Status Updates From Toxic Positivity: Keeping I...

If you lead with curiosity and seek understanding, the validation and empathy will flow naturally.

🤣 Complaining also tends to lead to the phenomenon of "one-upping," where someone tries to overshadow your complaint with their own. This is when you're complaining about your back hurting and your friend says, "Oh, you have no idea, my foot hurts so bad! I can barely walk."

Well I admit I had never thought of it in this way 😵

• An emotion is a physiological experience (like a rapid heartbeat or difficulty breathing) that gives you information about the world. It's a complex reaction pattern that is determined by the significance of the event.
• A feeling is your conscious awareness of the emotion itself.

But here's the thing: emotions aren't intellectual. You can't think them away or deny them out of existence. Emotions don't always tell the truth and sometimes we interpret them incorrectly, but they're there for a reason. Telling yourself that you shouldn't be feeling something won't change that reality.

There will always be someone who has it worse and someone who has it better. Recognizing that something is worse may help give you perspective, but it doesn't diminish what you're feeling. It's OK to complain about something you're grateful for.

😑 Every month Alissa gets slammed with work, and she's really good at her job, so they give her even more to do.

Positive thinking is often a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Instead of helping, it leads to emotional suppression, which is destructive to our bodies, minds, relationships, and society. The evidence clearly indicates that emotional suppression is ineffective, taxing, and mal-adaptive. It leads to a worsened mood, negative feelings about social interactions, continued negative emotions…