Is toxic positivity blocking you?

There’s a push from some spiritual teachers to only focus on the positive aspects of your life and you will be happy. That is a very harmful approach and no one is capable of being happy all the time. That just isn’t realistic. I call it toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. Being positive 100 percent of the time is not achievable or realistic. While it is true that what you focus on you manifest or attract to you, only focusing on what feels good and wholesome is denying and ignoring the parts of you that are deemed negative or distasteful. This is rejecting yourself and further harming you and your inner child and other traumatized parts of you. Let’s face it. No one on this planet gets out of having trauma. Life can be hard, but it isn’t meant to be all hard and awful.

Did your parents ever tell you to quit crying or if you’re going to do that go to your room? Or worse yet, if you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about. How did that make you feel? Pretty devastated I would imagine. So why are you doing that to yourself? It’s like walking through your house and there are piles of garbage everywhere, but you only focus on the spots that are clean and ignore the rest. The garbage won’t magically disappear will it? Absolutely not! You have to get out the cleaning supplies and get to work to have everything cleaned up and emotions are no different.

ALL feelings are valid. By ignoring what you are really feeling in favor of all the yummy stuff you are essentially telling parts of yourself to shut up and that they don’t matter. No one is perfect. If you ignore the parts of you that make you uncomfortable how can you become whole and at peace with your past?

True healing means getting to know and love every single part of you warts and all. Everyone at one time has done things they regret and has felt petty, or jealous. That doesn’t make you a bad or unlovable person. It makes you human and guess what? Humans are a glorious and special creations because there are no other beings quite like us anywhere else in the universe.

You deserve to be happy and at peace, but that takes work and inner reflection. Start with your inner child and work your way up. I promise you won’t regret it.