I've NEVER seen these two words combined...

Hiiii Friend!

​Listen to this email here for enhanced dramatic effect lol​

Recently I've been struggling to handle negative events in my life. I thought I was managing well by perceiving every bombshell of an event as "part of the story" or "an opportunity that's gonna lead to rainbows and butterflies." Although I still believe this is the right way to go about something, I realized I was setting myself up for more crossfire by overdoing this mindset.

Imagine this: You've never experienced pain before in your entire life and you decide to cook bacon using your hands to flip each piece - you're going experience 2nd degree burns for the first time. Then, as you wail in pain your thicc cut bacon burns to an inedible crisp. Dramatic, I know.
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Now continue to imagine: While you're crying with your hand under running water (which is making it worse?) you say to yourself, "Wow! I'm so glad this happened to me! I'm looking forward to eating my charcoaled bacon too. I never liked normally cooked bacon anyway. Oh and at least I burned my right hand, so now I can practice playing the flute with just my one, left hand to be ambidextrous!" Stupid, I know.

The quoted stupidity above is something I can definitely be guilty of: 🤮 TOXIC POSITIVITY 🤮

I read about this for the first time the other night as I was reading, "Manifest In Action" and Ms Roxie defines it as - the obsession with remaining entirely positive, even during challenging times, and continuously focusing on the need to adopt a positive mindset.

Then goes on to say it's dismissive and it encourages a facade that's detrimental to building emotional resilience. SO EFFING TRUE. I've recently experienced "getting punched in the mouth" back to back to back which was wearing me down, so after a while I had forgotten that it's ok (and sane) to have negative emotions - because the important part and where true growth happens is during the recovery.
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If we block these emotions with toxic positivity in the first place, there's no recovery, no learning, no growth - no using tongs the second time you go to cook bacon and another round of 2nd degree burns with a entree of oily, black, bits. But if we give ourselves the permission to experience time and space to feel ALL the feels - our body and subconscious will naturally guide us to tongs that help to protect us from repeating the same mistakes.

THE PROMPT(s): When's the last time you might've used toxic positivity to avoid negative emotions? When's the last time someone used it on you? Saying something like, "oh it could be worse." how did you feel? and how much time do you think you need to realistically heal from those 2nd degree burns? What would you say to someone when you just need time to process?
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Hope this was helpful to you as much as it was for me 🧡

✌🏾TTYL!✌🏾
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Simie
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P.S. Am I the only one who's never heard of the term: toxic positivity? I understood the concept but to sum it up into two words is so much easier to use as a reminder. Lemme know.
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​P.S.S. Ok so literally nobody corrected me on this - "it's actually P.P.S." not "P.S.S." just wanted to bring this to your attention because I think it's funny I went months before noticing this. It will remain and you are now part of an inside joke lol.

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