One of many rants coming your way. While happiness may not be a choice, your decision to read is.
Have you ever had a severe head and chest cold with congestion and coughing and headache and a perpetually runny nose? Have you ever been so sick you couldn’t get out of bed or you just sat all day, staring into space, brain fuzzy, unable to concentrate on anything? Have you ever been so sick you just wanted to sleep all the time?
I just got over what people laughingly call a “cold” with all of those symptoms and more, and it occurred to me that many of the feelings are identical to those I feel most of the time–run down, tired, fuzzy, unable to do the simplest of things, and only wanting to sit and chill.
I’ve been dealing with depression for decades. It started in high school, and it lives on a spectrum. Sometimes it’s just a nagging feeling that something is not right. Sometimes, it feels like something dark and dirty has exploded on the inside and is eating its way out. But always–ALWAYS–it forms the foundation of everything I do and think and am.
Over the years, I’ve tried every medicine on the market. Only two helped–one at doses 5x the “high” normal range and the other in combination with another. That latter one made my hair fall out and left it so brittle and thin I actually started to feel the 62 years I am. The former? Created a whole host of short-term side effects that overrode any good I was feeling.
I’ve tried traditional and energy therapy, have immersed myself in spiritual community, spent long days out in the woods, journaled, walked, gone to the gym, tried eating “right,” and gotten involved in all sorts of things. And here’s the thing. Sometimes, those things help in the moment, for at least part of the time I’m engaged in them. But nothing ever helps long-term. And even during the things that help for a brief time, there lies beneath a dark, heavy sadness. A sense of defeat.
Many people–including some self-proclaimed professionals–loudly claim these days that happiness is (simply) a choice, and that people who express what are identified as negativity and depression are doing it because they have opted not to be and do otherwise.
As someone who has worked with the most critically and profoundly mentally ill, who has struggled to manage my own sometimes-severe clinical depression since before high school, and who does not just buy into what society posits as “normal,” I can definitively say that those folks have a very narrow view of their world, that they are stuck in supposed-to-be’s, and that their proclamations can be dangerous and harmful to others.
These days, what I hear constantly when I talk about all this–especially from “professionals”–is that I must not be doing enough or the right thing. If I exercised regularly for 6 months? Well, that clearly wasn’t enough time. If I took medicine X? Well, it just wasn’t the right one. If I tried that same medicine again after decades? I must have not been taking it correctly. If I keep myself busy and still feel depressed? Well obviously, I’m doing too much. This is the standard response from healthcare providers when they don’t have the answers. No one is willing to admit that they just don’t know–they need to place the blame somewhere when their treatments don’t work. But I’ve come to understand that we just don’t have all the answers yet. And we may never. Living and learning are constantly evolving.
People who don’t live with this every day have a variety of ways of dealing with those of us who do, many of which are dismissive and sometimes dangerous. The two that are, in my view, the most dangerous are toxic positivity and what linguists call thought-terminating cliches (which I will talk about in an upcoming post).
Allaya Cooks-Campbell defines toxic positivity as “. . . the pressure to only display positive emotions, suppressing any negative emotions, feelings, reactions, or experiences. It invalidates human experience and can lead to trauma, isolation, and unhealthy coping mechanisms” and writes more about what it is and how to manage it in the following blog on Better Up:
https://www.betterup.com/blog/toxic-positivity
I’ll add one result to the exposure to toxic positivity: death.
Demanding that someone be happy or stop being “negative” and depressed can have a fatal outcome. Let me say that again, in a different, more direct way. If you tell someone that they are not happy because they have made a choice not to be, you may be responsible for helping that person make the decision to end their life. Because what you’ve said is dismissive, it tells them that their thoughts and feelings don’t matter, and you’re letting them know they haven’t done enough to take care of themselves (and you, apparently). In someone who is depressed, that all translates to “I’m not enough. I’m no good. I can’t even help myself. Nobody hears or cares about me.” And honestly? Why would anyone want to stick around if they genuinely believed those things?
Some people do all they can, try all the treatment that is available (or they can afford), get up every day and slog through it, eat the right foods, exercise, hold a full-time job or run their own business, and all the other things that are “guaranteed” to help, and still, the depression overwhelms.
That insistence from others to be upbeat, to “smile,” or to just “choose happiness,” acts to completely disregard what someone with depression (or grief or trauma) is feeling. Depressed folks typically feel bad about themselves, and the inability to be how others expect them to be may make them feel worse. What we hear when someone says “just choose happiness” is “you are not good enough right now, and it’s your own damn fault.” Tell that to someone enough times, and the risk of suicide–which may already be a consideration–is heightened.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that our thoughts drive our feelings and vice versa. It’s a sometimes vicious cycle. But I also know that sometimes people don’t have the ability–they are not able–to control their moods or the thoughts that run rampant through their heads. Insisting that someone “just choose to be happy” when they are struggling with sadness, grief, or a more elusive depression is cruel. And it can lead them to do awful things.
I fully believe that, for folks who are unable to acknowledge all of the potential sources of an individual’s “negativity” (by their definition) or lack of joy, that insistence that others be positive is solely for their own comfort. Those people don’t actually care at all if someone is depressed or worried or grief-stricken; they are only concerned with how seeing those feelings and emotions expressed makes THEM feel. And they, often without any seeming care, force others to express themselves in ways that will make THEM feel better.
I have finally decided that these people have no place in my life. I recognize that the practice of toxic positivity is DANGEROUS and only serves the person spouting it. And I say that without reservation, as someone who has had to navigate unthoughtful comments and directives at every turn. I’ve not experienced a single ounce of actual compassion and understanding from anyone whose go-to response is “smile” or “just choose to be happy.”
The Grey Zone 
Thank you.