Positive Pressure?

I have been pondering on this topic for a few days now. Doing a bit of research and what not. 

I think there is a new pressure added to society and that is being POSITIVE. First of all, it is great to be positive, but it is also normal to be negative and some people are actually born with predisposition to having negative neuro pathways.

Body Positive and self love are great things, but it has also become a problem. Being positive all the time is unhealthy in my opinion. Not everything can be positive or have something about it that is positive. 

On instagram, there is so much FAKE positivity. If you are always “positive”… you are lying to some extent. It gets to the point where people make being sad, Positive! There is NOTHING positive about feeling depressed or suicidal. And if you put a post up telling the truth and admitting the negatives, you are just told to “be positive”. 

Being positive will NOT fix everything. Looking for the positives in a shitty situation is great if you can do it. But sometimes you need to pull your head out of la la land and face the facts. Some things are NEGATIVE and there is and never will be a positive side. 

People get shamed for being negative. Someone posted a picture of their body and said how much they hate it. Some comments were, “don’t complain.” Yeah that’s fucking helpful.

 “Just find what you like and focus on that.” If I could find something I liked why would I be telling you I hate everything about my body. Cheers for the tip.

“You don’t need to hate your body, love yourself.” I am aware I don’t NEED to. If I could just stop, I would. 

“Stay positive!”

People only put negative posts like that to reach out for understanding, not to be told to be positive. It is HEALTHY to be sad sometimes. 

It sounds so stupid when people say stuff like, “cried for hours until I cried myself to sleep. At least I slept for two hours though #staypositive.” 

There is nothing good about crying for hours wanting to die, then crying yourself to sleep to only sleep for two hours. You are ALLOWED to say that is shit and your night fucking sucked without having to find anything positive about it.

Another example would be, “just self harmed again, but it wasn’t deep so that’s good.” No it is not good. There is nothing positive about selfharm. Just because it wasn’t deep doesn’t make the situation any better. You had to feel so low and awful to get to the frame of mind, which is… NOT POSITIVE! 

My suggestion would be to watch the kids movie “inside out.” It is a great representation of why being sad sometimes is good and healthy for a brain and how it makes other emotions fall into place. Humans need to cry and be sad to become strong enough to pick themselves back up and smile because the sadness has past so there is a pathway to feeling better and/or happy.

– Amy xx