Hello everyone, welcome to the River’s Virtual Sunday Service. My name is Alison. I am the assistant pastor here. We are currently in a sermon series titled, “Invisible Beliefs That Shape Life and Country.” We are looking at different invisible values and beliefs that shape our culture and life, and we are comparing them to God’s Agape love.
2020 has been quite the year. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of memes comparing 2020 to a dumpster fire. We have all experienced so much loss, so much fear, so much pain, and so much uncertainty. Many psychologists have said that we are living through a “collective trauma.” With the incredible challenges that we are facing, individually and collectively, I want to talk today about one invisible belief that is making things even worse for all of us. I want to talk about “Toxic Positivity.”
Have you heard that term before? It’s been getting some buzz in news articles recently. Psychologists define toxic positivity as:
“the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.” --The Psychology Group
The problem with “toxic positivity” is not positivity itself. Positive thinking can be incredibly helpful. It can be a wonderful coping skill to help us navigate tough times. But, like with anything, when taken to the extreme it can become toxic. Positivity becomes toxic when it is used to deny, minimize, and invalidate. When, instead of helping us feel things like gratitude, joy, and hope it instead leads us to feel misunderstood, isolated, and ashamed.
Have you ever shared about the ways that you were struggling and been told to “look on the bright side,” “think positive,” or “find the silver lining”? When what you really needed was for the person to listen and empathize? That is toxic positivity. Toxic positivity also shows up as social media feeds that are “good vibes” only or the inner voice that says, “I shouldn’t feel this. It could be so much worse.” Toxic positivity is so rampant in our culture that illustrator Emily McDowell created a line of greeting cards that, in an effort to show what true empathy looks like, pokes fun at the incredibly invalidating things we can say to each other (and ourselves) when we are suffering. Her cards say things like:
Toxic positivity tells us that emotions like sadness, grief, anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, loneliness, or stress are “bad” and “unacceptable.” And so, when we experience these perfectly natural human emotions--emotions that it makes sense for all of us to be feeling right now--we can start to believe that we are doing something wrong. That we are handling things badly. That we are bad people for not being more positive or having more faith. And this can lead us to begin to feel shame. It can also lead us to begin suppressing our emotions. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel our emotions and work through them, we will sometimes try to deny them and bury them inside. Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually make them go away. Buried emotions can resurface as depression, anxiety, and/or physical pain or illness, among other things.
Sometimes toxic positivity is wrapped up in religious language. When this happens it is called “spiritual bypassing” because spirituality is being used as a way to try to bypass painful emotions. But the thing is, toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing are not biblical. For example, take a look at the psalms. The psalmists did not shy away from expressing their true feelings! Take Psalm 22:
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
Wow! What a description of the psalmist’s pain. Instead of judging his or her painful emotions as bad and shutting them down, the author leaned into them and gave them space. He or she took the time to process them by putting them into words and expressing them to God.
Jesus didn’t deny his emotions either. When his friend Lazarus died he didn’t force a positive outlook by saying things like “everything happens for a reason” or “God is in control.” Instead he allowed himself to feel his grief and to weep. Later, in anticipation of being arrested and killed, Jesus told his friends, “I am deeply grieved, even to death” before throwing himself on the ground to pray.
We cannot use having faith in God as an excuse to avoid our feelings. God’s Agape love says that we are unconditionally loved and accepted. This includes our emotions! God accepts all of our emotions and we need to learn how to do the same. We need to stop categorizing feelings--and even more importantly ourselves--as “good” or “bad,” “acceptable” or “unacceptable.” Judging our feelings in this way is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Feeling sadness, anxiety, fear, or anger does not make us “bad.” And feeling joy, hope, gratitude, or peace does not make us “good.” Authentically experiencing the full range of human emotions only makes us human. Humans who are unconditionally loved and accepted by God.
So what does it look like to reject “toxic positivity” in favor of “healthy positivity”?
One thing we can do is: Accept and experience emotions as they are, not as we think they should be. When we do this we are following the instruction of Romans 12:15 which says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” It is incredibly important to meet people where they are at. To rejoice with them as they are rejoicing. To weep with them as they are weeping. To enter into what they are actually feeling and experiencing, not what we think they should be. And this starts with ourselves. Do we allow ourselves to rejoice when it’s time to rejoice? To weep when it’s time to weep? Do we allow ourselves to experience each of our emotions as they arise? Or do we shut them down in favor of what we think we should be feeling?
A second step we can take is to: Set aside time to feel and process emotions. Sometimes we need to be intentional about creating space to get in touch with what we are feeling. This one is really important for me because I am incredibly good at pushing my feelings aside, especially painful ones. I have a tendency to keep powering through until I just can’t anymore. What I’ve found though is that doing this actually makes things worse in the long run. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to deny my feelings and it usually ends up making them stronger. So, I’ve found that it’s helpful for me to set aside time and give myself permission to feel. I will sometimes actually say to myself, “Alison, you have permission to feel right now.” And then I will just sit with whatever comes up. I will do some breathing exercises and will spend time talking to God about whatever I’m feeling. By doing this, I often find that the painful feelings begin to feel more manageable or even if they remain intense, at least I do not feel so alone in them. I know that God is with me and that is comforting.
And that leads me to my third and final practical suggestion. We can: Allow for multiple feelings to coexist. One of the reasons we get sucked into “toxic positivity” is because we forget that it is possible to feel multiple, sometimes conflicting, emotions at the same time. We falsely believe that being sad means we can’t also feel hopeful. Or that being frustrated means we can’t also feel grateful. But this isn’t true! We are capable of feeling many things at the same time. The apostle Paul said this in a letter to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 4:8-9):
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
Paul was describing the suffering he and his companions were experiencing as they sought to spread the good news about Jesus. It is significant that Paul did not deny the tremendous suffering they were experiencing and the impact it was having on them. He acknowledged that they were afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. Yet, at the same time they also felt hope, comfort, and motivation to persevere. These emotions did not cancel each other out. Instead, they coexisted.
I had a profound experience of what these suggestions can look like in practice three years ago, when my now-husband and I were on a trip to Florida. We were incredibly excited about this trip because we knew that it was when we would likely get engaged. On the first night of the trip, Mike proposed. We were thrilled! We called all our family members and began what was supposed to be a week of celebration. The next day, I got a call from my sister. My beloved grandmother, one of the most important people in my life, had had a stroke. She wasn’t going to recover. I was devastated. The biggest gift I gave myself that week and in the months to come was to let myself weep when I needed to weep and to let myself rejoice when I needed to rejoice. I let go of what I thought I should be feeling and embraced what I actually was feeling from day to day, moment to moment. This meant a lot of ups and downs. It meant waiting about a month to tell friends about our engagement so that I would have time to grieve. It meant setting aside time to cry and remember my grandmother. But it also meant allowing myself to excitedly make plans for our wedding and our future. That season was incredibly complex emotionally. I experienced that it is possible to feel deep sadness and incredible joy at the same time. And I learned what a gift it can be to have others who are willing to join with you in what you are really feeling. To rejoice when you rejoice and weep when you weep. I am so grateful that Mike and a number of close friends were able to do that for me.
Embracing “healthy positivity” is important in big moments, like the one I experienced, but also in the emotions of our day-to-day lives. As we seek to make it through this global pandemic together, let us remember that all feelings are gifts from God. They are important sources of information and points of connection. Being real about our feelings can be incredibly hard. But it is also freeing and allows us to connect more authentically with ourselves, with others, and with God. As we feel, may we discover that God is there with us. May we internalize that there is no emotion that makes us “bad” or disconnects us from God. And may we learn firsthand that we, and our full range of human emotions, are unconditionally accepted and loved by God. As we allow ourselves to be validated, empathized with, and comforted by God, may we begin to experience peace, joy, and hope in the midst of our suffering.
If you are interested in discussing the sermon together, please join us on Zoom at 11:40am EST. I would love to hear your thoughts and think together about the ways that we can embrace “healthy positivity.”
2020 has been quite the year. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of memes comparing 2020 to a dumpster fire. We have all experienced so much loss, so much fear, so much pain, and so much uncertainty. Many psychologists have said that we are living through a “collective trauma.” With the incredible challenges that we are facing, individually and collectively, I want to talk today about one invisible belief that is making things even worse for all of us. I want to talk about “Toxic Positivity.”
Have you heard that term before? It’s been getting some buzz in news articles recently. Psychologists define toxic positivity as:
“the overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state that results in the denial, minimization and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.” --The Psychology Group
The problem with “toxic positivity” is not positivity itself. Positive thinking can be incredibly helpful. It can be a wonderful coping skill to help us navigate tough times. But, like with anything, when taken to the extreme it can become toxic. Positivity becomes toxic when it is used to deny, minimize, and invalidate. When, instead of helping us feel things like gratitude, joy, and hope it instead leads us to feel misunderstood, isolated, and ashamed.
Have you ever shared about the ways that you were struggling and been told to “look on the bright side,” “think positive,” or “find the silver lining”? When what you really needed was for the person to listen and empathize? That is toxic positivity. Toxic positivity also shows up as social media feeds that are “good vibes” only or the inner voice that says, “I shouldn’t feel this. It could be so much worse.” Toxic positivity is so rampant in our culture that illustrator Emily McDowell created a line of greeting cards that, in an effort to show what true empathy looks like, pokes fun at the incredibly invalidating things we can say to each other (and ourselves) when we are suffering. Her cards say things like:
- I promise never to refer to your illness as a "journey." Unless someone takes you on a cruise.
- Together we can find a cure for the phrase, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
- When people say, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” I don’t think they get how much you hate running.
Toxic positivity tells us that emotions like sadness, grief, anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, loneliness, or stress are “bad” and “unacceptable.” And so, when we experience these perfectly natural human emotions--emotions that it makes sense for all of us to be feeling right now--we can start to believe that we are doing something wrong. That we are handling things badly. That we are bad people for not being more positive or having more faith. And this can lead us to begin to feel shame. It can also lead us to begin suppressing our emotions. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel our emotions and work through them, we will sometimes try to deny them and bury them inside. Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually make them go away. Buried emotions can resurface as depression, anxiety, and/or physical pain or illness, among other things.
Sometimes toxic positivity is wrapped up in religious language. When this happens it is called “spiritual bypassing” because spirituality is being used as a way to try to bypass painful emotions. But the thing is, toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing are not biblical. For example, take a look at the psalms. The psalmists did not shy away from expressing their true feelings! Take Psalm 22:
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
Wow! What a description of the psalmist’s pain. Instead of judging his or her painful emotions as bad and shutting them down, the author leaned into them and gave them space. He or she took the time to process them by putting them into words and expressing them to God.
Jesus didn’t deny his emotions either. When his friend Lazarus died he didn’t force a positive outlook by saying things like “everything happens for a reason” or “God is in control.” Instead he allowed himself to feel his grief and to weep. Later, in anticipation of being arrested and killed, Jesus told his friends, “I am deeply grieved, even to death” before throwing himself on the ground to pray.
We cannot use having faith in God as an excuse to avoid our feelings. God’s Agape love says that we are unconditionally loved and accepted. This includes our emotions! God accepts all of our emotions and we need to learn how to do the same. We need to stop categorizing feelings--and even more importantly ourselves--as “good” or “bad,” “acceptable” or “unacceptable.” Judging our feelings in this way is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Feeling sadness, anxiety, fear, or anger does not make us “bad.” And feeling joy, hope, gratitude, or peace does not make us “good.” Authentically experiencing the full range of human emotions only makes us human. Humans who are unconditionally loved and accepted by God.
So what does it look like to reject “toxic positivity” in favor of “healthy positivity”?
One thing we can do is: Accept and experience emotions as they are, not as we think they should be. When we do this we are following the instruction of Romans 12:15 which says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” It is incredibly important to meet people where they are at. To rejoice with them as they are rejoicing. To weep with them as they are weeping. To enter into what they are actually feeling and experiencing, not what we think they should be. And this starts with ourselves. Do we allow ourselves to rejoice when it’s time to rejoice? To weep when it’s time to weep? Do we allow ourselves to experience each of our emotions as they arise? Or do we shut them down in favor of what we think we should be feeling?
A second step we can take is to: Set aside time to feel and process emotions. Sometimes we need to be intentional about creating space to get in touch with what we are feeling. This one is really important for me because I am incredibly good at pushing my feelings aside, especially painful ones. I have a tendency to keep powering through until I just can’t anymore. What I’ve found though is that doing this actually makes things worse in the long run. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to deny my feelings and it usually ends up making them stronger. So, I’ve found that it’s helpful for me to set aside time and give myself permission to feel. I will sometimes actually say to myself, “Alison, you have permission to feel right now.” And then I will just sit with whatever comes up. I will do some breathing exercises and will spend time talking to God about whatever I’m feeling. By doing this, I often find that the painful feelings begin to feel more manageable or even if they remain intense, at least I do not feel so alone in them. I know that God is with me and that is comforting.
And that leads me to my third and final practical suggestion. We can: Allow for multiple feelings to coexist. One of the reasons we get sucked into “toxic positivity” is because we forget that it is possible to feel multiple, sometimes conflicting, emotions at the same time. We falsely believe that being sad means we can’t also feel hopeful. Or that being frustrated means we can’t also feel grateful. But this isn’t true! We are capable of feeling many things at the same time. The apostle Paul said this in a letter to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 4:8-9):
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
Paul was describing the suffering he and his companions were experiencing as they sought to spread the good news about Jesus. It is significant that Paul did not deny the tremendous suffering they were experiencing and the impact it was having on them. He acknowledged that they were afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down. Yet, at the same time they also felt hope, comfort, and motivation to persevere. These emotions did not cancel each other out. Instead, they coexisted.
I had a profound experience of what these suggestions can look like in practice three years ago, when my now-husband and I were on a trip to Florida. We were incredibly excited about this trip because we knew that it was when we would likely get engaged. On the first night of the trip, Mike proposed. We were thrilled! We called all our family members and began what was supposed to be a week of celebration. The next day, I got a call from my sister. My beloved grandmother, one of the most important people in my life, had had a stroke. She wasn’t going to recover. I was devastated. The biggest gift I gave myself that week and in the months to come was to let myself weep when I needed to weep and to let myself rejoice when I needed to rejoice. I let go of what I thought I should be feeling and embraced what I actually was feeling from day to day, moment to moment. This meant a lot of ups and downs. It meant waiting about a month to tell friends about our engagement so that I would have time to grieve. It meant setting aside time to cry and remember my grandmother. But it also meant allowing myself to excitedly make plans for our wedding and our future. That season was incredibly complex emotionally. I experienced that it is possible to feel deep sadness and incredible joy at the same time. And I learned what a gift it can be to have others who are willing to join with you in what you are really feeling. To rejoice when you rejoice and weep when you weep. I am so grateful that Mike and a number of close friends were able to do that for me.
Embracing “healthy positivity” is important in big moments, like the one I experienced, but also in the emotions of our day-to-day lives. As we seek to make it through this global pandemic together, let us remember that all feelings are gifts from God. They are important sources of information and points of connection. Being real about our feelings can be incredibly hard. But it is also freeing and allows us to connect more authentically with ourselves, with others, and with God. As we feel, may we discover that God is there with us. May we internalize that there is no emotion that makes us “bad” or disconnects us from God. And may we learn firsthand that we, and our full range of human emotions, are unconditionally accepted and loved by God. As we allow ourselves to be validated, empathized with, and comforted by God, may we begin to experience peace, joy, and hope in the midst of our suffering.
If you are interested in discussing the sermon together, please join us on Zoom at 11:40am EST. I would love to hear your thoughts and think together about the ways that we can embrace “healthy positivity.”