How does it make you feel when you’re having a rough time and somebody tells you to just be positive, everything will be all right? Do you agree that just changing your mindset with make all of your problems go away? Or if you act happy and positive, you won’t feel sad and negative?
I always tell people to feel their feelings. This is so important for good mental health! Burying your difficulties won’t make them go away. It will just make it harder to dig them back up to deal with them. And deal with them, you must. If you try to pretend they don’t exist, they’ll silently eat away at you and cause all sorts of problems.
Denying your feelings and forcing yourself to feel positive when you feel anything but is called toxic positivity. It’s okay to acknowledge that sometimes life is just hard. Sometimes we get frustrated and sad. That’s normal and we need to allow those feelings to come and go without judging them as “bad.” They just are. They’re just feelings. They don’t define us.
Does this mean that optimism and gratitude are bad things? Absolutely not! It’s great to try to maintain a positive outlook, just not at the expense of suppressing your other emotions. So how can you find balance? One way is to keep two journals. In the first one, you record your difficult thoughts and feelings, and in the second, you only record your gratitude. Even if you just write one thing down that you’re grateful for when you’re done journaling your other thoughts, it can really help you to maintain a positive outlook, while still feeling and expressing your feelings. As with most things, it’s all about balance.
RH Nature Nurtures 