@RightMeow said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:
If you have interacted with me at all for any sort of time, you know I’m an overthinker. Part of that is I will never think the praise is about me, but I’ll think everything negative is. Yeah, yeah. I know.
Onwards.
Positive toxicity.
I’m fucking optimistic. I have been all my RL and people have accused me of being fake. I’ve had to alter who I am at my core for my friends IRL (they are not actually my friends currently) to not be so positive. I’ve been told to shut up when I am being authentically who I am.
I tend to end posts here about being kind to each other. Not to dismiss others because I’m also (I thought) pretty supportive of what people feel. You feel your feels. Your feels are valid. It’s just I have been in such a dark place after run-ins with people (DownWithOPP/Ruiz/etc) and the fall out from all of that – it’s almost like hey just a quick reminder to breathe.
Soooo… now I’m confused and this confusion is stupidly effecting me RL.
What is the line between just being an optimist with ADHD (which probably means I’m hyper happy) and being toxic?
Should I not post? Should I not say uplifting things? Should I not point out good points? I’m genuinely confused and not sure, but it is never my intent to harm. I’m just who I am and maybe that’s a bad thing?
Anyways - I don’t think the original vent was at me as I don’t think I interact with the person, but it’s caused me to be curious.
Also, this is a genuine ask, not a tell me I’m great or anything. Where it the line? What do you alter? If you are a RL optimist at what point of alteration for others do you then become unauthentic?
Toxic positivity has a lot of aspects. One of them is what @Pyrephox mentioned above. Other aspects are the performative, public displays of “omg you are all so great forever” that I see a lot, especially when they end up humble-posting about “omg you guys, you’re so nice that you even replied to my nice post about how nice I am, wow”.
It creates a thin veneer that can be used to cover up things that aren’t so nice, things that are toxic and problematic.
I don’t think being positive is a bad thing. I work hard to be positive and express that positivity when it’s has merit. If I’m chatting about something on my game and someone says the people there are friendly, I express that yeah, I’m really proud of how friendly the game culture is, or whatever. But I don’t go out of my way to post random page-long stuff on public forums about “OMG EVERYONE HERE IS SO GREAT”.
Like most things, I think toxic positivity is contextual.