211. The problem with 'toxic' positivity

to have you here. Back for another episode. As we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties, we are going to talk about something a little bit different today, a concept that you may or may not have heard of, which is toxic positivity. Even if you haven't heard of it, you've most likely experienced it in some form, people you know, telling you to keep your chin up, that everything happens for a reason, and to think good thoughts and they'll

become your reality. Because toxic positivity is everywhere these days, especially with the rise of a lot of Instagram and TikTok self help content. It is essentially this belief or this attitude that a positive mindset fixes everything. Whatever it is you're going through, being optimistic will make it better. And it's an attitude that has a lot of consequences for our mental health, for our emotional wellbeing, but also for our emotional intelligence and our ability to actually address

our emotions and solve our problems. I have to admit I have been guilty of perhaps promoting this kind of messaging, both to myself and you guys, the listeners. It is very easy to villainize negative emotions or so called negative emotions, because they simply just don't feel nice. You know, feeling angry doesn't feel nice, Feeling distressed disappointed doesn't feel nice, and putting a positive spin on things kind of erases the need to truly feel and process these big feelings.

But maturing is recognizing that just because something doesn't feel nice doesn't mean it's not useful. And second to that, emotions like grief, like despair, like disappointment, and rejection they are what makes us human, and being able to connect with those emotions means that we are able to connect with ourselves, firstly with our experiences, but also with others. It's a real privilege to sometimes not feel amazing all

the time personally. I also think that toxic positivity is really dangerous during our twenties, in particular, because you know, our emotions can teach us so much during this period, and they do influence who we are becoming. So if we mask them by being overly positive about everything, by not letting anything in, by numbing ourselves out, we're kind of doing ourselves a disservice. And it may sound strange to hear me say that, you know, being too positive

is a danger to you? Is dangerous because how can something so nice be so dangerous? But when we gravitate towards the same reaction for all of our experiences, I eat always looking for the bright side, no matter how hard or difficult something is, we do tend to suppress a lot of what makes us so tender and so unique and so vulnerable in that vulnerability is a good thing. So today we are going to discuss the problem with always being positive. And I know it sounds strange, but

why feeling bad is sometimes good for you. We'll also dive into why it is that we tend to gravitate towards optimism, this concept of self inflicted emotional gas lighting, and the alternative. What is the alternative to putting a positive spin on things? Where does this incline come from? We're going to talk about the origins of shame and

emotional embarrassment. And I think that once you realize how common this radical optimism, this unrealistic optimism is, you'll be surprised how often you notice it, and you'll be surprised how rampant it is in our society. Once you begin to notice it, you'll never stop noticing it. But we also, of course want to give you an alternative. We want to talk about what it is that we can do, because if we can't make our emotions feel good, what's

the alternative? Do we just let them exist? Well, yeah, that's the answer. There we go the episode summed up. No, we'll be talking about that a little bit more, and I think that's all. That's all that I have without further ado, let's get into it. Toxic positivity has a few different names, you know. The first time that it was labeled was back in the nineteen eighties, and back

then it was as unrealistic optimism. It's also known as bright siding positive tyranny, which is very dramatic, but I think you get the picture at the end of the day. All these terms are referring to the same thing, a deep but also toxic and maladaptive belief that thinking positively can erase all negative feelings, and that those negative feelings are bad. We have bad emotions that we should not feel, and the way to not feel them is to cover them in sugar and cover them in sunshine and always

find the positive, always try and shake it off. We want to prioritize upbeat thinking. We want to push down the difficult stuff. No one wants to see that, no one wants to feel that. And if you can't be positive all the time, you have somehow failed. Something is

wrong with you. This can be a belief that we've learned from someone else around us, or it can be self imposed, like feeling guilty when you feel sad or disappointed and immediately forcing yourself to think about everything you should be grateful for instead of letting yourself be sad or pushing down big feelings by telling yourself it could be worse, just move on. This is why toxic positivity is sometimes seen as a form of self inflicted emotional

gas lighting. That is a mouthful, but I think we're all pretty familiar with the term gaslighting when it comes to romantic relationships. It's this act of one person manipulating somebody else into questioning their own reality and what is actually true or real, as a way to maintain control over them. When we force ourselves to push down and push aside hard emotions, the premise is that we are essentially gaslighting ourselves by saying this isn't real. You don't

know what you're experiencing, your choosing to feel bad about this. Rather, then you feel bad about this because it's hard, and that's a normal reaction. This experience is real and raw, and it's okay to be in pain and to be flat for a while. This is hard. You can feel sad about it more often than not. Though toxic positivity is something that we experience from others, there is of course,

that own sense of like almost self preservation. I would call it, to maintain a positive outlook at all times. But there are often these times when perhaps you go to a therapist or a family member or a friend and you say, you know, I'm just really struggling with this thing, this terrible thing is happening. I'm really stressed, I'm really tired and really exhausted, And the only thing they try and do is get you to see the

positive sides. They only try and get you to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I get it. I really do get why a family member or a friend, or a therapist or anybody would want to bring us back to what is good because we don't like to see other people struggle. We don't like to see other people feel sad, especially people that we love. You know. Some examples of this are like, when you go through a breakup and you're immediately told that you

know there's someone better out there. Think about the positives in this situation, think about how fun it's going to be single when you perhaps aren't ready to hear that. Losing your job and being told that you know you can have it worse. Some people don't even have a job. Some people don't even have savings. Some people have been unemployed so much longer than you, so chin up. It's all that line of thinking, you know, getting ghosted, getting rejected,

and being told that everything happens for a reason. Yes, it's a nice thought, it just might not be helpful, and it's probably one of those thoughts it's only helpful in hindsight when you're ready to hear it. What's another example that we see a lot, Oh, somebody was telling me about this the other day. Live it like when you go and like see a friend, or you're with a family member or whoever it is, and you just feel like you can't be low energy because they'll immediately

pathologize or think that something is wrong. So if you're like, oh, I've just had a really bad day, they'll immediately be like, well, that's not good. No, no, no, no, we don't want you to have a bad day. Let's make this better. We need to think positively, we need to fix your problem when you might just be having a bad day or over emphasizing the power of gratitude. And that is

something that we see all the time. I had an example from a friend, well from a friend an acquaintance, who was telling me about how one of her coworkers lost her mother to cancer really unexpectedly, and of course dealing with that just humongous grief, unimaginable grief, she went and saw a therapist, and a therapist or it was a counselor told her to make a gratitude list to help her feel better. And you know what, I get

her intentions. We're most likely in the right place, but you can also see how this is probably not helpful. That's probably not the one thing that we need to do. This is almost a denial of the negative emotions and an unrealistic promotion ofitive thinking when this person probably would actually not benefit from immediately moving on. That's what I get the point of, Like, Oh, yeah, what are you

grateful for? So you don't dwell on this loss? But maybe it would have been better to just be like, Yeah, that's really really awful. That really sucks. Let's just let you feel really bad about that for a while, because that is a completely reasonable thing to be feeling. One final example, because I'm filled with anecdotes today, is this experience.

This concept out of order is a term known as bright siding, and we see this a lot when someone tells us a story about something really frustrating or really terrible or painful, and immediately somebody else jumps in with a matching story of their own that is far more terrible and far more painful, or they point out the one part of the story where something good happened or something worse could have happened. You know, Oh, I just

had the most terrible commute to work today. I was so frustrated, I was so angry by the time I got in, I just like didn't want to be there. And then they go, well, on the bright side, like, at least you know what happened to me today. Well, at least you know your car didn't explode like mine,

so you have something to feel good about. It's like, well, when that happens, it immediately immediately kind of cuts off your ability to express your feelings because you either feel the need to justify the experience or you can't compete, and therefore you just go quiet. And there is this incredible book about this exact concept called bright Sided How Thevorlentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America, and it talks about how by stamping out negative thoughts or villainizing

negative emotions, we become very two dimensional. We learn pretty quickly that actually being truthful, looking for comfort rather than solutions or optimism is going to be met with toxic positivity.

So eventually we just become our happy moments. We just showed all the good things and everyone looks at each other thinking, wow, her life is really perfect, her life is really amazing, whilst you think the same thing about them, And essentially the author makes this very convincing argument that toxic positivity has made us inauthentic, and I tend to agree. Let me play devil's advocate for a second before we

fully jump into the consequences of this. You know, we do see toxic positivity everywhere, and you know what, sometimes it is only natural to want to see the bright side of what we're going through. It can be useful and it can also be intuitive. As humans, both you know, evolutionarily but also socially, we naturally prefer positive emotions. They indicate greater happiness, greater satisfaction, They create less emotional pain and disharmony, less social friction. We would probably prefer to

not get bogged down in hard things. There are also just people who are really optimistic. It's not that they're necessarily toxic in their optimism, it's just how they come. And I think a lot of people would probably look at that those explanations that I just gave of people trying their hardest to relate to somebody else through a positive lens and be like, what's the problem. What's the problem here? Of course, it's better to be happy than sad,

you know. Of course, this lightens the mood people want to be around you, people want to be your friend, people want to be happy, and I really do understand that. And I'm not saying that in these instances there isn't room for resilience, there isn't room for gratitude, there isn't room for problem solving. But the thing is is that

those things are healthy coping mechanisms. When we overly rely on them, When our solution to anything bad is just be grateful for what you have or okay, just get over it and keep your chin up, that is toxic positivity versus healthy positive. These happy, good vibes become toxic when it involves avoiding and suppressing, minimizing, or rejecting negative feelings. And let's be real, that doesn't actually make them go away,

that doesn't allow us to make peace with them. The only thing that is occurring is that in the moment, they become invisible, and that means that eventually they will most likely return with the vengeance later on. So let's talk about the consequences of toxic positivity. First of all, it stigmatizes these so called negative emotions. And I know that I've been using that word that term very frequently.

Negative emotions Basically, what I mean by that is the emotions that are very much villainized by society, things that we kind of cringe at, we would rather not see. Anger, jealousy, grief, sadness. Often the the reason that these emotions I think are so disturbing to some people is because they are so human, and when we see somebody else experiencing them, we so

deeply can see ourselves in that feeling. We know what that feels like, and I think that kind of makes us feel embarrassed, like, oh, don't be loud about what it means to be human. And you know, sometimes being human does it's just kind of shit. Sometimes it just isn't fun. There is not a single person alive today who would say, you know, my entire life has been golden. Everything is great for me, and yet it feels like

that is what is kind of expected. These negative emotions, they are what keep us from being a very palatable person, from being somebody who always leaves others feeling in a good mood. If nothing else. These negative emotions, I actually think are really useful because they make our good moments

and our good memories even more special. They are also a natural reaction to our experiences and they teach us something, They have a purpose, and I think our desire to hide them links very closely to the stigma that is directed towards mental health and mental health conditions and mental health struggles. And I don't think that that is an accident. Society is not that great at wanting people to be open about what they're going through. There is a long

history of that. And if we've never been taught to

accept that this is a dimension of being human. If we continue to keep up this narrative that intense emotions deserve to be hidden, they don't deserve to be masked by optimism or masks by positivity, the next generation is taught the same thing, and that is where prejudice and misunderstanding comes from a failure to really normalize and accept what is typical for most people, which is that we do feel sad, and we do feel angry, and we do grieve, and that doesn't always need to be stamped out.

It makes us feel like we always have to be okay when no one is. And I saw this quote about this from an author that said, this unrealistic optimism towards life is essentially saying whatever you do don't tell the truth of what it is like to be alive. Don't be authentic, don't be honest, don't be open. It's like having a nice illusion of what everything should look like. It's I don't know. It's not that there is like this greater power that be that is controlling this and

making everyone forcing them to look happy. It is like a long pattern and a long history of this going on, and I think it mainly comes down to the effects of shame and embarrassment. We aren't, you know, necessarily coming out and saying ill, why are you crying? Don't be upset? That makes me so uncomfortable. We aren't being like can you please stop that? Can you please stop grieving all over the place, or stop being you know, upset all over the place? Like no, stop. That is not necessarily

what it's going on. But when we immediately switch gears, when someone brings up the emotions that we don't like and we cover them in positivity and we serve them back to them, you know, that is a meaningful enough queue to influence behavior. It is an implicit message to not do that again, don't do that. We're not outwardly saying it, but everything about our behavior and everything about our treatment of this emotion is telling you just that.

And within that reaction, within that interaction that happens, the thing that we're going to feel is a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, a lot of embarrassment that we, you know, even expressed ourself in the first place. And of course this stigma lives on. The second consequence of toxic positivity is that it actually makes us feel worse rather than better, and there are dozens of studies to

back this up. The less we feel, the more of a positive spin that we put on things, the less that we learn to cope, and the more control that that emotion has. This is the classic cycle of avoidance in psychology. We never actually learn what to do with big emotions because the only thing we can think to do is to suppress them or make them light and fluffy, which actually just gives them more importance. It makes them louder,

it makes them darker. The cycle repeats. There is a very well known study from the eighties and the title of the study is the Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression. Just some light reading, and it's pretty groundbreaking. What it basically says is that when you're asked not to think about something, the more you immediately want to think about it. So you may have heard of this. If I say to you, okay, please, whatever you do, don't think about

a white elephant, don't think about it. Don't think about a white elephant. Of course, you're thinking about it, and you'll probably keep thinking about it for the rest of the day. If that's my only instruction. Don't think about so don't think about how hard that was. Don't think about how terrified you were, how unhappy you are. Make

it positive, make it bubbly, make it glowy. Of course, the thing that I'm telling you not to think about implicitly or explicitly is the thing that's going to become louder. And that is exactly what is happening here. Your positive thoughts suppressed the initial negative ones, and that suppression actually has the reverse effect of creating a preoccupation with the initial event because you didn't get the chance to work

through it. You didn't get the chance to truly process how you reacted, perhaps the trauma that it's left, the consequences, none of that. You've just pushed it into a box. There was another study from the nineties that showed something very similar that suppressing feelings can actually make our psychological stress and our psychological suffering more significant and more intense. And that kind of brings me to my next point.

Not only does toxic positivity actually end up making the feelings worse, so kind of having that like backfire effect, it also prevents growth. Now I spoke briefly about this before, but the next step in the toxic positivity disaster timeline is that a not only do you feel shame and stigma towards your emotion, which b means that you actually

end up feeling worse, but finally, you never actually grow. Now, I am not saying that bad things happen for a reason and that these negative feelings are a lesson, But if there's, you know, anything, any kind of consolation prize, as terrible as it is, it's that when you let yourself feel the hard times, you grow through the hard times. When you apply unrealistic optimism, you don't even get that.

So not only did the bad things still happen and you still feel terrible, but you also never learn to evolve as a person, learn how to respond. You also never get to appreciate how tremendous you are, Like you were the one who had the courage and the strength and the patience and the will to get through all of that. When we try and be like, well, everything happens for a reason, or you could have it worse, or look on the bright side, we need to stop there.

You know, you were actually dealt a bad hand and you still push through, and that is a testament to how amazing you are. And that is a testament to your strength and your problem solving and your hard work. And when you wrap it all up in a nice pink, fuzzy bow, you don't actually get the acknowledgment you deserve

around how truly resilient you were. So the final consequence of toxic positivity, and in my mind, one of the most convincing is to why we cannot be positive all the time is that it just isn't the full picture. Your mindset cannot change everything. It is a very privileged perspective to think that thinking good thoughts can shift a situation. Yes, it can definitely shift the way you think about something, it can change how you feel, but the situation in

the event remains the same. And I think the big problem I have is that there are certain things that a positive mindset, you know, will not make better, It will not solve obviously, Like a really big one is

things that are like biological or genetic or medical. You know, I've never seen a single article or academic piece of research that has said positive thinking shows signs of like improving cancer survival rates, or people who suppress negative emotions are less likely to have diabetes, or like woman wins award for I don't know, for being happy all the time, congratulation, happiest woman alive. I've never seen anything like that. And there is a lot that we need to mention about

the fact that some people just have it harder. And coming into their circumstances, their story, their life, and applying perhaps your more privileged perspective and one in which you can say just think positive thoughts about it is kind of not very fair. It's not very fair, and it's just not very nice, to be honest. It's not that you're trying to be mean. It's just it's just not very nice. Because imagine sitting there and being like, yeah, it's very easy for you to say, oh, you know,

bad things happen for a reason. But if your mom's just died, or if you're going through a war or whatever, it is like, no, that's not the truth, that's not the full truth. The other thing, the other thing I think of, is like your environment does play a much bigger role than we think, and it sometimes overwhelms our

ability to think positively about something. I saw this video from a creator on YouTube the other day who she's a dietitian specialist, a doctor dietitian specialist, and she gave the example of like cortisol levels and how there's been this whole flood and like pseudoscience or I don't know, let's not be so quick as to call it pseudoscience, but this whole flood and research around how changing negative thoughts into positive ones really helps lower your causal levels.

But she said in this video, she's like, yes, that might be true, but none of that is going to be effective if you don't have shelter, or you don't have a sense of internal or external safety, if you don't have community. Positive thinking making things lighter just actually masks certain things that may actually really need to change, that may actually really demand action and demand some form of justice or demand a personal shift. So we've talked

about some of the consequences of toxic positivity. It isn't the full picture. It prevents growth, It actually makes us feel worse, and it stigmatizes what are normal emotions. I want to talk about the alternative. If we have to abandon our radical optimism, maybe not radical unrealistic optimism. Radical optimism is still fine. But if we have to aband and our unrealistic optimism, what do we have left. Well, we're going to talk about all of that and more

after this shortbreak. I have a lot of grace for those of us who do genuinely try and see the good, and I will say that I am someone who does try and do that. There is a lot of beauty in finding the joy despite things being pretty terrible. There is a lot of beauty in seeing the good side of things and trying to find the silver lining. Again, we want the people we love most to be happy. We want to guide them back to a place of feeling good and positive about their circumstances. So I totally

get the inclination we want to feel good. It's okay to want to feel good. This episode isn't about being like if you want to feel good about yourself, you have toxic positivity. No, I think it's more about whether your version of being positive involves not not making space for negative emotions or bad emotions. Complex emotions will call them that. I think complex emotions also sometimes make us uncomfortable because we've never been taught how to process them

within ourselves or with others. We have no education or emotional management courses like that's not something that we are taught on or informed on as children, even as adults. So suppression and making everything seem quite positive and lovely is the status quo. But let's talk about some alternatives for actually looking at those complex emotions and you know, making peace with them, becoming friends with them, becoming friends with your friends negative emotions and not bright siding and

not trying to fix everything. So, firstly, when you find the desire to suppress a negative or complex emotion is coming up, be honest with the fact that a situation is difficult and break away from the urge to say it's fine. Immediately. You're allowed to feel your painful emotions without them becoming you. There was an article from Scientific

America that I read in preparation for this episode. It's about ten years old, and it suggests that across multiple studies, multiple case studies, multiple research projects on happiness, it is actually the people who are in touch with their negative emotions who overall experience the greatest levels of well being and true mastery over their lives. So, honestly, you are better off just admitting that something sucks, just admitting that something is awful. That is okay, You're going to push

on anyways. You are not going to become those feelings. Those feelings are just part of your human experience. I think it's honesty without the extreme pessimism, and I get that that is a fine line to walk. But you are allowed to feel despair, feel griefeel whatever it is. And that doesn't need to be everything. That doesn't need to become you. You know, you don't have to get wrapped up in ruminating and letting it interrupt your life.

If you make space and time for your negative emotions and then are like, Okay, I acknowledge that this exists. I acknowledge that I feel this way, and I've given myself time to feel that, and now I'm going to move on. And if this emotion bubbles up again, I will look at it. I will hold it, I will sit with it. And when we're going to try again, we're going to move through same process every single time. So when the urge to run and kind of cover

up occurs, stay put, fight the instinct. There is this scene in Harry Potter. I think it's like the first one, Yeah, the first Harry Potter Sorcerer's Stone, Philosopher's Stone, where they're getting Harry'll run and one of them is like getting like suffocated by those by the vines, and Hermione goes just relaxed, just relax. I think when we try and make everything positive all the time, that is the vines

tightening around us. We're fighting back against what is a very natural instinct to feel, and it actually ends up suffocating us. It feels counterintuitive, but acceptance is where we find a lot of freedom. One way that I like to think about it is that sadness and goer grief, jealousy, pessimism, they're like little creatures in my house. They're like little

dust mites or little kittens. You know. My house is my brain and in it there are all these things kind of wandering around, and sometimes it might jump out and scare me, you know, are we pottering around and this little dust mite might be in my way. My grief might be in my way, my pessimism might be

in my way. But it's just a house guest. I don't need to lock them in a room, because that way they're going to become a lot louder, they're going to screech, and they're less disruptive when I let them roam about. When I know that these complex emotions are in the house, but they're not scary to me. They're not something that I need to run from or lock away. When those negative emotions come up, hold them, hug them,

let them pass through. Don't feel the need to immediately get rid of them, but find a way to integrate them through things like that are healthy coping mechanisms like talk therapy, like journaling, and like some catharsis or physical expression. This is another big piece of advice that I have.

Make hard emotions tangible things like art therapy. That is a huge component of art therapy is taking things that we would otherwise push aside and actually making them tangible, making them physical, giving them a home, and giving them, you know, a place to be free in a place

to come out. Same thing with a lot of physical therapies, and not physical therapies in terms of the eyebroker bone sense, in terms of like expressing negative emotions through your body, getting involved in a boxing class and a running class and a hit workout, something that provides your body with a release. We know that we feel a lot of emotions in our body. How can we expend and expend

that energy and give it a place to go. I think when it comes to navigating the urge to go positive when a friend is sharing or when you're giving advice and you're noticing that Okay, wait, I keep steering into the positive lane here. How do I bring this back so that my friend feels acknowledged. That's a whole

other thing. But I think replace your unrealistically optimistic statements with realistic ones and with ones that at their center, at their core are statements of acceptance, are statements of approval for these emotions. For example, if someone is like, oh my god, I know it's been four months. I know it's been a year, but I just still hung

up on my ex I'm still miserable. Instead of being like okay, but I feel like it's time to like get over it, Like maybe you should go and find somebody better, because like there's definitely somebody better out there for you. Be Like, I'm listening, I can totally see why that would be really really hard if somebody, you know, your friend, I've had a lot of friends recently get later from their tech jobs. There's huge like redundancies in

that area. If your friend is like, oh I got laid off, this is just like the most terrible thing. Instead of being like, well, on the bright side, at least, like, you know, you have savings. At least, you know, maybe your parents could help with your rent. At least, like you'll find a new job pretty soon. At least you know you always said that you hated that job. Maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes you just got to say, you know, failure is sometimes a part of life, and

your feelings around that are super valid. How can I help? Sometimes bad things just happen. I'm really sorry, there's no reason. What do you want me to do? Not like what do you want me to do? But like what would you like me to do? How can I help you? You hear? What are you thinking? Just explain how you're thinking? Just explain how you're feeling to me, and I will sit and I will absorb all of that complexity, all of that outrage, all of that negativity. I'll just absorb

it for you. And I'm not going to sit there and be like, yeah, this happened for a reason, because I can acknowledge that maybe you don't want to hear that right now. There is a time and a place for being positive. There is a time and a place, and I totally respect the need to want to make somebody feel better, but sometimes you've got to look for the signs that that's what they want as well. And you know what the easiest sign is is when they say,

can you just make me feel better about this? And then you can make them feel and then you can be a little bit more positive about things, or when you can see that they're moving from wanting to vent to wanting advice, or if they are someone who does actually respond pretty well to that, they're like a good friend or a partner, like you, probably know when they're ready to hear those positive statements. Until then, just be really genuine and authentic in your interactions with them, kind

of avoid using those cliches or those platitudes. That may not be relevant or helpful. I just want to finish up by saying, one more time, you don't have to feel good about your life, about yourself, about the world all the time. In fact, as those studies were telling us, sometimes it's actually helpful to feel deep, vulnerable, complex feelings

about a situation, about your life. Those feelings not only remind you that you're a human and that you can feel a full rainbow spectrum of emotions, they also do

help you grow. They do help you problem solve, they do help you be empathetic, they help you connect with other people, and they stop us from being one dimensional people, like that book was saying, that author was saying, when the focus is always on happy experiences, happy emotions, getting back to joy, getting back to what feels good, making just like when the only ambition is to have as many happy moments as possible, and that is like it's

a very concrete task. I think sometimes we really forget how special it is when times are good, and we also sometimes forget what it means to be truly feeling, and that sometimes like those emotions really remind us of what matters and what we care about. And as much as like obviously, we love sharing happy, fun memories with

our friends. I think true bonding and true connections sometimes actually does come from those dark and hard and sometimes painful moments where you're honest and you're feeling and you're authentic. So I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. It's a bit more ramboly than I normally do, but this is just a topic that I'm really passionate about and didn't want to script it as much. I just kind of wanted to talk about it, have a bit of

a discussion. See if you guys related, if this is something that you've experienced, if you also think that there is perhaps a problem with being too positive all the time. So thank you so much for listening. I hope that you've made it this far. If so, make sure that you are following me on Instagram or following me here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you are listening right now, and if you can leave a five star review, that is incredibly helpful and it of course helps the show

to grow. Until next time, stay safe, be kind to yourself, be gentle to yourself, and we will talk soon.