Have you grown up hearing: 

“Finish your food because there are starving children in the world.”

“Be grateful, things could be a lot worse.”

“Everything happens for a reason.” 

This is toxic positivity. It is an overgeneralization of happiness and optimism across all situations, disregarding unpleasant emotions and impending issues. While positivity empowers us to grow and seize opportunities, toxic positivity invalidates the exasperated feelings that we experience in reality. It seeks to “fix” rather than extend empathy, compassion and acknowledgement towards ourselves or others. 

On the other hand, gratitude is a feeling of appreciation in response to an experience that is beneficial (but not attributable) to the person. In other words, it is the tendency to recognize and respond with grateful emotions to the roles of other people’s benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains. 

While it is beneficial to maintain perspective and learn from life’s toughest challenges, forcing yourself “just to be grateful” is toxic. It forces us to put a positive spin on something and we strip ourselves of the opportunity to let the suffering move through us, neglecting our own emotions and processing system, harming us in the long term. When we skip past our difficult emotions to find the silver lining, thinking we can solve a problem or make it go away, our feelings of sadness, grief, loneliness, fear, or stress are left unresolved and ignored. We become pressured to stay grateful at all times, and in the times we cannot, there is an immense feeling of guilt, confusion and perhaps, even shame for having negative emotions. Therefore, while gratitude and recognizing privilege is important, allowing yourself to acknowledge that some things absolutely suck and that sometimes we just have bad luck is important as well.