I'll be the first to admit that it gets a bit tedious to be around someone who's eternally mopey and complaining about everything, but I also have to say that I find "excessively positive" people a bit on the annoying side.
Perhaps you know the type...
Like a friend of mine from many years ago who somehow felt that everything she ever encountered was "an opportunity."
A tax audit (bummer) was "an opportunity to learn ways to improve bookkeeping." When she fell and broke her leg on the first day of a 2-week ski vacation it was "an opportunity to experience what it feels like to be disabled."
There were never any problems in her life.
Avoiding Reality?
Nasturtium
Whenever I feel the inclination to become critical, I tend to pause to consider what exactly bothers me about certain behaviors.
In this case, it's my interpretation that some people are living in a state of "cognitive disconnect" from what is real. Some things in life do authentically suck... and whereas I can admire the effort to not be dragged down by setbacks, claiming that inherently bad things are somehow "good" or "opportunities" seems a bit disingenuous to me.
Seems more realistic to fully accept that something bad happened, and then navigate the situation in a "make the best of it" way.
Unexperienced Emotions
Thinking about my former friend this morning got me to thinking about the concept of "unexperienced emotions." Some psychologists would argue that no such thing is possible, but I'm not so sure.
Red fall leaves
The Human psyche is very "clever" and employs all manners of tricks to help us survive traumatic and difficult situations. Psychologists only understand a small fragment of what's going on in our brains... and most often, when we talk about unexperienced emotions, we're talking about severe trauma; we're talking about the brain "blocking out" something that's too horrible to look at, directly... as a coping mechanism.
Here, we are talking about something far milder... perhaps some kind of fear of having a negative emotion.
When we deal with Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD) it usually concerns some truly horrible situation... but in recent years, it has become more accepted that PTSD can also arise from a long sequence of small negatives... often called "Complex PTSD."
Maybe what seems like an addiction to "not feeling anything negative" is a similar type of response, developed over a long period of time.
Why Do I Even Care?
Last flowers of the fall...
What got me to ultimately sit down and type this out was the additional memory that "M"-- in spite of all her positivity-- wasn't actually a happy person. She definitely had a lot of initial magnetism, but it covered something more troubled.
It also bothers me from the perspective that the whole "positive thinking" movement might be a little misguided... and possibly psychologically damaging in the sense that it often asks us to "lie" about how we're really feeling.
Saying "Everything is awesome and I am having a perfect day!" when you just had someone run into your car and you're going to miss an important meeting doesn't actually work because our inner body wisdom knows we're lying.
So why not just have an "Authentic Thinking" movement, instead? Accept what you're feeling and experiencing-- good, bad or indifferent-- but don't fall into a pattern of dwelling on it, eternally. Or lying about it.
What's YOUR Experience? Do you consider yourself a positive person? Do you know anyone who seems "excessively peppy?" How do you feel when you're around that person? Do they seem sincere, or a little over the top? What's your opinion of the whole "think positive" issue? Do you think it genuinely helps people... or is it just mental trickery? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
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Created at 171119 15:12 PDT