Contents
Toxic happiness: discover the dark side of positive thinking
Psychology
Not many days ago i ran into on Instagram with the illustration of a book whose title could be read «How to make everyone happy. A practical guide ». Curiosity led me to puncture to be able to continue seeing the carousel of images where apparently the advice would come to keep everyone around me happy, but what was my surprise when when I swiped the first image I found another that read “it cannot be done”, and a page more in which it read “live your life.”
Rafael Pardo, author of «Toxic Happiness. The dark side of Positive Thinking ». The doctor of theology and psychologist has created a book where
gives sufficient arguments to abandon the constant search for happiness; that of others and that of oneself. «There is no objective need to always be happy and at all costs, as if the failures, sadness, duels or vicissitudes of life always have to prompt us to go to a psychologist “, says the expert.
For some years now, numerous psychologists have warned about the dangers of Positive Thinking, understood here as an ideological movement that produces coffee cups with nice slogans, apps that measure your happiness through mobile phones, self-help books that promise emotional well-being, omnipresence of happy emoticons, abundance of coaches, etc. Don’t we have the right to complain? Rafael Pardo explains that the pressure towards an always positive attitude «contributes to unhappiness, since some people feel guilty or defective when they can’t feel good. ‘ “The counterpart of the books that promise happiness is the idea that, if you are not happy, it is because you do not want to”, says Rafael Pardo.
In his book «Toxic Happiness. The Dark Side of Positive Thinking »reflects on what happiness is and how different cultures have understood it.
There are as many definitions as there are cultures, and that is the problem. Eastern cultures, for example, have a concept centered on social expectations; In America, on the other hand, they relate this feeling to success and functionality, and one of the deceptions is to take happiness as the exact definition, when in reality there is not and cannot be measured.
Simplifying life’s affairs by continually searching for happy slogans or feel-good hacks is a worrying attitude. And the fact that they assure us that we must be ourselves to be happy, and that at the same time they impose on us how we must be ourselves to be happy, is still an irritating paradox.
So what is the dark side of positive thinking for you?
When we have a psychology of easy slogans: be more than you think you are. The dark side is found when these positive messages do not give sadness or other feelings labeled “bad” and it is socially imposed to be and be happy and do not give the opportunity for someone to feel bad. I will not forget a case in which an American biologist was unwell because of her illness (she had been detected cancer) and realizes that social groups and doctors prevent her from telling her that she is unwell. Her messages were “you’re going to continue to be beautiful”, “you’re going to get out of this” … In this way, they prevent feelings such as guilt or discouragement from appearing, when it is logical and normal that at certain times we find ourselves like this.
The anger is now showing itself through demonstrations, and this appears because the system is fighting for something. To George Floyd, an African-American man who died of suffocation at the hands of the police in the United States, who is told that social conditions are not important, when he would surely be alive now if he had not been victim of racism and xenophobia. If being well becomes a social dictatorship and there is no room for expressing other feelings, it ends up being a perverse speech for many people.
He talks about toxicities in his book. Do you consider toxic the thought that if you are not happy it is because you do not want to?
Yes, it would be toxic because there are factors that some “best sellers” overlook. Positive psychology never talks about socioeconomic conditions, for example, when this is an important point. They have a very positive dialogue, very mindfulness, but you cannot tell a person with a job insecurity to find happiness because the issue is not how they take life, but the objective conditions of how they live. It is a psychology of power service: for them the problem is that you do not know how to overcome stress.
Therefore you defend that, for example, sadness has to approach us with total freedom to the same extent as other feelings because they are part of our life.
One of the things that “best sellers” do is experience emotions by differentiating them as positive and others as negative. All emotions have a function, and for these people the positive ones are the good ones and the negative ones like you don’t know how to live. The yin and yan accept that the negative is part of life, but there are many people, on the other hand, who seem to see a problem for feeling sad, despite being part of our emotions.
He dedicates a section in his book to distinguish two types of happiness: extrinsic and intrinsic. Do you consider the intrinsic much more important?
It is much more important. A child who is forced to play the flute out of obligation will end up leaving because it is something that he may not feel like doing; On the other hand, if it is an instrument that he likes and does it for pleasure, when he is an adult he will continue to play it. What is born of you, of your values, gives much more energy and makes you preserve more in the activity. Many defend the importance of doing things that bring well-being but curiously they link it to the outside: overcoming stress, being successful, having friendships, a good job … There is even an application that has more than four million subscriptions where they assure that It is designed by experts so that in 8 weeks you will be happy. They give the guidelines so that in that time frame they achieve the longed-for happiness. Let’s think of people who are pouring their data into this app so that a psychologist can dictate whether you are more or less happy.