I'm so over these "toxic positivity" people

Keith Hernandez4 said:Personally, I find myself increasingly irritated by people who can’t seem to mind their own business—those who act as if they have some divine right to dictate how others should behave or feel. And then, heaven forbid, if someone shows even a tiny bit of human imperfection, they practically feast on it just to feel superior.

I see it happening constantly on this forum. It’s almost as if everyone is just sitting there, waiting for someone to post about a struggle—a struggle that might even be their own fault, because, well, they're only human—just so they can descend like vultures, ready to lecture and condescend. Why is that? Is it because seeing someone else stumble gives us wings? Does witnessing weakness or vulnerability make us feel taller? As if we need to kick someone while they're down just to ensure they hit the pavement even harder?

So, that’s why I’m "always cheerful." For one thing, when someone asks how I am, they rarely actually care about the truth. And for another, I refuse to hand over any ammunition to the malicious types out there; I have no desire to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing I'm struggling. Perhaps those very people who get under your skin simply don't strike you as safe enough to share real feelings with, so you end up hiding behind a mask of positivity.
Given how many people are just idling, waiting for a moment of weakness so they can twist the knife, I suppose my cynicism isn't misplaced.

For some of us, it isn't about performing for an audience at all; it's just about building a wall to protect ourselves from the toxic, intrusive crowd.

Yes, you know, I hadn't considered that perspective, and it actually makes quite a bit of sense.
I am truly sorry to hear about the rough experiences you've had 😢 Fortunately, once you stop giving people power over your emotions, their attempts to belittle you lose their sting entirely. I recommend this to you simply because I know how exhausting and damaging it is to constantly perform. If you show your true mood, people will seize the opportunity to judge or gloat, but if you look closer, you'll realize they are mostly just actors themselves. Let your satisfaction come from the fact that you are several steps ahead of them—because at least you aren't pretending.

Keith Hernandez4 said:So many people are just selfish, superficial, and completely lacking in empathy. They’ll label you as "always happy" simply because you don't walk around with your head down and insist everything is fine. The point is, people rarely want to know what’s actually hiding beneath someone else's skin—unless it’s something they can use to boost their own ego. Just look at the OP. They play a role, and it "annoys" them, yet they end up with stomach ulcers and sitting in therapists' offices. Does that conclusion strike you as well-meaning, as if there were a genuine interest in finding out why these people aren't as happy as they pretend to be? Or is it just malicious, because, hey, she’s a grouch, so how dare she wear a mask to protect herself from that very malice?

For me, it's the people who are always "moody" for no actual reason that get under my skin. They act like life owes them something more than it gives, simply because they exist. They complain so much they don't even have time to ask the person they're talking to how they are. They reject every bit of good advice, take the path of least resistance, and then whine when everything falls apart and they have to face the music. They’re always the ones having it "hardest"—it doesn't matter if you broke your leg; to them, their broken fingernail is somehow the more tragic catastrophe.

If I care about someone, I’ll try to get to know who they really are and give them solid proof that they don't have to perform for me. If I don't care, then why should their "cheerfulness" bother me? Everyone manages life however they can, and everyone has their own defense mechanisms. I certainly won't look down on them just because I believe I should always be blunt and show all my grumpy sides while they choose not to.
Not to mention, in my opinion, anyone who thinks they can be completely honest with everyone hasn't had a particularly difficult life, nor do they truly understand human nature.

And yeah, too many of them feel absolutely no sorrow when someone else is hurting. Quite the opposite, actually—they enjoy seeing others suffer, or perhaps they find more satisfaction in someone else's pain than in their own.

No, that conclusion doesn't sound well-meaning to me at all. Not like they're actually interested in finding out the "why" behind it. But does that mean nobody else is allowed to want to understand? I don't get it. We can fully understand someone and it still won't change anything for them—some things just can't be changed, you just have to accept them.

So, what does "total honesty" even mean to you?
Look, I’ve dealt with absolute hell in almost every area of my life (and I needed someone from the outside who didn't know me to actually convince me of that, since everyone loves to say, "well, others had it harder"). So I’m still being honest, no matter how much it hurts or how people try to throw their fears at me. Always honest? That sounds just as ridiculous as being always cheerful or always moody. Life isn't that black and white; there are tons of shades of gray. But I'm not going to lie to someone's face just because I know I messed up—if I can find the strength to forgive myself and not do it again, or if I just decide to let it all go to hell. Because I've seen where lying to someone's face leads. You can be honest in a kind way, regardless of whether the other person is attacking you. It's for my own sake and out of respect for the other person. It’s not about acting superior.
If you aren't honest, how are you ever going to find the truth? I want to be happy in life, not living in a nightmare. I've had enough of that since I was in elementary school—pretty much my entire life.

To really get someone—to truly understand them—means knowing when they’d rather stay under the radar and not be seen. It’s about giving them exactly what they’re craving, even if they can't put a finger on it themselves or just won't admit they need it.

I’ve got no problem playing the part, whether that means acting grumpy or being the life of the party. The people who actually care about me don't mind at all, because honestly, I make a real effort to prioritize their feelings too.
I spent a long time wearing masks, learning how to adapt and just "go with the flow." But eventually, I just got tired of it—it wasn't making me any happier or more at peace. Now? I'm much more chill. I've tried a few different ways of navigating life, and this is where I landed.

Here’s the bottom line:
Games are for work; honesty is for real relationships. How deep does that go? Only as deep as you want the connection to be.

Austin Murphy5 said:I wonder if anyone else here can relate to the sentiment I’m about to share.

To give you some context: I enjoy my solitude just as much as I enjoy good company. While I certainly show emotion, I tend to keep the vast majority of my internal world to myself—not because I’m being secretive, but simply because I don't feel the need to, nor has it ever been particularly wise to do so. When it comes to the people I actually choose to spend my time with, they absolutely must possess a few specific traits:
1. The ability to engage in abstract conversation—you know, discussing ideas rather than just gossiping about other people or rehashing daily events.
2. They cannot be the type to mock others, especially those who are less fortunate or weaker.
3. They shouldn't be prone to talking back—even accidentally.
That is essentially my baseline for meaningful connection.
Of course, I would never be unkind to colleagues who don't meet these criteria (and frankly, they never do), but I simply have no desire to socialize with them outside of the office if they don't fit the bill.

As for whether people are generally "good-natured" or in a high spirit... well, that has never really been a deciding factor for me. If someone is having a rough day, I will likely be the one stepping in to help; conversely, if they are in a fantastic mood, I am more than happy to celebrate their happiness. Most people exist somewhere in the middle—navigating their own ups and downs—and I find that perfectly acceptable.

However, I find I have a much higher tolerance for the perpetual grump than I do for the eternal optimist.

Now, optimism is wonderful—provided it isn't "performed" with excessive, jittery energy—and I certainly don't have an issue with it when it's genuine. For instance, I tend to be the resident grouch in my household, while my husband is always in high spirits, and we function together beautifully. It’s not that I’m constantly complaining or venting, nor is he walking around shouting about how "absolutely maaaaagnificent" life is; we actually behave quite similarly, though he simply worries far less about everything than I do. And that works for us.

But I have noticed a real struggle for me when dealing with that specific crowd—those who are constantly laughing loudly and performatively, offering incessant compliments, or incessantly prattling on about how incredible their weekend was. These are the people who seem to find everyone likable and will never, ever admit that something is bothering them. I’ve observed that these types rarely actually listen when others are speaking. Instead, they might spend the conversation checking their reflection in a window or interrupting a deep thought just to give the most insincere, overly cheery wave to someone passing by the table. To them, every concert is a masterpiece, regardless of how terrible the sound system actually is.

I realize this might sound harsh, and please believe me, I don't consider myself superior—I just value sincerity. Sometimes I truly wonder how much room these people leave themselves to experience actual, raw emotion. I once lived in an American community where almost everyone behaved this way, and it seemed like half the population was seeing a therapist multiple times a week. Not to mention the prevalence of stress-related issues like ulcers or tumors. I honestly find it difficult to believe they aren't just performing, and as a result, I generally avoid being in their orbit. Perhaps I'm just out of touch, but there it is.🙂

Are there any others out there who feel the same way?

just being 🎉

Bradley Ortiz2 said:Personally, I can't stand anything fake—not even a false positive.

Sent from my D5103 via Reddit

Same here. I have zero patience for anything fake or rigged. For me, honesty is the only thing that matters. Honestly? I’d much rather deal with someone who complains constantly but is being real, than some person pretending they're living their best life when they're actually falling apart inside. Don't get me wrong, people who are genuinely happy and positive are great—you can feel that energy hitting you immediately. It's unmistakable.

There are so few honest people left out there that sometimes I feel like Diogenes wandering around with a flashlight looking for one... but I still hold onto the few real ones left. I value them more than anything.😉

I don't mind people being happy and riding high, but everything needs its time and place.

For example, it drives me crazy when you bring up a struggle—say, "work is absolutely killing me"—and instead of actually listening, they just start bragging. They’re all like, "Oh, my job is perfect! My boss is a total legend and everyone gets along so well..."

Look, show a little empathy for the people who aren't having such a flawless time.

Personally, my goal is just to not kill the mood. I don't have the energy required to be the designated cheerleader.

It feels like narcissism, arrogance, and pure greed have become the ultimate status symbols in this day and age.

Carl Rivera43 said:It feels like narcissism, arrogance, and pure greed have become the ultimate status symbols in this day and age.

I guess you’d hear the exact same thing a hundred years ago, or a thousand, or two. People don't actually change as fast as we think they do. In my opinion, humans have always been the same; it’s just the way we show it that shifts. You’re always going to have empathetic people, narcissists, people who would give you the shirt off their back, and then those who whine about having nothing just to suck the attention out of a room. I think it’s wrong to assume that people who stay positive had easy lives or are just being superficial...
From where I'm sitting, the bigger issue is that people tend to take cheerful folks for granted. They write them off as shallow just because they don't bash their heads against a wall every time life gets heavy...
My mom passed away three weeks ago... and man, it’s incredibly hard. We were close, and even though I moved out on my own early, she was always my home—that place you go to hide away until the storm passes. I cry, but I cry alone. Do people really think it isn't hard for me to not have anyone to just hold me and say, "it'll be okay, you won't feel this broken forever"? Just because I don't walk around looking like a dark cloud when I'm out in public? Just because I don't fall apart in front of everyone? When people actually ask how I am, I tell them the truth... but at the end of the day, I still have to deal with it all by myself. No one can carry my grief for me. I can talk about other things (and I have to), I can support others, I can encourage them...
I am my parents' daughter. They went through so much nonsense with a smile, working their tails off without ever complaining. They genuinely cared about how people were doing, without feeling the need to brag about how they grew up with nothing or how hard they had to work jobs that had zero to do with their degrees... At my mom's funeral, there were over two hundred people there... and about a hundred of them weren't even family, just friends. Everyone saw her more like a sister because she stayed in touch with everyone, even when life was absolutely tearing her apart. Mostly because that's just who she was.
Smile, no matter how rough life gets. Life is as beautiful as it is difficult. With a smile, you might at least brighten someone else's day as you pass by. Even if it's just to make them laugh at the idea that you're not "normal," because honestly, who actually laughs when everything around us feels so gray and miserable...

Man, you’re totally right. Honestly, sometimes people just see everything through this gray, pessimistic lens because of all these unnecessary pressures they're dealing with.

Carl Rivera43 said:Man, you’re totally right. Honestly, sometimes people just see everything through this gray, pessimistic lens because of all these unnecessary pressures they're dealing with.

There are some things happening in this world that we just can't control, no matter how much they hurt...
All we really have is control over how we process it all. We’re all here for such a short time. Why on earth would we waste what little life we have by staring at nothing but gloom? Why choose to be gray just because the world feels gray?
And honestly, especially now—when my time eventually comes—I want people to remember me with a smile. I want them to remember me smiling, helping out, dancing, just being full of life and love... I want my kids to tell stories about how I was the kind of mom who made Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes, or how they remember me singing them to sleep. Even if I got angry sometimes, I want them to remember how they learned the art of irony from me. I want them to learn that it doesn't matter where you're headed, but how many butterflies you managed to blow away along the way. I want them to say they learned to believe in themselves because I taught them that you can fall, sure, but you've gotta know how to get back up, brush off the dust, wipe your tears, and just keep moving.
Maybe think about that for a second. It’s not even about how random strangers remember you; maybe someone is having a totally fucked up day, and your simple smile is the one thing that actually cheers them up because nobody else bothered to.

velvetcobra65 said:I guess you’d hear the exact same thing a hundred years ago, or a thousand, or two. People don't actually change as fast as we think they do. In my opinion, humans have always been the same; it’s just the way we show it that shifts. You’re always going to have empathetic people, narcissists, people who would give you the shirt off their back, and then those who whine about having nothing just to suck the attention out of a room. I think it’s wrong to assume that people who stay positive had easy lives or are just being superficial...
From where I'm sitting, the bigger issue is that people tend to take cheerful folks for granted. They write them off as shallow just because they don't bash their heads against a wall every time life gets heavy...
My mom passed away three weeks ago... and man, it’s incredibly hard. We were close, and even though I moved out on my own early, she was always my home—that place you go to hide away until the storm passes. I cry, but I cry alone. Do people really think it isn't hard for me to not have anyone to just hold me and say, "it'll be okay, you won't feel this broken forever"? Just because I don't walk around looking like a dark cloud when I'm out in public? Just because I don't fall apart in front of everyone? When people actually ask how I am, I tell them the truth... but at the end of the day, I still have to deal with it all by myself. No one can carry my grief for me. I can talk about other things (and I have to), I can support others, I can encourage them...
I am my parents' daughter. They went through so much nonsense with a smile, working their tails off without ever complaining. They genuinely cared about how people were doing, without feeling the need to brag about how they grew up with nothing or how hard they had to work jobs that had zero to do with their degrees... At my mom's funeral, there were over two hundred people there... and about a hundred of them weren't even family, just friends. Everyone saw her more like a sister because she stayed in touch with everyone, even when life was absolutely tearing her apart. Mostly because that's just who she was.
Smile, no matter how rough life gets. Life is as beautiful as it is difficult. With a smile, you might at least brighten someone else's day as you pass by. Even if it's just to make them laugh at the idea that you're not "normal," because honestly, who actually laughs when everything around us feels so gray and miserable...

Please do not mistake my post for a lack of empathy or any disrespect toward your mother or your loss; I have endured my fair share of such departures. Both of my parents, gone in an instant during my childhood; a sister, a grandmother who was a mother to me, friends who left too young and too suddenly, relatives, and a vast number of people whose passing I have witnessed firsthand.
I have come to realize that when a person passes, an entire world vanishes with them—a world that even those closest to them never fully understood.
And I have learned that for those who have departed, it isn't about the recognition, nor the headcount of those attending the service, nor some public acknowledgment of their true value compared to others.
That spectacle serves the ones left behind... it creates an image that allows us to grapple with our own mortality, leaving us with a comforting portrait of those who are gone.
Smiling is incredibly difficult when you are weeping inside.
And one shouldn't always have to smile, nor perform happiness, because often a forced cheerfulness is nothing more than a mask used to shroud one's own fears or despair.
One ought to draw lessons from personal loss: the need to understand others, to respect them even when—by our own judgment or the judgment of others—they seem undeserving of it, because human perfection simply does not exist.
I was present at the funeral of a woman where three of her descendants were in attendance (all of them bitterly feuding with one another due to the deceased) along with six of us, whom the woman had caused the most grief to during her lifetime.
I found myself wondering why the six of us had ended up there in the first place—and then it hit me—we weren't there to judge her. We were actually there to offer some semblance of forgiveness. Despite all her shortcomings, we chose to see the human being underneath... someone who, I’m certain, was suffering quite deeply in their own way.

Why on earth do people assume their personal feelings are some sort of vital factor for the rest of society to consider?

If they actually were... I mean, how could anyone possibly be expected to recognize the shifting moods of every single person they cross paths with during a day? 😵

Where did this whole "trend" even come from—this idea that "I feel this way, therefore it matters"—it really grates on me... it's just 😵

Were you all somehow conditioned to fear growing up? Have you ever even heard of terms like maturity, emotional intelligence, or simple respect?

No one is telling you that you aren't allowed to have feelings, but at the end of the day, a drama queen remains a drama queen, regardless of how much you try to rebrand it. 😉

Lawrence Bailey77 said:Why on earth do people assume their personal feelings are some sort of vital factor for the rest of society to consider?

If they actually were... I mean, how could anyone possibly be expected to recognize the shifting moods of every single person they cross paths with during a day? 😵

Where did this whole "trend" even come from—this idea that "I feel this way, therefore it matters"—it really grates on me... it's just 😵

Were you all somehow conditioned to fear growing up? Have you ever even heard of terms like maturity, emotional intelligence, or simple respect?

No one is telling you that you aren't allowed to have feelings, but at the end of the day, a drama queen remains a drama queen, regardless of how much you try to rebrand it. 😉

It isn’t merely a matter of fashion—though people love to obsess over trends—it is more of an inescapable reality that everything for any given human being begins and ends with themselves... 😉
Some people catch on early—it’s almost impressive, really—while others take their sweet time, and then there are those who simply... never quite arrive at the realization. It's a spectrum, I suppose.

Jeffrey Fisher5 said:It isn’t merely a matter of fashion—though people love to obsess over trends—it is more of an inescapable reality that everything for any given human being begins and ends with themselves... 😉
Some people catch on early—it’s almost impressive, really—while others take their sweet time, and then there are those who simply... never quite arrive at the realization. It's a spectrum, I suppose.

Well... I suppose it's all fine... and entirely human... there's no arguing that part

But I suspect that acting as the center of one's own universe is, first and foremost, quite exhausting for a person. One can never truly "step out" of oneself to experience anything external—if not other people, then perhaps nature itself... I suppose there are no limits to how much one can retreat inward. 😵

Some realize it sooner, some later, and some, I imagine, never at all.

And then there are those who simply force their entire perception of the world to bend toward their own fleeting emotions 😵... for an entire lifetime 😢... it seems a rather tedious way to live, though, I suppose, it is a human choice... 🙂 I merely wonder if, had they known any other way, they might have chosen differently. 😉

Constantly forcing a positive attitude can be exhausting for everyone around you. It feels unnatural, and frankly, it can be irritating depending on the context. I was sitting at a diner with my father when a man approached me and asked, "How are you doing?"
I told him, "Not great, honestly."
He followed up with, "Why's that?"
"My father just passed away," I replied.
I have nothing else to add.😲

I have this coworker at my office who literally screams when she laughs
if you give her even a tiny bit of attitude, she just bursts out laughing
whenever anyone walks into her office—whether it's a client, me, or some other colleague having a rough day—she's just there
the whole office echoes with it
she even calls the boss by some cutesy nickname
she loves talking about how much of an optimist she is and how grateful she is for every single day—but honestly? She’s a total snake underneath it all
I can always tell when someone is with her because every two seconds there's this loud, piercing "ahahahahahahaha" echoing through the halls
so yeah, people like that really get on my nerves

There is a huge difference between being genuinely cheerful and just being forced, fake, and overly bubbly

but man, people just fall for it, don't they?
Maybe it's self-interest, or who knows what else
because there's no way I can't see right through it
Basically, it's all fake

We’re living in a world of illusions

Robin White2 said:Constantly forcing a positive attitude can be exhausting for everyone around you. It feels unnatural, and frankly, it can be irritating depending on the context. I was sitting at a diner with my father when a man approached me and asked, "How are you doing?"
I told him, "Not great, honestly."
He followed up with, "Why's that?"
"My father just passed away," I replied.
I have nothing else to add.😲

😢