A Christmas Cheer Palate Cleanser- Critique of Relentless Positivity

Barbara Ehrenreich

confronts the false promises of postive thinking

in her newest book Bright-Sided- How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America.

I felt happier just hearing about this book. Today, I breathed a huge sigh of relief after reading just a few pages.

I’ve felt pretty alone in my skepticism of positive thinking as I’ve been living in Southern CA.

Its sort of ironic since my friends would probably describe me as cheerful and I think I am innately optimistic. I almost always think there is some solution out there or one more idea I haven’t thought of when I’m faced with hard times. And this optimism often does serve me well because I look for more ideas and knowledge and options. So, I get some of the benefits of positive thinking. I understand how it can be useful to envision your goals and know what you want, and how its useful to think that you CAN do it.

But I hate this “Secret” business. I certainly don’t think that the universe is responding to my wishes. I think its responding to my actions. Several years ago, I watched What the Bleep do We Know, a movie that mixed quantum physics and positive thinking. I found parts of it intriguing and parts of it absurd.

I was invited by a friend who was excited to see the movie, and brought a friend who happened to be a scientist. Afterwards, my scientist friend said that they totally misrepresented quantum physics and I was joking that if reality really conformed to your wished then none of those experts in the movie would have had gray hair and wrinkles.

Ahhhh… since then, “The Secret” and all like ideas have had a greater and greater influence on my many of my friends.

My theory for why people like the ideas: its a scary world and if you can influence it with just your emotions and thoughts- you suddenly have a LOT more power. While maximizing power, it also minimizes responsibility because, those people whose lives really bite right now, on some level they have really brought it on themselves, haven’t they?

The downside, well, for one thing, it can be really irritating to try and confide in someone who believes in being relentlessly positive. Seriously, there is a real lack of connection and empathy.

For another thing, it can really bring the positivity believer down. My positive thinking friends blame themselves for everything- its the other side of their annoying smugness.

One of my friends got divorced, which she was understandably very heartbroken about- but she kept questioning the validity of her feelings and thinking that something was wrong with her for feeling so bad. “You’ve been very bonded with someone for years and it hurts to be sepearted from someone after all that time. That’s how it is for us humans. We are social creatures. Its normal that you feel this way right now.” I told her.

I just hate it that she had to feel so bad and then feel guilty and responsible at the same time! That’s what really pisses me off about people who promote positive thinking- especially when it comes to illness. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.

Oh my gosh, it is all SO annoying!! Thank you for writing this book. I’m going to go read some more of it now!

I am in a self-help program right now. (I do like to change my inner world as well as my outer world- although I’m also a very, very big believer in changing the outer world.) Its called Emotional Brain Training, and there is a process- when you are upset – of noticing the emotions you are feeling and then finding your unreasonable thoughts, replacing them with reasonable thoughts and then finding the “essential pain” and “earned reward” of your situation. Its SUCH a relief and contrast to positive thinking.

Here’s an example I found online of the essential pain/earned reward part of the process.

Again, ask yourself, “What is the essential pain?” That is, “What is the unavoidable reality, the necessary loss?”

When you have faced those losses and let them fade, the earned reward will become apparent. When it does, the trash has been taken out. You will feel healed.

Then ask, “What is the earned reward? The payoff? The blessing?”

Here is the example from Sally’s limits tool:

“What is the essential pain of this loss? To feel at peace, I would have to face the reality that sometimes I am immature in my relationships. The essential pain is realizing that I am not perfect, and to face the fact that I cannot change the past.

“When I face that and just feel it, the pain begins to fade and, if I wait a moment, the earned reward becomes apparent. The earned reward is realizing that I do not act immature all the time and I am not perfect. I am human. I can’t change the past, but the earned reward is that I can do my part to change the future. I can call her. I can try to speak to her in a way that is connecting. I can do my part.”

I really like EBT, its just so much more empathetic and humane than “Secret” like positive thinking. For me, it sucks that we are so powerless in some ways, as humans. I HATE that I can’t turn back time, and fly, and “manifest” a million dollars. That would really rock my socks. But, its just so much kinder to admit that here we all are, powerful in some ways and at the mercy of natural laws all at the same time; all in this together.

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