{"id":228164,"date":"2024-06-04T19:03:26","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T19:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/04\/toxic-positivity-why-excessive-optimism-is-bad-for-your-health-and-mental-well-being\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:17:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:17:53","slug":"toxic-positivity-why-excessive-optimism-is-bad-for-your-health-and-mental-well-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/04\/toxic-positivity-why-excessive-optimism-is-bad-for-your-health-and-mental-well-being\/","title":{"rendered":"Toxic positivity: Why excessive optimism is bad for your health and mental well-being"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Having a positive mindset can result in unexpected consequences<\/p>\n

DEEPOL by plainpicture\/Anja Weber-Decker<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Are you struggling with low self-esteem? If so, you may have been told to repeat phrases such as \u201cI am a loveable person, I am a loveable person, I am a loveable person\u201d. Positive chants like this, known as self-affirmations, are said to boost a person\u2019s mood and feelings of worth. You might think that sounds too good to be true \u2013 and you would be right. When psychologists tested the effects of this very mantra, they found that it backfired. Those participants who started out with low self-esteem ended up feeling worse. The problem was that they simply didn\u2019t believe what they were saying.<\/p>\n

We know that a positive attitude can be good for us<\/a> and that the right mindset can have a real impact on our health and happiness. But it turns out that we can have too much of a good thing. What those psychologists studying self-affirmations found was an example of \u201ctoxic positivity\u201d \u2013 the idea that a forced optimistic interpretation of our experiences alongside the suppression of negative emotions can do real damage. The term has become something of a buzzword in both academia and pop culture. Yet despite this, messaging that \u201chappiness is a choice\u201d and \u201cpositivity is a mindset\u201d abounds.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s required is a rebalance. It isn\u2019t enough to say that excessive positivity can be toxic. We need to know when that is the case, why and for whom. Luckily, there is a growing body of research addressing these questions.\u2026<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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[ad_1] Having a positive mindset can result in unexpected consequences DEEPOL by plainpicture\/Anja Weber-Decker Are you struggling with low self-esteem? If so, you may have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}