It is not a surprise to find social media, self-help books, self-proclaimed life coaches and motivational leaders promoting insane fake positivity to you.
You feel left out when everyone shares some positive vibes in WhatsApp stories, Insta stories and it makes you question yourself –
“Am I the only one with dark clouds over my head 24/7 while unicorns are hopping across the rainbow?”
This awkward feeling makes you feel “not okay”, and the desperate need to fit in with others mess up your life. You try to blend in with similar vibes giving birth to an imitation game of wearing and changing masks of fake positivity.
For instance, every time you go through the deepest and darkest abyss of your life, you will be served a dose of fake positivity to see the brighter side, and you get high for a while. You feel all charged up and invisible like superman.
Soon the dose wears down, and you are again invaded by the dreadful feeling you are running away. Nothing stays longer even if it is positivity.
In layman’s terms, I can describe it with a simple example.
You are geared up for a bumpy bus ride across the mountain region. After a few minutes of roller coaster experience, you hear your stomach growling with an uneasy feeling. It would help if you threw up, but since everyone is in a state of euphoria, you don’t feel right to express your discomfort.
You try to pretend that everything is under control. After a few more minutes, there comes another strong urge to throw up, and you look away in the window.
Your friend instantly tracks your feelings and suggests throwing up.
You, being a control-freak, deny the suggestion and continue to nail in your acting. The bus halts as the destination arrive, everyone gets up to move out, and in a perfect state of oblivion, you follow their footsteps.
Out of nowhere, you throw up right in front of everyone and realise that you can only prolong the uneasy feeling but cannot stop it. It is going to make its way out sooner or later, but it will do it for sure.
This is precisely the experience you go through when negative feelings invade you.
Every time you feel like bursting into tears, overwhelmed with anger, jealousy or regret, fake positivity preaches you to be a better human being and stay positive. It makes you see the positive side of every situation.
The bottled-up emotions which were about to be unleashed, stay inside of you. They eventually grow stronger with time, but the outlet is closed in the name of “positivity.”
It is perfectly okay to search for the light at the end of the tunnel.
It is not okay to ignore the existence of the darkness you have to pass to reach the light. The whole problem starts when you try to deny the existence of the darkness to reach the light.
Having bragged a lot about fake positivity, let me describe one more critical aspect.
Happiness and positivity are often misunderstood.
If you go through a mental breakdown, a rejection or severe anxiety, being positive cannot make you happy. It does not make things worse for you.
Positivity is not a cure to any critical situation of your life, but it is an attitude you need to summon the silent warrior in you.
It may not bring sunshine in your life, but it surely gives you the strength to wear the mantle of faith and keep working for things to change.
It may not remove the darkness in your life, but it will change the way you see it.
Well, these were my thoughts on fake positivity and let me know yours in the comments!
So the next time when someone advises you to search for rainbows in the dark thunder, you know what to do!
Guest Post( Author ) – >
Gururaj is a content writer from Hyderabad who writes to make a living and lives to write. When he is not writing, he can be caught taking a long nap, scrolling memes or reading a novel while sipping tea on the balcony. He has an irrational love for Batman movies, cat videos and illustrations. Yes, he spends a chunk of his time answering questions on Quora, sharing random experience on Medium and making amateur illustrations on Behance. Are you looking for a freelance writer? Find him on LinkedIn for a brief chat.
