What is empty positivism?

The empty positivism, also called depressing optimismIt is that attitude, sometimes even "mandate" that seeks to always be happy. We live in a society that rejects negative emotions: "".

The problem comes when crises or adverse experiences appear. Is it possible to continue to be happy in those circumstances?

All the emotions positive Y negative (understood as pleasant / unpleasant and not as good / bad), they are natural reactions in the human being and we need to feel them in order to understand them. They serve us as guide and each one has its own function. or to get closer to something beneficial.

How does it manifest?

• Tendency to simplify:. Reject and block all unpleasant emotions.
• Constantly self-assess: The fact of repeatedly thinking if I am happy is exactly what makes me unhappy.
• And constantly evaluate others: Showing our apparent happiness on social media and comparing it with that of others encloses us in a permanent circle of inauthenticity. The visible is not always the total, think of an iceberg.
• Feelings of guilt for feeling negative emotions. .

Effects and consequences of empty positivism

Multiple studies confirm that high levels of happiness are related to a lower probability of getting sick. However, feeling happy has to be a consequence of adequate mental health, no one imposition.

• Empty positivism forces you to always be well, regardless of the circumstances, as if you could choose to be happy. If you can't, you are not trying hard enough. This supposes a double upset: the inevitable suffering and above the feeling of inability for not being able to control it from optimism.
• In his attempt to eliminate all that is unpleasant, he falls into the superficiality, since it does not address the origin of what created the discomfort, but only blocks the negative emotion that it generates.
• If only because they are not pleasant, we not only lose essential information to be able to manage them and develop ourselves personally, but it can lead us to an emotional disconnection that can become psychopathology. For example, if a person does not allow himself in a grieving process, it ends up becoming entrenched and turning into pathological grief.

How to approach it?

• It is impossible to be fine all the time, Emotions are transitory and have to do with what happens to us, they follow their process and need to be liquefied.
• Don't try to feel something you don't feel Accept it, but don't let them dictate how you have to feel either.
• Exercise intelligent optimismAccept that you are not in complete control of everything, that you can face adversity by acquiring new ways of solving things that happen to you.
• Give up magical thinking from "".
• Train therapeutic pessimism, you need a certain amount of pessimism to be a smart optimist. If you couldn't think about what could go wrong, you couldn't take steps to remedy it.
• Don't indulge in negativity, don't make being sick an excuse for inactivity, take charge and get on the job.
• Stop valuing happiness as a criterion for social success. Feeling negative emotions does not mean that you are a failure.
• Relativize, Recognizing your strengths and points to improve will favor your development and you will gain in well-being in an authentic way, not imposed.
• Ditch the canned slogans of supposed happiness, create your own learning based on what you are living.

• • Feeling happy has to be a consequence of good mental health, not an imposition.
  • If we silence some emotions just because they are not pleasant it can lead to a great emotional disconnect.
  • We must not indulge in negativity, being bad should not be an excuse for inactivity. It's about taking the reins and getting the batteries