Trying to balance work, school, student teaching, friends, family and being a girlfriend is hard. On the weekends, I am a student manager. I am a girlfriend. I am a daughter. I am a student trying to catch up on work. During the week I go to class. I participate in clubs. I student teach 3 days in the week. It is a lot, and it is exhausting. Sometimes I feel as that the end of my rope is starting to unravel. I feel a thin as a sheet of paper. My shoulders are tight every day with the stress, anxiety and worry I carry from week to week.
It’s hard to feel supported when you don’t want to rely on everyone else and instead want to rely on yourself. Sometimes the biggest thought in my head is “I want to do this on my own but I can’t.” For a person like me who wants to take on the world’s problems, being honest, standing up for myself and saying no is hard. I don’t stand up for myself as much as I should. Though I am a great self advocate in school when it comes to my needs, I am not a good self advocate when it comes to my wants. It is hard for me to balance my relationship, friendships, career and academics while handling myself. I cry a lot out of fear, frustration, anxiety and a even more feelings than that. Sometimes, I don’t know what the feeling is or what caused it, but I know I am going through a strong emotion.
I like to put up a hard face and I like to take on as much as I can to prove I’m a strong woman that can juggle everything. In my own head, sometimes I think I can do that, but it isn’t until I break down that I realize I can’t and I need to talk about it. Part of the balancing act for me is what happens the moment I speak up. I keep to myself a lot because I hate to be offered solutions rather than just a listening ear.
Perhaps the worst part of balancing everything is when people say “it’ll be okay.” Shut up. I know it will be okay, but right now, in this moment, I am not okay and you are diminishing my feelings. Stop telling people “don’t be sad,” “you’ll be fine,” “wipe away your tears,” and instead listen and help them heal instead of not letting them feel. Toxic positivity is exactly that. According the the University of Washington’s Psychology department, “Toxic positivity is a way of responding to your own or someone else’s suffering that comes across as a lack of empathy. It dismisses emotions instead of affirming them and could come from a place of discomfort.”
For years and years and years, when I cried I was told “it’s okay” instead of “it’s okay to cry.” It was damaging. Even today I apologize for a natural human reaction to pain when I cry. I cry very, very easily and I often do that as a reflection of the tone of conversations. After months of therapy, it is because certain tones of voice and loud sounds, trigger a response to trauma in my brain and so I start to cry when someone raises their voice at me or a door gets slammed. It’s something I never knew happened until I started therapy. I also was told that I dissociate as a way to deal with feelings I can’t yet process. Toxic positivity only furthers that. Because my feelings are dismissed, it reinforces that they aren’t important and therefor that I can’t talk about them.
Toxic positivity is not only harmful for individuals, but harmful for relationships too. According to Samara Quintero and Jamie Long, toxic positivity can create feelings of shame, suppressed emotions and isolation. In turn, this can stress personal relationships. For example “good vibes only,” implies that individuals can only be happy and positive around a particular person and that you have to be a certain type of person around people. It leads to inauthentic interactions.
Toxic positivity can be avoided by simply listening to your friends and family. By offering to listen or be empathetic rather than unintentionally dismissive, you can erase the cycle of toxic positivity. For me, the start was reminding myself that toxic positivity is often unintentional. People don’t realize the harm that it has by dismissing their feelings. It takes people time and lots of reminders to remember that what their doing is a bad habit. Balancing my life is difficult as it is, but sometimes all it takes is a moment to step back and say “the world doesn’t care how you feel, so feel whatever you need to.” Most of my stress surrounding my life is because I don’t let myself feel anger, frustration, sadness, disappointment and more negative feelings so as to not make others uncomfortable. I am not here on this earth to make others comfortable. I am here on this earth to do my best.
Read more about Toxic Positivity here.
HXCO,
Cecilia