everything goes batshit crazy and her emotions can not work anymore. A depressive situation appears, feelings stop being felt, decisions are made in darkness, everything is blocked and empty…. The situation is saved in the end, because Joy realizes that Sadness is what is needed. If shit happens, sadness needs to be felt. And I think, the general message is that all feelings need to be felt, because suppressing feelings can make you detached from your emotions, your empathy, reality and life. You can get lost (but you will still state, that you are happy and you may believe it yourself).

And of course you can watch this video here…

I am not sure how much you get annoyed by the omnipresent “You have to think positive, then everything is possible!”-message. Please, let me be my tortured self for a moment, when I rant about that bullshit. Yes, positive thinking is an important tool to get you to do hard and scary things, especially if success is not that likely. If you want to change your job or compete in the Olympics you better prepare and think about risks and options and when you go for it, than you should better be able to imagine a good outcome or you will hesitate and sabotage your own efforts. But this is about an obsession with positive thinking and I have been annoyed by it way too long. No, not everything is possible, if you just believe in yourself! Things can be hard and spiked with obstacles, tragedy can hit and you can not control everything, no matter, what you believe. And while this sentence in most cases just means a good intended: “I am rooting for you, that you will be able to stand up and walk your path to your goal!”, some geniuses think that it is a magical spell. “You just have to believe in yourself!” What the magic does not work? “You must doing something wrong!” And here it comes, a river of toxicity, carrying cruel bullshit along its way.

I encountered this stream of poison, blasting out of different esoteric holes, stating: “You just have to be positive and you will be happy, therefore, if you are not happy, it is entirely your fault, filthy little worm!” You can imagine, how that toxin hits someone with depression and you know me well enough to know, how angry it makes me, when people with that mindset target people with depression. Also from other religious sides, I observed a vibe of: “Bad things only happen to bad people, so if something bad happens to you, you must be full of sin.” And lately, now that work put me in touch with conspiracy theorists of the financial world (I can not recommend going into that corner), I see related things, where rich people, who fled to low tax countries, because they don’t want to contribute money to the country that made them rich, tell other rich people, that other people are poor, because they “think poor”. So the message is, all the poor people could actually be rich themselves, if they would only be better at thinking and therefore every rich person completely deserves every penny – even if earned through unethical treatment of others - because they are better at thinking rich. “You can reach everything, if you just put your mind to it”, said the rich guy.

The actual discussion about the term toxic positivity – which might have been coined by an author, I was too lazy to put effort into research – evolves more about that thing, were the struggle of others don’t get acknowledged. It is about that thing, I grew up with. When I wanted to tell about something that hurt or stressed me, I heard a lot of: “It is surly not as bad, as you describe it.” Other hits included: “You are exaggerating”, “you have to look on the bright side” and the all-time favourite for talking about failure: “Who knows, what it is good for.” Well, I know that these answers were not that much because of an obsession with positivity, it was more a disinterest in the struggle and emotions of others. But yes, for positive things was in general more interest available, so it might have been a mix of not wanting to engage with negative emotions and being too self-centered to care about someone else. For me it was an endless struggle to show my pain, so that it gets noticed and validated and in the end treated. But that sadly never worked out.

So, if a friend tells me about some tragedy that hit them, I always react at first in a way, that the person can see, that I believe in their feelings and that what happened to them is indeed shit. And then, hopefully, we feel all the emotions one by one, there will be comfort and confirmation that I will be there no matter what. And then and only then, we can talk about solutions and maybe other ways to look at it… In my mind it is the standard protocol for friends in need. If my pain would have been taken seriously in my childhood, my depressive tendencies could have been treated earlier and maybe I wouldn’t be in the state I am now. That might be, why I take those things very seriously.

People who are that much obsessed with positive vibes are toxic for others, because they don’t acknowledge their feelings. And people, whose obsession with positivity goes that far, that they build up delusions, that they will defend with aggression can get real dangerous. But I think, that they also bring themselves into troubles.

I once knew a girl, who always insisted, that she was happy. At first I thought, she just did not like to share her problems, which is fair enough, but then it looked more like, that she did some kind of self-hypnosis. It seemed to be some kind of mantra to state, that nothing can hurt her, because she is very shallow – which is a very odd thing to say about oneself, but even weirder to wear as a crown. And it was clearly not true - on the contrary, I had the feeling, that she was very empathic and caring and full of emotions that seemed to overwhelm her. That might be the reason, she put them away and denied having them. “I am always happy.” The problem for me was, that I would just say out loud, what was clear to see for me, and then there would appear a surprisingly aggressive side. She defended the view she had of herself. So to tell her, that she is in fact not shallow, was risky business, I can tell you.

So maybe lets close with signs, that let you detect, if you have toxic positivity inside you, that I found on a homepage:

Brushing off problems rather than facing them

Feeling guilty about being sad, angry or disappointed

Hiding your true feelings behind feel-good quotes that feel more socially acceptable

Hiding or disguising how you really feel

Minimizing other people’s feelings because they make you uncomfortable

Shaming other people, when they don’t have a positive attitude

Trying to be stoic or “get over” painful emotions

Well, now we did end at a kind of personality test 😅 And all that is left, is the old important question that, I assume, appears in every personality test: Would you sabotage the efforts of other survivors, who want to actually go and look for help, because you think that looking for help diminishes the image you build up without any evidence, that every second a rescue team will appear, in a situation where you and your mates starve and freeze at a height of 4000 meters after a horrible plane crash in the Andes? Those personality tests really go deep, don’t they? 😉

Best wishes, stay positive, but not too much,

Your hungry but not that hungry friend