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Disabled people are allowed to be pissed. Disabled people are allowed to be negative, angry, bitter. Abled people lament and complain about the hands they're dealt all the time. Disabled people have no more obligations than abled people to be always positive and looking for the bright sides.

You deserve to let go of trauma, but in the ways that work for you. If that means that you need the time and space to feel what happened to you, to voice it, to take action, then you deserve all of that. Being told to "just let it go" on someone else's timetable is invalidating. You never deserve toxic positivity - you deserve healing on the terms and timeline you need.

There was a movie called Nala set in a post-apocalyptic world that was animated similarly to The Ghost and Molly McGee, and it was about toxic positivity, but if I'm remembering correctly was soulless and bad. Also, there was a magic mansion whose rooms and walls were constantly changing for some reason.

Disabled people have to regularly attempt things that they can't do or that have no chance of working, hoping that once in a while they'll get lucky. And they often have to put more effort than the average person into anything they do.

When a disabled person says "I can't do that" or "that won't work", it's not negativity. It's not refusal. They're most likely still going to try it anyway and put more effort into it than the average person. They're most likely already doing that. Saying "yes you can" or "just try it" is not helpful or reassuring. It's dismissive. What they hear is "About this problem that you're burning yourself out trying to solve, I deny that it even exists. Now, on top of already burning yourself out trying to solve it yourself, you must also go out of your way to convince me to even believe that it's happening, and I will try my hardest to find any excuse to not believe you. Either that, or you can continue to suffer in silence while I pretend I helped you and while I wonder why you never ask for help."

Body positivity comes off as very aggravating to me and some other disabled people I know (not everyone obviously)

It's just annoying when there are signs and posters everywhere saying things like "love your body for everything it does for you!" Cause, like no? I'm sorry but I don't like my body, it's defective and causes me a lot of pain. But I also think part of what confuses other people when I talk about this is that to me, my body is not me, it's just the vessel I live in. I don't identify myself with it and quite honestly I do not like it.

But I also happen to think that it is very attractive, but like as an observation not a moral or value based thing. Even if I thought I was unattractive so what? That doesn't mean anything about me as a person doesn't make me less then those I find nice to look at.

Idk I just don't like when I try and talk about how I hate my body people dismiss that and tell me all the reasons I should love it, it feels very dismissive of my lived experience. That's not to say I think people shouldn't love their body power to them if it makes them happy but dont try and force me to love what limits and hurts me.

Part of the reason I’ve always had a hard time talking about the particular flavor of fundie Christianity I grew up with, and how/why it messed me up the way it did, is because it was always this weird one-two punch of religious guilt and toxic positivity that’s just…really hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it firsthand.

Virtually all of the media portraying toxic Christianity that has resonated the most with me has had a heavily satirical element. But I’m a Cheerleader, Saved!, Moral Orel, Good Omens. I wasn’t sure why, for a long time, because I’m really not a joke-about-my-trauma sort of person much of the time. (I’m capable of finding humor in it under the right circumstances, it’s just not my go-to move.)

But I realized recently that the satirical portrayals often ring so true to me because they lean heavily on the toxic positivity element. The incongruence of seeing characters spout objectively horrifying ideologies with relentless cheerfulness is what makes it read as satire to most people.

It doesn’t read as satire to me. Not really. I’ve watched the aforementioned movies and shows with friends, or discussed them with friends who had also seen and enjoyed them, and I often found myself saying, “You know, that’s not as much of an exaggeration as you might think. It’s actually pretty spot-on.” And the other person would stare uncomprehendingly at me, because come on, what we just watched was completely bananas. Real people don’t talk or act like that.

And yeah, there’s some over-the-top exaggeration of specific words and behaviors for comedic/satirical effect. But the emotional experience of old-school scary religion overlaid with praise-the-Lord-for-everything toxic positivity? That was very very real, actually, and nothing has ever captured that aspect of it for me the way satire does.

Some people have love for humanity, but no compassion for it, no real empathy for human beings that goes beyond the surface level and superficial. Being a misanthropist with compassion is better than being a philanthropist who thinks that there is ultimately nothing fundamentally wrong with the world, who thinks it's okay if all the horrors that humans are subjected to continue to persist, because they think "everything balances out in the end" or because "everything happens for a reason" or some shit. Like I'm sorry, but we definitely tolerate toxic positivity and allow it to masquerade as healthy optimism out of a fear of ever validating anything that seems "too edgy" way, way too much. At some point a desire to only think normal thoughts that aren't cringe turns into intellectual cowardice and moral laziness, and you've definitely reached that point if your attitude towards the abundance of heinous suffering in this world is just, "oh gee well that sure is unfortunate, but you know, ultimately life is beautiful and everything is okay, and none of that stuff really matters in the grand scheme of things, life is still inherently good, etc. etc."

If there is no form of suffering so heinous to you that you would rather vaporize the planet than allow it to continue for one more day, then I'm sorry but you are someone with a hollow and performative affection for your species. Valuing the mere presence of human minds over the actual experiential quality of the lived realities of real humans will always be oonga boonga brain shit to me, I'm sorry. Like your primal drive to support the species' survival is dampening your higher moral functioning. I would rather live in a world where there's just three clones named Sally who are immortal and always happy, than live in a world where millions of people are enduring unspeakable horrors every single day, sorry. "The beauty of life" and "the wonderful tenacity of the human spirit" mean nothing to me when there are people living their entire lives in slavery and little girls are getting gangraped to death. The fact that people regularly take their own lives because their pain is so unbearable that they'd prefer to just cease existing should tell us all we need to know about the value of quantity vs. quality on this issue. Life itself is not inherently good any more than anything else is, and more life does not automatically equal more value and goodness. If you see nothing wrong with throwing new people into this world despite knowing what it could have in store for them, what potential fates they, or their children, could endure, then you only love humanity in the way you love coffee or a good book. You love the idea of humanity. The ideal of humanity. What humanity represents to you. You love humanity as a concept, not as a collection of individual human beings with thoughts and feelings.

honestly the most pathetic feeling is when you get in a fight with someone because all you did was express what made you upset and instead of apologizing, they find a way to make you feel bad about it so you’re left regretting even saying anything at all.

im sorry but ‘youre not your diagnosis’ is another form of toxic positivity. obv i get the sentiment, but my diagnosis effects my entire life. i may not ‘be’ my mental illness, but my mental illness is a part of me. lets not invalidate the suffering were unable to simply dismiss

for those folks that run across this post and feel some kind of way about it, i'm sorry. those that find this post resonates with them, remember, no one is owed your gratitude and forced gratitude isn't gratitude at all. i'll let the tags do the rest of the talking.

"Everything happens for a reason." No. It does not. Fuck that, fuck off, fuck you.

unpopular opinion: forgiveness in this day and age is a huge part of toxic positivity. you don’t have to forgive anyone. and unless YOU’RE the one ready to forgive, forgiveness does absolutely nothing for you. people telling you that you have to forgive are people who are saying that you “shouldn’t” be angry at someone for their harm done towards you. fuck them and fuck the person who doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

thought that i’d get this out before i send some dark witchery to my bitch ass “father”. don’t be afraid to give mfs their karma.

You know, I get things like "don't tag your hate" to a degree, but I also think it's absurd to demand that no one ever says anything negative about the show/character/whatever that you like. People are allowed to dislike things or criticize certain aspects of them just as much as you're allowed to like those things and talk about how much you enjoy certain aspects. And you can disagree with them. That's also totally fine.

Obviously, attacking or making fun of people who have different opinions is an entirely separate matter, but it's incredibly bizarre to me when someone says, "You're not allowed to discuss what you don't like about this because I like it." In what universe is that a reasonable expectation?

"I can't hate any piece of media because it took so long to make and people worked so hard on it!!!!" do you hear yourself?? Do you not feel braindead from all the toxic positivity??? tell that to with any person who's actually written a book/comic or helped create a movie/tv show and they will laugh you out the room