The quiet harm of over-glorified positivity, and the need to honour our darker skies.
The world today hands us sunshine like a prescription—“Be positive,” it says, “Look at the bright side.” And while I’ve always admired the resilience behind this sentiment, lately I’ve begun to notice its unintended shadow.
I remember an afternoon when a friend was trying to open up about a deep sense of loss—one that is not visible to the world, but aching inside. Halfway through, someone interjected with a cheerfully, “But at least you have your health and family—stay grateful!” It shut the conversation down, not with cruelty, but with what I can only call a tyranny of forced brightness.
In our rush to be okay, we sometimes silence what truly needs to be said, felt, expressed, sensed.
Toxic positivity, as psychologists now describe it, is not about being hopeful—it’s about being unwilling to hold space for anything else. It is the subtle insistence that sadness is a failure, that discomfort is weakness, and that pain must be quickly swept aside with a motivational quote.
But life is not at all a curated feed. It is disheveled, textured, and layered with contradictory truths. And sometimes the wisest thing we can do is sit gently beside someone else’s storm, without trying to paint a rainbow over it.
In relationships, toxic positivity often shows up as unintentional dismissal. A spouse sharing burnout may be met with, “Just think positive and push through.” A teenager confiding anxiety hears, “But you have such a good life—don’t think like that.” A family whose relative going through terminal illness gets “Be positive and every thing will be ok“. Slowly, emotional honesty becomes unsafe. Conversations turn shallow. Reality swept away. Honest discussions stop. Relations built over years get sidelined. Decisions get deferred. And a quiet loneliness seeps in—where everyone is smiling, but no one is seen.
I’ve come to believe that true emotional maturity lies in our ability to co-exist with discomfort—our own and others’. Not rush to fix it, not spin it into gold, but simply be with it. Some truths are not problems to solve, but weather to witness.
Sometimes the most healing words are not “Think positive,” but rather:
“I see you. This must be hard. Let’s sit with it for a while.”
A life lived with inner integrity allows both sunlight and shadow.
The wisdom lies not in always finding the bright side—but in trusting that even the dark has something to teach us.
And perhaps, it’s only when the sun sets fully, that we begin to see the stars.
Letters for the Inner Journey by Pushkar
Whisper back, if the letter spoke to you.