Why Pretending You're Okay Is Wrecking Your Nervous System

What Is Toxic Positivity?

It was a new phrase for me to. But as in all snapshots in time there is a lot of new jargon around.

I did a Uni paper on communications years and years ago (I must have been a bit bored) and they then explained it as a way to keep people in their lanes. If you didnt know the jargon, that basically meant the one speaking it was the expert by default.

Energetic hygiene

Though the lens of

Somatic permission

Hold space for

And toxic positivity

Now I’m not one for these buzz words, or jargon, I find them irritating at best,  but I must say the toxic positivity thing had me thinking about something that happened in my clinic a few years back.

I had a client with stage 4 cancer…. The most gentle and wonderful of souls, but like all acute illness she had the backstory of a life of emotional pain and non alignment with her soul.

In other words she constantly tried to live within the rules and when she didnt the guilt made her very sick

She would come to the clinic a couple of times a week to keep her pain levels down and work though what she needed to release the energy of in a life that was out of kilter.

One day she came and sat with me, sans her usual smile and determination … her words were

I’m so sorry, I know I’m supposed to be brave and positive and upbeat, but I can’t today and I feel so guilty because I just cant get there. I’m scared and tired and angry.

Bless her she had me near tears, and believe me that doesn't happen that often.  You can’t be an effective practitioner if your falling apart every time you encounter big emotions or you would be a wreck within a week, and most certainly useless to your clients.

That aside, my heart broke for this wonderful soul.  And then I became angry. This world of ours is so bent and broken around reality its wrong on every level.

We have been taught since we could open our mouths to keep our emotions in check.

No one really cares how you manage that …..

Just do it.

So embedded are we in the belief that we need to turn our backs on our emotions, the very thing that keeps us alive, curious and vibrant that here was a woman that felt guilt that she couldn’t smile in the face of her own death, even for a day.

What happened: I hugged her and held her hand while she spoke of her terror and then wrote her a note from Spirit excusing her from pretending to feel anything other than what she felt until I saw her again… that at least made her smile and understand the wrongness of her guilt

Emotions exist for a reason — but like so many of the rules we’re taught to follow, suppressing them just to keep others comfortable makes no real sense. What it will do, however, is make you sick. And sometimes very sick.

Anger is ugly - especially for women… most unattractive lol

Sadness — Weakness. Self-indulgent.

Seen as something to snap out of. If you were sad, you were being a burden.

"Toughen up." "Don’t cry." "There are people worse off than you."

Fear — Irrational. Embarrassing.

Told it made you small or cowardly. Pushed to push through it, even when it wasn't safe.

Shame — Keep it quiet. Bury it.Never named, just deeply embedded. Made to feel like you were the mistake, not that you made one.

Guilt — Used to make you behave properly.Mostly used as a tool for control. Associated with morality (but only the morality of the person that wants you to behave they way they need you to)  and being “good.”

After all I've done for you ....if you loved me you would …im so disappointed in you

Joy — Too much. Settle down.Only acceptable in small doses. Big joy made you “too much” or naive.

Love — Earn it. Prove you're worthy.

Rarely unconditional. Love often came with strings, expectations, or conditions. … Be good and i’ll love you

Even and maybe especially

Neutrality/Contentment — Lazy. Aimless.If you weren’t striving, hustling, or proving, you were wasting time. Peace wasn’t productive enough.

"What are you doing with your life?" "Don’t settle.”

And yes some emotions are as you know ‘uncomfortable’… some really uncomfortable but imagine a life without them…

Take the emotion of sadness. Now ask yourself ….. what if I couldn’t feel it?

What would happen if sadness wasn’t part of your emotional vocabulary?

You wouldn’t know what mattered. You wouldn’t recognise loss, or endings, or the ache of something once held and now gone. You wouldn’t know where your heart had been stretched, where love once lived, or what your soul is still trying to process.

Without sadness, there’s no signal that something was meaningful. No pause to honour what you’ve outgrown.

You might feel empty instead of broken ,  and there’s a difference. Broken implies something mattered. Empty is just numb.

Sadness tells you that you cared. That you're human. That your heart still works.

It’s not the enemy. It’s the messenger. And when allowed to move, it becomes the bridge to acceptance, growth, and eventually that wonderful peace.

So don’t fear your sadness. Fear what happens when you stop feeling at all.

And while on the subject of fear

What if you couldn’t feel fear?

You’d walk into traffic. You’d touch the fire. You’d ignore your gut when someone felt off. You’d take every risk with no measure, no instinct, no inner signal to pause or question.

Fear is not weakness. It’s data.

It tells you when something isn’t aligned. When something’s unfamiliar. When you’re standing at the edge of expansion or danger … and yes, those two can feel weirdly similar.

The trick isn’t to eliminate fear. It’s to get into the right relationship with it.

To ask, “Are you protecting me… or just keeping me small?”

Fear becomes a powerful ally when you stop seeing it as a wall and start treating it like a wise friend with a slightly or sometimes not so slightly anxious tone. It doesn’t always need to be obeyed ,  but it should be heard.

So instead of trying to conquer fear, try working with it. Ask it questions. Get curious. Let it speak, and then decide if it’s telling the truth… or just trying to keep you safe in a world you’ve already outgrown.

Toxic positivity is the pressure to be relentlessly upbeat, no matter what’s actually going on. It’s the belief that “good vibes only” is the highest spiritual path … when in truth, that mindset can quietly gaslight your own emotional reality.

It’s not the same as genuine optimism or healthy reframing. It’s bypassing. It’s slapping a smiley face over grief, rage, fear, or confusion. It’s denying pain in favour of a forced “it’s all good” narrative — and in doing so, it shuts down real processing, healing, and change.

You’ve likely felt it before:

• When someone tells you to "just stay positive" while you’re drowning.

• When you feel ashamed for not being able to “high vibe” your way out of real trauma.

• When you push away your own intuition because it feels “too negative.”

You’ve probably heard the line:

“You can’t know joy without sadness.”

It gets thrown around in that jargon— but emotions aren’t here to serve as measuring sticks for one another.

Sadness isn’t the support act for Happiness.

It’s its own teacher. Its own terrain.

Sadness comes to soften us. To slow us down. To remind us we’ve lost something we loved, or that something within us is calling for change. It pulls us inward so we can listen to the parts of ourselves that joy often drowns out with celebration.

And joy? Joy doesn’t need sadness as a reference point to be real. Joy is the moment. Fully. Without comparison. Without the need to be brighter than anything else.

Emotions aren’t there to define each other. They stand on their own. Each one is a complete message, a whole experience, a portal into something meaningful.

So instead of using one to justify the other, maybe we could start meeting each of them as valid,  not because they make other emotions more vivid, but because they have something to say all on their own.

Each one arrives with a purpose. And none of them are asking to be weighed against the others.

Emotions are energy.

All of them. And energy, all energy needs to move

So the point of all of this is this:

Suppressing so-called "negative" emotions doesn’t raise your frequency … it suppresses your signal. It stagnates your field. It breeds shame, disconnection, and self-doubt.

This isn’t about toxic positivity.... it’s about honest alignment.

It’s about letting yourself feel what’s real, without judgement. Anger, grief, fear, joy, peace because  they all belong.

When emotions are allowed to move through the body instead of being silenced or shoved down,  or you attempt to ignore them by focusing on some imagined positive, they become signals, not symptoms. They guide, they clear, they shift. But only if we stop trying to outrun them.

This isn’t about wallowing in every emotion that comes knocking ....it’s about respecting them as perfect tools, not traps.

Emotions are messengers, not permanent residences. When we honour them, not bury them, we get the information we need to realign with who we are and move through life with clarity, strength, and emotional integrity. That’s not indulgence,

that’s intelligent navigation.

Start with presence. Breathe. Notice where the emotion sits in your body. Give it space. Let it move.

Because healing doesn’t come from pretending it’s all fine. It comes from feeling what’s true for you,  and letting your system do what it was built to do: process, adapt, and return to balance.

Normally, naturally and a damn sight more healthily than pretending you have it all worked out, and you live in constant bliss.

Think of emotions like letters in the mail. Every one arrives with a message of some sort... something to tell you about where you are, what matters, or what needs attention. You read it, take in what’s useful, then let it go... You wouldn’t carry every letter you’ve ever received around with you..... you take the message, not the weight.

Allow the process....

It might feel like an emotional tsunami to start ... but it will soon fall into balance.

You may be getting a few blogs over the next while as I have a new speech to text thing on here… and as a lot of you know I am much better at speaking than writing.. so that sorts that out.. other than it not removing all the swear words… a winner.. please remember to go back and like and share the post to anyone that you know needs some support.

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