Bright Sided: When Positive Thinking Becomes a Tool of Repression

What a great way to describe your process, Robyn. Ignoring or denying negative realities doesn't make them untrue or go away. I like your approach of rejecting a false positive and working through to a true optimism. I suspect not only does it feel better but it is also longer lasting.

Thanks so much for your comment!

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

What a great topic!

I have always thought of myself as an optimist but also know that sometimes life SUCKS. I can look at my big picture and be optimistic, but also can be real. Sometimes an asshole is an asshole. Sometimes a bad day is comically bad. Sometimes it's okay to be negative when shit happens. don't shove red/purple/yellow/pink/lime green ribbons down my throat or try to sprinkle glitter and fairy dust on my pile of negativity. Let me work through the negative and I will get to a true and honest positive on my own time. 

Thx for the food for thought!

Robyn

www.everydayjillwentupthehill.blogspot.com ( http://www.everydayjillwentupthehill.blogspot.com )

I think that is an apt word to describe what can become a dogma for some. Sadly I think they believe themselves to be kind and doing someone a favor when they push right-thinking of any kind as the end-all, be-all, cure-all. And I think they don't realize it because they do so in an effort to mask their own fear and hide it from themselves.

I am so very sorry to hear that misguided and ignorant efforts to help your sister find ways to alleviate her pain caused her greater suffering.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience and for your comment, suebob.

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

Thank you for your kind words and for sharing your thoughts, cooper. Like you I hope to have some free time to dig into this book soon.

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

To lose the ability to feel the range would be, I think, to loose an essential essence of what makes us human.

Thank you so much for sharing your post and for your comment, Mata.

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

I like that idea, Liz!

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on the book - you give a helpful and balanced review - and for your comment.

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

It sounds like you have a healthy balanced approach, Jenna! In the classic words of Journey, hold on to that feeling ;-)

With the caveat that I haven't yet read the book, I don't think Ehrenreich was characterizing natural optimism (which is in my experience a joy to be around) but rather the institutional, organizational and business use of positive thinking philosophy to convince people to deny their emotions, ignore reality and behave against their own interest.

Thanks so much for your comment!

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )

The problem I have with the positive-thinking "Secret"-type folks is that they seem to make no differentiation between things that are under our control and things that aren't. People with serious illnesses and people suffering under repressive regimes aren't there because their thinking got them there. Much of life is random, and no matter how happily we think, we must deal with forces beyond our control.

I am especially passionate about this because my sister died from Multiple Sclerosis. She spent years doing affirmations and trying to figure out how her negative thought patterns had created her disease. In my mind, those who promote the idea that we can avoid all suffering if we just think correctly are guilty of great cruelty.

We need to be as positive as possible about the hand that we have been dealt and try to help others through their tough times, but haranguing people to "think positive" is often just mean.

Love the post and the links. I have always felt that some of the very strange positivsm borders on not only the creepy but the insane, and is hardly rational or conducive to progress. It also tends to make people who fail feel it is their fault. A much needed post. Thanks.

I hope to catch the book in my free time.

cooper

In 2008 ago I wrote a post out here about how I just couldn't get into Echhart Tolle's uber-positivism ( http://www.blogher.com/i-want-eckhart-tolles-work-... ). I said then what I believe now:

This is the great chasm into which I see much NewAge thought collapse .It is written by and for comfortable persons, persons who are not AIDS orphans in Africa, not starving in Darfur, not raped in Bosnia. These are not people who have been tortured in prison, beaten because they are gay, savaged by acts of senseless violence. They are not starving, not afraid of how they will house their families, not homeless, not shot by random gunfire. If they were, they could never write such words. There are people in the world who have a right to negative feelings - who are in legitimate pain, who suffer needlessly -- not needlessly because they are indulging their egos, but needlessly because help was not given when it could have been, should have been

Everyone needs to grapple with negative feelings. But it is no crime to feel them, and it would be a sign of a dead soul in some cases who did not feel the stings and pain of injustice. Rage at injustice has caused change for the better. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

To get stuck in any feeling rut us a problem, and it would be a rut to get mired in rage as well, but there is a place and a time for the full range of feelings .

~~ Contributing Editor, Mata H. also blogs right along at Time's Fool ( http://timesfool.blogspot.com )

I just finished "Bright-Sided" and enjoyed it throughly. I was fascinated by the stuff about Calvinism, megachurches, and the effects of positive thinking within our world and workplaces. I do think that there's a often pressure to not be realistic that often borders on the creepy, particularly in the workplace when employees are being treated like crap within a company run by people that own multiple houses. Positive thinking does become a form of control, and that sucks.

The thing is, I do believe in positive thinking and things like the mind/body connection - But I think of them more like vitamins. Somewhere along the way paved by The Secret, I think people started treating positive energy and the mind/body connection like the food. Hard work, education, and perseverance are the food.

Liz Rizzo ( http://blogher.org/blog/liz-rizzo )

I blog at Everyday Goddess ( http://everydaygoddess.typepad.com/ ).

It is not either/or. It is a balance. A personally decided balance.

In the middle space is how you decide to navigate your life. I know growing up it was important to hear "you can do it, believe that it is possible" messages. I don't want those to stop. As I've grown older I can put them into life contexts that make sense.

Perhaps Barbara is railing at aspects of the self-help industry who do feed on fears to sell books and movies? Or misunderstanding about positive thinking, of which there are many.

On the other foot, there have been positive affirmation books that have soothe my soul.

The "Plucky kid" is a icon that is embedded in our souls. How much of this is cultural?

Gena - Out On The Stoop ( http://outonthestoop.blogspot.com )

The balance is so important and so different for each one of us.

I'm a positive person at my very core. I have to try to be negative. UNLESS the situation calls for some tears or some rightful anger. And then I cry. Or rant. And then I go back to being my optimistic self. Repression it is not.

I like how I view the world. :)

@FireMom ( http://twitter.com ) from Stop, Drop and Blog ( http://stopdropandblog.com ) and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land ( http://thechroniclesofmunchkinland.com )

I suspect you are correct that part of what Bright-Sided is attacking is that fear-inducing mindset many use to hawk their wares. I agree with you - I don't want messages of positive support and encouragement to go away but I also don't need or want a side dish of guilt to go along with it.

Thanks so much for your comment, Gena.

BlogHer Contributing Editor ( http://www.blogher.com/blog/maria-niles ) PopConsumer ( http://consumerpop.typepad.com/popconsumer ) Beyond Help ( http://mariax.vox.com/ )