We’ve all scrolled through social media only to come across beautiful floral pictures with hashtags like good vibes only, look on the bright side, it could be worse, change your mindset, just be positive. The idea of these posts is usually to provide us with a quick burst of encouragement, positivity or motivation; however, there’s one problem…These encouraging, positive and motivational quotes can often end up invalidating and shaming people who are experiencing real pain and loss in their lives. Researchers have created a name for this phenomenon: toxic positivity.

The human thought process isn’t that simple. If just saying “be happy” or “think positive” to ourselves or others worked, there would probably be a lot less anxiety, depression and other mental illness in the world. Unfortunately, human thoughts are greatly related to human emotion and not every emotion can be “positive-thought’d” away. For example, saying to someone who has lost their spouse, friend or child “I’ll get easier”, “maybe it’s for the best” or “you’ve got to be strong” can leave the person feeling confused and conflicted, and lead them to believe that there is something wrong within themselves. It creates the subtle suggestion is that it not okay to be sad. What we should be saying are things like “I can’t imagine how painful this must be for you” or “I can understand why living feels unbearable right now”.

This post is not necessarily about decreasing positivity on social media, but more about helping others recognize that social media’s trend of positive vibes only may be leading people to feel dismissed, ignored, or outright invalidated