The Positive Moment

Positive Psychology vs Toxic Positivity

I teach a class in positive psychology. However, I am very skeptical about it. Toxic positivity is often mistaken for positive psychology. It’s not positive psychology that possesses us to walk up to the depressed and say “Don’t feel so bad, it’s a beautiful day out!” or to the woman who has lost a child and say “You can have another one!” That is toxic positivity, and true to its name, it’s toxic to the well-being of the person who has every right to be angry or sad. The person spreading toxic positivity does so to not have feelings themselves, and they shut down the feelings of the sufferer as if they have no right to exist.

A Magic Conversation

I had something happen to me yesterday that was the opposite of toxic positivity, and I’ll describe it to answer why. As my readers know, I am in the middle of experiencing the 10-year anniversary of a time in my life where a psychiatrist diagnosed me with bipolar II and the emergency room referred me to inpatient. The behavioral health ward is a pretty quiet place, but the lack of autonomy — no cell phone, no computer, no shoelaces — accentuated the feeling that I was a pariah. (I don’t even want to talk about the worst bed I have ever slept on, and I have slept on the floor on an air mattress). I mourn my life before its complications, even knowing that I suffered from deep depression.

Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com

Yesterday, I ran into a friend for the first time in a while (she stuck her head in my office) and we caught up. I told her I was in the middle of my 10-year anniversary of my hospitalization, and she paused for a moment to share that feeling with me, and then she said something that totally surprised me. She said, “You need to go out and celebrate.”

My first reaction was a moment of incomprehension. Celebrate? Celebrate what? I must have looked confused, because she said, “Most people (with bipolar) can’t say that.” A glee bubbled up in me. I was not a sufferer, I was a survivor! Suddenly, I knew where I wanted to celebrate and what item on the menu I wanted.

A Cause for Celebration

Why was her statement positive psychology and not toxic positivity? First, because she gave me space to feel. That’s important, because toxic positivity shuts down feelings. Second, because her suggestion to celebrate acknowledged my bipolar rather than demanding an escape from it. Third, because the positive related to my effort to stay out of the hospital instead of fatuous praise.

The conversation was an alchemical moment, and I now look at the hospitalization as the first step in living a stronger life.

Self-esteem, according to Positive Psychology

This essay is my answer to an essay question I gave my personal adjustment class on their take-home final:

In positive psychology, there are two theories of self-esteem, and they lie at polar opposites to each other. One is sociometer theory, which says we get our self-esteem by how others see us, and the other is self-affirmation theory, which says we get our self-esteem by what we tell ourselves.

The general belief in popular culture that affirmations can help our mood is based on self-affirmation theory. I will admit that my daily affirmations — “I am worthy of love/I am worthy of luck/I am worthy of success/I am worthy of good things” make me look at my life more positively.

But my gut tells me that sociometer theory may be dominant in explaining self-esteem. We have a natural need to fit in. It’s a survival mechanism, so it’s only natural that we base our self-esteem by the ability to fit in. When we look at bullying and its relationship to teen suicides, we see sociometer theory at work, because bullies target the victim’s need to look outward for self-esteem.

On the other hand, society needs outsiders as well, people who don’t fit in, because that’s where societal change happens. Maybe those people (and I consider myself one of those people) use self-affirmation to have the strength to live their lives courageously. I find myself longing that I could fit in, because it would be so much easier, but I work hard on my self-affirmations so I can continue to function.

Day 27 Reflection: Gratitude

Everyone knows that gratitude makes people happier.

Maybe not everyone, but popular psychology instructs us to write gratitude journals, naming a magic three things per day that we feel grateful for. One can find gratitude journals in hard-bound form, in smartphone apps, and in Facebook memes. That’s because gratitude journaling works, according to research in positive psychology (Emmons and McCullough, 2003).

Some days it’s hard to write anything in the gratitude journal. Days when little things go wrong one after another, we hug those hurts to ourselves as if to use them as currency to bargain with our Maker for better luck. When we fall into negative self-talk, learned patterns of pessimism, we can’t find a thing to be grateful for. Gratitude doesn’t come to mind when we suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

I have those days of suffering, given that I live with Bipolar 2, which I’ve been open about in these pages. I also wrestle with negative self-talk. I’ve wrangled these two into submission for the most part, but still depression and darkness pop out at times.

I challenge the darkness with gratitude:

I am grateful for my bipolar disorder, because it has made me take care of myself. I am grateful because it has given me insight into suffering.

I am grateful for getting my manuscripts rejected because it has forced me to work harder and improve my writing.

I am grateful for my struggles because they remind me that nothing is simple in life.

Tarot, Choices, and Motivation

I’ve just gotten back to reading tarot cards, having gotten a new deck for Christmas. I’m not great with it — in fact, I still have to read the little guidebook to see what the cards are telling me, mostly because I’m not a visual person.

I don’t read tarot to predict my future or anyone else’s. None of this “slap, slap, slap, your dog’s gonna die” card reading. I read Tarot as a way of understanding what’s going on in someone’s psyche. I pick decks and methods that are suited for interrogating undercurrents and suggesting right action. The Good Tarot, my Christmas present, functions well in this way.

I don’t see my tarot-reading ability as having great favor from the spirits or anything dramatic like that. Tarot, to me, is a way of unlocking intuition and perhaps giving life-affirming instruction. Frankly, my readings are closer to positive psychology than woo-woo. Given that I teach positive psychology, that’s not surprising.

This morning I gave myself a very short reading. The way I do this is ask a question — the question was “what’s in store for me today?” I had already decided I would take some time putting more description in Voyageurs to make up for the material I cut by advice of my dev editor. So that was very much a part of “today”, but so was going to the weight clinic to try to find out why I haven’t lost this last 20 pounds. (I’ve lost 65 and have been on a plateau for a year).

I laid down one card — the two of fire. Its basic meaning — “creative planning for the future, mapping progress, trusting in the unknown. Spirit-led ambition.” (Baron-Reid, 2017). I laughed, because I sensed that one card told me everything I needed to know. But when I shuffled the cards again, two cards fell out — the aforementioned two of fire and The Fool, the card that symbolizes the beginning of a journey, a child’s enthusiasm.

The way those two cards go together tells more of a story: I am at the beginning of a journey, planning the journey with enthusiasm, trusting in the unknown rather than assuming that news will always be bad. It’s entirely possible I’m misinterpreting this and it’s about my class planning for the semester, although that’s less like a journey and more like a walk around the block. I suppose it could be about a journey I don’t know about yet. It doesn’t matter, because what matters is that I take that attitude to all my journeys.

Baron-Reid, C. (2017). The Good Tarot Guidebook. Hay House Publishing.