The Bad Vibes of “Good Vibes Only”

“When you share some­thing dif­fi­cult with some­one and they insist that you turn it into a pos­i­tive, what they’re real­ly say­ing is, my com­fort is more impor­tant than your reality.” 

Dr. Susan David, author of Emotional Agility

According to a 2019 study span­ning thou­sands of peo­ple and three decades, opti­mists live as much as 15% longer than pes­simists. This much-pub­li­cized study spanned the #good­vibeson­ly wave on social media (almost 20 mil­lion posts so far and grow­ing all the time). 

This came up recent­ly while scrolling through my daughter’s Instagram feed, which was filled with banal chest­nuts like old feel­ings are no place for new expe­ri­ences (um, of course they are. Our cur­rent real­i­ty is com­plete­ly shaped through the lens of our old feel­ings) and no mat­ter how you feel, get up and show up (or sit on the couch and have a good cry; that’s a total­ly legit­i­mate response to being a human in today’s world). And the one that almost made me throw her phone across the room: turn away from any­thing that doesn’t fit your vibe (aka, if you’re a non-oppressed human man­i­fest­ing your best life, make sure to ignore all the peo­ple in the world that weren’t born with your privilege).

There is much to be said for being pos­i­tive, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, bet­ter sleep, low­er stress lev­els, improved car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, and ele­vat­ed immune func­tion. But no one’s good vibes have stopped the war in Ukraine yet. It’s not that I am in any way against pos­i­tive think­ing. It’s the only part of #good­vibeson­ly that makes it tox­ic positivity. 

Toxic pos­i­tiv­i­ty is the mis­guid­ed belief that pos­i­tive think­ing can be — and even should be — applied to all expe­ri­ences of pain or suffering.

Look at the Hundred Acre Wood gang. Some of us see our­selves as Pooh (let’s just snack and relax today) or Tigger (I am so excit­ed to be alive today!) Others res­onate more with Piglet (I’m real­ly wor­ried about today) or Eeyore (some­thing will def­i­nite­ly go wrong today). But in fact, each of us is a lit­tle bit of all of them. Humans are mul­ti-lay­ered, com­pli­cat­ed beings with a flu­id range of per­spec­tives. We need to nor­mal­ize the full range of emo­tion­al expres­sion because there are no bad feelings. 

Eeyore lit­er­al­ly lived in a mag­i­cal for­est with amaz­ing friends that con­stant­ly told him how much he was loved and he was still often sad and anx­ious and social­ly awk­ward. Because it is real life to feel depressed or anx­ious some­times, and some peo­ple feel like that a lot more than oth­ers. What the Hundred Acre Wood gang gets right is accept­ing Eeyore exact­ly as he is, with­out con­stant­ly chid­ing him to turn his frown upside down.

My daugh­ter strug­gles with the cul­ture of tox­ic pos­i­tiv­i­ty. When her anx­i­ety or depres­sion rears its head, she com­pounds the suf­fer­ing by feel­ing guilty about feel­ing anx­ious or depressed. The social media plat­i­tudes in her feed only give her false reas­sur­ance instead of empa­thy and under­stand­ing. They imply that any­thing less than good is unde­sir­able. And they alien­ate her from her true feel­ings, sug­gest­ing that what­ev­er she is feel­ing must be wrong and avoid­ed at all costs. Then she feels pow­er­less and bro­ken because she can­not sim­ply turn off the very real emo­tions cours­ing through her heart and brain. 

When humans are strug­gling, they need to be seen, acknowl­edged, and val­i­dat­ed, not told to repress their truth. At its core, #good­vibeson­ly is a form of gaslight­ing, telling us that what we’re feel­ing isn’t real. It silences our expe­ri­ences. And why would we turn away from any of our feel­ings? Sometimes the best per­spec­tives arise from pain. Think Tammy Wynette or Amy Winehouse. Vincent Van Gogh or Frida Kahlo. Sylvia Plath or Robin Williams. The Eeyores and Piglets that feel the world the most deeply often leave us the best music or art or writing. 

It’s pos­si­ble to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly accept our real­i­ty while mak­ing room for hope, to accept that no feel­ing lasts for­ev­er and all feel­ings are valid.