Whitney Goodman | What is Toxic Positivity?
The Emma Guns Show
Emma Gunavardhana
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2022
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this podcast episode, Emma chats to Radically Honest Psychologist Whitney Goodman (@sitwithwhit) about Toxic Positivity.
If you haven't heard the phrase toxic positivity before, it refers to saying things like 'good vibes only' and 'look on the bright side'. It's a positive platitude someone might offer when you tell them about something you're struggling with or sayings such as 'everything happens for a reason'.
It might feel like being helpful, it may even seem like kindness to offer a hopeful perspective but, Whitney argues, that it actually invalidates your feelings and can leave you feeling dissatisfied and confused.
During our conversation, Whitney and I discuss our thoughts on The Secret and the idea you can manifest your perfect life, we realise how insidious toxic positivity is and how it affects us all. We discuss the type of people who have 'be kind' in their social media bios and how [spoiler alert] they are usually trolls.
Whitney also offers valuable tools on how to eradicate toxic positivity and the ways in which you can be helpful and constructive and why, actually, a little negativity is now bad thing...
Whitney's book Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy is available now.
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Transcript
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| 1:35.4 | Hello, hi and welcome to this episode of the Emma Gun Show featuring my conversation with radically on a psychotherapist Whitney Goodman as she explains why |
| 1:43.8 | being positive might not be as good for you as you think. |
| 1:47.6 | To listen to this episode, add free and to watch our conversation in full in video, head to patreon.com forward slash the Emma Gun show now and become a patron. |
| 1:56.2 | That's patreon.com forward slash the Emma Gun show to become a patron today. |
| 2:05.4 | Whitney, welcome to the Emma Gun show. How are you? |
| 2:08.6 | I'm good. Thank you for having me. |
| 2:10.4 | It's a real pleasure to talk to you. So, for the benefit of listeners, I've already given you an introduction, |
| 2:15.0 | but you are a licensed psychotherapist and author. |
... |
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