This is Inner Work, a spiritual growth podcast, a place to explore spiritual concepts, tools, and practices to deepen your healing and awakening. I'm your host, Josephine Hardman, a certified intuitive healer and Akashik Records practitioner and teacher.

I'm honored that you're here and happy to serve as a guide and companion on your path for a little while.

To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one or through my courses, please visit josephinehartman.com.

Toxic positivity is a particular form of spiritual bypassing where we basically deny what is right now.

It is a denial of what is present or what is unfolding in the present moment.

We can experience toxic positivity both within ourselves, so we can do this to ourselves, and of course we can experience

it in the external world. Within yourself, you might resort to toxic positivity to cover up an

uncomfortable feeling or emotion. So for example, you might pretend that that emotion is not there and plaster an artificial

smile on your face and tell yourself and everyone else that everything's fine when really it is not.

You might also have experienced toxic positivity inflicted on you by someone else, someone outside of yourself.

So maybe you've shared a vulnerable moment with a friend, let's say, or you might cry in front

of someone, and the other person tells you immediately, don't cry, or don't be sad about this, everything's going to be

fine. Look at the bright side. Or when someone tells you, hey, it could always be worse, which is

really such a minimizing, belittling thing to say to someone who is in pain. Of course, it might also be true, right?

Things could always get worse, I suppose, but that's really not the moment to say that to someone,

when they are being vulnerable, when they are hurting. That's really the last thing we want to hear

or be told when we are experiencing something difficult, something painful. And we also have to

take ownership, I think, of the times where we have inflicted toxic positivity on others,

which is not always conscious, it's not always on purpose or

intentional, and yet sometimes we might still do it. Maybe by minimizing what they were going

through at the time, or wanting them to get over something in our own timeline, or faster than

they're ready to do so, or feeling inconvenienced

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