These phrases are often offered as comfort, especially when someone is visibly struggling. But for many people today, particularly young professionals navigating burnout, uncertainty, and emotional fatigue, this insistence on optimism feels less like support and more like dismissal.
For Riddhi Garg, a resident officer at the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the pressure to stay positive has often felt performative.
“Positivity is not inherently harmful. In fact, it can be deeply reassuring,” she says. “But the problem begins when positivity is demanded at the cost of emotional honesty.” She recalls moments where expressing exhaustion or discomfort felt risky. There is a constant peer pressure to appear emotionally ‘sorted’. If you express pain too often, you risk being labelled as someone who is always cribbing, someone ‘negative,’ someone people would rather avoid.”
In such spaces, she says, staying positive becomes a form of self-protection rather than healing. “Smiling through difficulty felt easier than explaining oneself repeatedly or being judged for not being resilient enough.”
When support sounds like shutdown
For tech analyst Piyush Pal, toxic positivity shows up most clearly in moments of vulnerability, especially when he feels misunderstood. “Rather, you feel the other person is not even trying to see or hear your experience and giving generalised gyan,” he says.
He remembers this most acutely during a difficult job-hunting phase. “When I was feeling dejected, that’s when it happened. Friends and family, in want of supporting you, erase what you are trying to say and jump to conclusions.” Instead of space to process disappointment, he was met with platitudes. “It’s either people you’ve outgrown in career discussions, or friends saying things like ‘ho jaega’ or ‘don’t worry too much’.”
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What stings, he explains, is not the lack of care but the lack of listening. “Sharing vulnerability becomes a gateway to their pre-defined options.”
Psychiatrist Dr Pavitra Shankar, Associate Consultant at Aakash Healthcare, explains why such responses can be damaging. “Toxic positivity expects people to stay positive all the time even when they feel pain, loss, or hardship,” she says. “It pushes away feelings such as sadness, anger, or fear.” Healthy optimism, she adds, does the opposite: “It accepts difficulties honestly and holds hope that things can improve over time, without denying negative emotions.”
What is the cost of emotional shutdown? (Photo: Freepik)
The emotional cost of always being “fine.”
For professional emcee Rajan Nath, toxic positivity plays out in quieter, more personal ways. “I love being positive. I love sending emails to my loved ones, making them feel special,” he says. But beneath that positivity sits an unspoken expectation. “Deep down, there is some expectation that at least they can reply, or sometimes take the same initiative to reach out.”
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When that doesn’t happen, he suppresses disappointment to save relationships. “Since they are the only few friends in my life and I don’t want to lose them, I have to keep myself positive, subduing my emotions.” Over time, that suppression becomes emotionally exhausting. “That’s what I see as toxic positivity—being forced to stay positive even when there is emotional turmoil within.”
He also points to how early conditioning plays a role. “We’ve been taught since childhood that ‘Boys don’t cry’. Even if there is an emotional meltdown, you are told not to cry and be positive.”
Dr Shankar notes that suppressing emotions doesn’t make them disappear. “Suppressing negative emotions pushes them inside,” she says. “Over time, this can cause long-term stress, sleep problems, headaches, digestive issues, and emotional numbness.” Mentally, it may lead to anxiety, irritability, or burnout. “Unprocessed emotions often come back as symptoms or emotional outbursts.”
Performative healing
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The idea of curbing negative emotions, hence, “staying positive” is further amplified on social media. Healing, happiness, and self-care are often presented as aesthetic, soft lighting, motivational captions, curated timelines. “Healing is aestheticised and packaged into reels, captions and timelines,” says Garg. “But happiness is not linear, and healing is rarely beautiful.”
This “performative wellness” creates unrealistic expectations. “What we see online is often a curated version of recovery,” she adds. “It makes people feel they are failing even at healing.”
Dr Shankar agrees. “Constant pressure to stay positive can delay healing or seeking professional help,” she says. “People begin to believe their struggles are just a mindset problem—not something that deserves support.” Fear of being seen as negative or dramatic often prevents people from seeking therapy. “Healing begins with acknowledgement. It does not begin with forced positivity.”
While in relationships, toxic positivity often shows up as minimising pain. “Everything happens for a reason. Others have it worse. Just stay strong.”
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“These phrases may sound encouraging, but they often ignore emotions,” says Dr Shankar. “They shift focus away from listening and understanding.” Instead of comfort, they are silent. “They make people feel their pain is inconvenient or inappropriate.”
Workplaces are not immune either. “In professional settings, toxic positivity appears as pressure to stay cheerful to minimise stress or ignore burnout,” she explains.
Over time, this discourages honest communication and leads to disengagement and unresolved conflict. For Garg, the cost is deeply personal. “This stigma around negative emotions has created a culture where people try to escape reality instead of confronting it,” she says. “Forced positivity doesn’t heal you; it slowly isolates you and breaks you from within.”
So, where do we draw the line?
The distinction lies in validation. “For me, healthy optimism means acknowledging that things can eventually get better, but only after allowing ourselves to fully feel what is not working right now,” Garg says. “It means sitting with difficult emotions instead of suppressing them for social approval.”
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Dr Shankar defines emotional validation as acceptance. “You don’t try to fix or downplay feelings. You listen and say things like, ‘That sounds hard’ or ‘Your feelings make sense.’ You don’t need to agree, you need empathy.”
Nath puts it more philosophically. “You’ll get the feeling of relaxation on landing on a shore only if you’ve been sailing through the ocean,” he says. “It’s equally important to be negative sometimes.”
In a culture obsessed with resilience, productivity, and constant happiness, allowing space for discomfort may seem out of vogue. But shouldn’t it be the other way around? Because positivity that leaves no room for pain isn’t positivity at all. It’s unaddressed emotions.
What is the cost of emotional shutdown? (Photo: Freepik)