Ep #3: The Toxic Side of Positivity

I’m Mikki Gardner, and this is the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast, episode number three, The Toxic Side of Positivity. In this episode, we’re gonna dive into the positives and negatives of positive thinking, and how to avoid toxic positivity and instead create strength and support for you and your kids. Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who want to move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name’s Mikki Gardner. I’m a Certified Life and Conscious Parenting Coach, with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I’m here to help you do the same. If you’re ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well, get ready and let’s dive into today’s episode. Welcome, friend. We are here together again for episode number three. And I’m so excited to be with you again. Last week, in episode number two, we discussed the reasons why you feel the way that you do and how that all of our feelings really come from our thinking, not other people. Not the outside world. Not the scale. Not the bank account. From our thinking. You know, and as I was preparing for this episode, I couldn’t help but every time I thought about what I wanted to talk about next, it really comes down to sort of those positive feelings we want to feel. And that Bobby McFerrin song came into my mind—you know the one, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” I’ll spare you me trying to sing it for you, because as my kid says, I’m awful. But let me tell you—and I’m sure you can relate—but there is nothing worse than being told, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Just be happy.” Right? “Don’t worry about what your ex is doing. You just do you. It’s all gonna work out in the end. Keep your chin up.” Or the pièce de résistance, “Time heals all wounds. Just give it a minute.” Listen, these things actually might be true and have some truth in them, but it does not mean that they’re helpful. This kind of “just think positively” is actually toxic positivity. When we are listening to this kind of messaging and we’re just trying to “think positively,” ignore reality, and just willpower our way through it—I know you’ve probably had those moments—rest assured, I can tell you from my experience, I always end up feeling much, much, much worse. Because I now feel like I’ve failed because I couldn’t think positively enough, that I couldn’t just keep it going. This is toxic positivity. And this does not help us. And in this podcast, and with my clients, I will never promote toxic positivity. We might talk about affirmations. We might talk about trying to create more positive thoughts, but not in a toxic way. What I do promote is positive thinking, positive alignment, and a positive mindset. This is very different from “don’t worry, be happy.” It really comes down to wanting you, just like I want for myself and I want for my clients, that we end up with such a deep belief and knowing in our core that no matter what happens in our life, no matter what the other people do or say, that we will always have our own back, and that we will do what we can to come from a place of love, acceptance, and moving forward towards a more positive outcome. Notice I did not say that everything is gonna be rainbows, puppy dogs, and unicorns. Sure, it would be great to ride my unicorn to work every morning. But that’s just not the world we live in. So, we have to learn to accept the world that we do live in, but by cultivating this deep belief that we’re gonna be okay no matter what. So, it’s easy to say, “Oh, just think positive.” But the problem with that is that if we believe that we should only be thinking positively, then when we have negative feelings—which we will, spoiler alert—that something’s gone wrong. So, before I jump into this, I want to lay a few ground rules for this positive mindset, this positive alignment, and this positive thinking that I am promoting. Here are my ground rules. These are my ground rules for myself, and I want to offer them to you. You’re gonna have your own, but I want you to at least consider these. So, as we talk through this, we are not going to beat ourselves up. We’re not gonna beat ourselves up for the past, for the mistakes that we’ve made. We’re not gonna beat ourselves up for not feeling better or for not being in this different place. We are not going to beat ourselves up. Instead, we’re gonna give ourselves permission. Permission to be where we are today. It doesn’t mean that if we’re somewhere today, that we can’t be somewhere different later, but we have to just kind of allow ourselves and give ourselves permission to be and feel what we feel today. We have to be willing to give ourselves permission to feel all the feelings, the positive and the negative. And we have to give ourselves permission to be human, to have the same compassion and love that we offer others, like our kids. Offer ourselves that same compassion. If you’re listening to this, I know that you’re a compassionate, loving mom, woman, person who wants to do their best. And I know that you are. I also believe that you are whole and complete and worthy exactly as you are today, and this isn’t gonna change with any positive or negative feelings that are happening. So, now we’re gonna kind of dive into positive thinking. There is a truth—just a fact about life—that, at best—best case scenario—life is 50/50. What do I mean by that? It’s 50% positive, 50% negative. That’s just the baseline. And this might sound depressing, but look at our own life. It’s so true. Things happen. We just don’t feel positively all the time. Nothing has gone wrong. It’s actually, the positive and the negative is needed. Love feels so amazing because we know the absence of love. Abundance feels so incredible because we know scarcity and lack. Happiness has to have sadness. There are things that counteract, that balance them. It’s like a scale. So, it’s not all positive. It’s not all negative. But here’s the real rub: when we believe that we shouldn’t be feeling the negative—when we don’t want to feel the negative, when we resist it—we actually are creating more of it. “Where your attention goes, energy flows,” as they say. So, the more we resist the negative, not wanting to feel the negative feelings, we’re actually creating more of it. And sometimes we can end up making that 50/50 actually go to 75/25 or 90/10, where we’re having 90% negativity in our life. And this is not the place that we want to be living from. You know, over the past few months—and I know so many of us can relate to this with the COVID pandemic, with all of the changes, the upheaval, the uncertainty, the rug being pulled out from under all of us… The grief that so many of us have felt with loss of loved ones, divorce, changes, job loss, all of the things… You know, and over the past week, I’ve been grieving. My best friend and furry soulmate—his name was Caymus —left us last week. And he was very much a part of my life since before my son was born. He was my rock and always with me through my divorce. And not only have I been grieving the loss of him, but all of the feelings have come back up. Remembering all the times that I’ve had good with him and all the bad times or hard times that he’s gotten me through. And it really reminds me that the 50/50 rule really does apply. When we lose someone that we love, whether it’s a person, a pet, a job, a dream, a home, a marriage, whatever it is, we want to feel sad about that. We do not want to just feel happy about it. We want to grieve the loss because we loved something so deeply. But when we don’t allow ourselves that—when we think that we should be somewhere different—we start to create suffering. We start to create pain and we start to create more negativity for ourselves. And these are the exact times when we do feel quote-unquote “negative feelings,” whether it’s loss, whether it’s sadness, whether it’s anxiety, depression… Any of these things. What we want to try to do is come from a place of allowing, of accepting them. Allowing ourselves the space to feel them without trying to change it, without trying to resist it, without trying to cover it up. Because feelings actually don’t leave our body until they’re processed. So, they’re stored somewhere. Science is showing us that they’re actually stored many times in our gut. So, that’s why a lot of us are struggling with digestive issues. Or, you know, they say when you feel it in your gut, it’s because we do. All of our emotions are stored in our body. And so, the more that we can learn about emotions, feelings, how our thoughts are creating those things, we can also start to understand that not all negative feelings are unwanted or bad or shouldn’t be there. So, the more we can allow for them, the more we can allow them without trying to change them or react from them. I think last time I talked about kind of when we’re trying to get away from our negative thinking or we’re not being realistic, we end up like a pinball. And this is kind of that feeling, where you’re just bouncing from thing to thing. And the truth of the matter is is that positive action cannot come from negative thinking. Positive action cannot come as a reaction to something. Positive action can only arise out of the acceptance of the “as is.” So, what the heck does that mean? Acceptance of the “as is” is being really realistic to what is. Not what we think should be happening. Not what we wish was happening. Not what we want to happen. But what is. Accepting ourselves in our “as is” state is actually our key to freedom. When we can accept the situation without judgment, without resistance, but just allow ourselves to feel maybe some of those negative feelings we don’t want to, this is where all of our power lies. Because, again, when we ignore or resist, we just create more of it. And I know, for me, and I know for so many of my clients, and I am gonna go out on a limb and guess for you too, that when our kids are feeling negative feelings, feeling failure, when they are struggling, it is the hardest for us to do. We just want to gloss over it. We want to fix it. We want to make ’em happy. We want to do something to just make it go away. And while this is coming from a good place of not wanting our kids to feel that, it actually is producing the opposite effect, because it’s telling them that there’s something wrong—that they shouldn’t feel the way they do. They may take it that something’s wrong with them. And this is where we can go into that toxicity of just wanting to be positive. So, you know, when we’re talking about life as divorced families, divorce is a trauma. It is something that kids have to adjust to. It can be extremely difficult, extremely painful. And while we want to fix it and reduce all of that, we also have to be willing to allow our children to feel what they’re feeling without trying to change it. Because when we try to change it or fix it, we are telling them that there’s something wrong. And they may take the message that they aren’t resilient, that they can’t fix it, or that they shouldn’t be feeling that way. So, this is where we want to come from a place of supportive and validating versus toxically positive. So, what the heck does that mean? Well, let’s think about it. Maybe your kid’s in sports and they lost a game and they’re really upset. And there’s a point where you’re like, “Okay, okay. It’s gonna be okay.” But then they’re really, really upset. And we get to the point where we’re like, “Ugh, let’s just get past this.” And you’ll say, “Oh, you’ll get over it.” Well, that doesn’t help. That’s just kind of telling them to just, “Oh, think positive. It’s gonna go away.” Instead, we want to be validating. We want to create hope. It might sound like, “I know it’s really hard to lose a game, but you’ve done hard things before, and I believe in you and know you’re gonna get through this.” Or when we talk about divorce and the changes and the things that are happening, it’s like, “Well”—you know, we might want to say to our kids— “just be positive.” That, again, toxically positive. It’s not creating any hope for them, and it’s not validating how they’re feeling. So, we could switch that statement to something like, “I know there’s a lot that feels like it’s gone wrong, but what can we do to make it feel different? To start going in a different direction?” It acknowledges what’s going on for them. Or people might say to us when we’re struggling to move past divorce, when we’re struggling to co-parent in a good way, “Oh, stop being so negative.” That’s an awesome one. Maybe it would be more helpful for that person to say, “It’s pretty normal to have negativity in this situation.” Full stop. Not trying to change it. Not trying to say it should be different. It’s just, “Yeah, that’s pretty normal.” Because that validates how you’re feeling. Or there’s always the one, “Oh, find that silver lining. See the good in everything.” Well, you know, that, again, doesn’t validate anything. Instead, it would be much more helpful for us to tell ourselves or for someone to tell us, “It’s probably really hard to see anything good in this situation. But we’re gonna make sense of it later.” Because that’s saying, you know, hindsight is always 20/20, which is true. It’s not saying that you have to find the silver lining today, but in time, things might be clearer. And then, the last one that I’ll sort of mention—and I know I’ve been guilty of this—“Oh, just be happy.” And we just don’t want to deal with it. “Oh, just be happy.” That, again, not creating hope or validating how the person is feeling, which is likely not happy. So, instead, wouldn’t it be so much more helpful to hear, “It’s never fun to feel like this. Is there anything that I can do to help you today to feel a little bit better”? That’s at least acknowledging what’s going on and helping me feel a little bit differently about it, or saying that to our kids. So, these are just a few things that I wanted to kind of point out, because we want to be supportive versus toxically positive. We want to learn to, instead of just trying to swap our thoughts and always think positive, to allow for the 50/50. To allow for the positive and the negative. Because when we’re able to do this, we’re putting ourselves in a more positive mindset, “positive” meaning that we’re going for our greater good. And we are able to take positive action when we are not trying to resist negativity, run away from it, or react from it, but instead are accepting ourselves and our situation as it is, and then choosing how to move forward in a positive direction from there. Can you feel the difference? So, how can we begin to allow and accept more so that we can be more positively aligned and less resistant in life? Well, like I said, in each episode, I want to give you tangible tools and ways that you can implement these concepts into your life today. So, I want to offer you three ways to start accepting the “as is,” with the goal that we can learn to align to a more positive mindset and ultimately positive action and change. So, those three things are—the first one is compassion. I mentioned this earlier when I was asking you to give yourself permission. But it’s about compassion to be where you are today. Listen, we might not like it. We might want it to be different. It might be really, really, really uncomfortable. But things do not last forever. Feelings do not last forever. Actually, I heard the other day, science has found that feelings only actually last in our body for about 90 seconds when we allow them to be processed through. This was really awesome to hear because I can do 90 seconds. I can’t do 90 hours. I can’t do 90 days. But I can do 90 seconds. So, when I allow myself the compassion to be where I am… And, you know, there are those mornings when you wake up and it’s like, “Ugh. Again? I feel this way again?” And you just don’t even want to get out of bed. Maybe it’s depression. Maybe it’s anxiety. Maybe it’s just numbness. And it’s like, before your feet even hit the floor, your head’s so heavy, you don’t want it to get off the pillow. Well, I find it helpful in those moments to say to myself, instead of going, “Ugh, why do you feel this way? You shouldn’t feel this way,” or, “Just think happy,” or, “Just get going”… It’s not about that, but it’s about saying, “Today, I feel this way,” or, “At this moment, I’m feeling anxious.” Because what this does is it actually calms the brain down from thinking that this is gonna last forever and ever, because that’s just what the brain does. Nothing’s gone wrong. It’s just a human brain. And it thinks everything is tragic and the sky’s falling. I always kind of think of my brain as Chicken Little. It’s like, if you let it, it will run around thinking the sky’s falling. And I’ll get into all of that and sort of what’s happening in the brain and in the neuroscience in a different episode. But for this one, I just want you to consider this tool of adding the word “today” or “at this moment I feel [blank],” because it really does help calm the brain down. The second tool that I want to offer you is mindful moments. And I’m sure—I can feel the eyes rolling—but a lot of times it’s true. We are so in our heads all the time. We actually need to connect to the 90% of our body that’s from our neck down. And we do that by mindfully connecting to our body. Stopping in a situation where maybe we’re feeling anxious. Maybe we’re feeling overwhelmed. Maybe we’re feeling profoundly sad. Maybe we’re about to lose it and we feel like the tea kettle that’s about to just totally go off. In those moments, if we can just stop and take a breath and take three big, deep breaths, what it does is it allows us to step back and sort of widen the view. Get a bird’s eye view on the situation. That helps us witness what’s happening versus being so attached to it. I know I talked about this in episode two with our thoughts, that we are the observer of our thoughts. We are not our thoughts. So, these mindful moments are the same idea to ground into your body, into your breath, and to realize that actually there’s a whole person below your brain. And we’re gonna take care of all of you. The entire being. And so, those little mindful moments of just breathing and watching what’s happening can be really impactful. The last thing I’m gonna say, and the most effective tool that I know to create positive alignment and to be able to manage emotions and thoughts in a positive way, is meditation. So, everyone feels differently about this, I realize. And I’m gonna talk more about it on future episodes. But as of today—which is October 15^th, when I’m actually recording this, which is probably a couple weeks before you hear this—I am 20 days away from my full year of meditating every single day. And there’s a couple things that I’ve learned. And again, I’ll go into it later, but peace and calm are our bodies’ natural setpoint. The reason it feels so good is because it’s actually where we’re supposed to be. That’s when we’re fully aligned, when we are at peace and we are at calm. When we meditate, we are training our brain and practicing the skill of separating from our thoughts and becoming the witnesser. When we are able to do that and we’re able to separate from our thoughts, this is where we are really able to see and accept the “as is”-ness of life. We are able to see things without judgment, without attachment, and are able to be clearer about what it is. And so, meditation is literally just a practice. It’s just a skill of being silent, connecting to your breath, getting out of your head, and connected to your body so that you can hear what’s going on and you can separate from sort of the million, gazillion thoughts that are going on in your brain—positive, negative, all of them. So, these three tips—compassion, mindful moments, and meditation—for all of us, including myself, who are perfectionists, type A, and productivity-based people, it sounds ridiculous. Trust me, I hear you. I’ve been there and I thought the same thing. “How could that possibly work?” Right? It sounds ridiculous to be still to create more, but it really is true. Because when we are able to allow things to be as they are, accept life as it is, have compassion, be present, we are actually tapping into the universal energy that’s inside of us. That is when we are our most powerful. That’s when we can align and change ourselves to become the mom and the woman and the human that you truly want to be. But it takes practice and it takes a willingness to think differently, to feel differently. And instead of just saying, “Oh, just feel better. Everything’s gonna be okay. Just look for the silver lining.” That kind of toxic positivity isn’t helping us. But when we are accepting, when we are allowing, and we are actually creating support and validation for ourselves, that is true power. So, this is what I have for you today. And I’d love to hear from you on how this is working for you in your life if you try any of these three tips. Or what questions you have about it. I would love to connect with you. You can always leave me a comment or meet me over on Instagram and tell me what’s on your mind. But before I leave, I have a favor to ask you. To celebrate the launch of this show, I’m gonna be giving away $75 Amazon gift cards to three lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show. I want to give you something to brighten your day, like subscribing and reviewing to this podcast will brighten mine. And listen, it doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I really would love if you were enjoying the show. I just want your honest feedback so that I can create a show that provides you so much value that you keep coming back. So, please visit CoParentingwithConfidence.com/PodcastLaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter and all those specifics. I’m gonna be announcing the winners on an upcoming episode really soon. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I am incredibly grateful that you’re here. I know there are a million other things that you could be doing, a million other podcasts you could be listening to, and I am so glad that you’re here with me today. So, take care and I’ll see you next week. Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit CoParentingwithConfidence.com. I’ll see ya next week.