So about a year ago, I took this life coaching training certificate thing to add that service to my practice as a licensed clinical therapist and the person running the training started the training by bluntly saying, life coaching isn't therapy in any way. Therapy is just for people who don't want to get better and who just want to complain.
And that was just such a profoundly shaming statement that erases vast, immense amounts of people's experiences, especially my own. And it was implying that those who go to therapy don't wanna change. And those who offer therapy benefit from people who don't wanna change. And it also implied that life coaching is the way.
And I'm skeptical of anyone saying that the thing that they do is the only way. Like unless you're the mandalorian and then, then it's okay. Um, but don't get me wrong, I know the world of therapy is problemed. Um, just like the world of life coaching is problemed, but to imply that all therapy is just for rep repetitious, complaining is toxic positivity.
And toxic about other people's experiences and positive about your own agenda. We're gonna come back to that later. And I was wondering how would I have felt hearing that statement and that training when I started my therapy, like when I was about 20 years old? Um, back then I was deep into like trauma therapy and doing my work.
And what would it be like hearing that, especially from such a convincing person in authority. Who seemed like they had their life together, which is important for this video. Um, before therapy, it really didn't take much to sway me because as a trauma survivor, I didn't trust my own gut. I didn't trust my own reality, my own choices, my own interest, and I was super affected by the opinions of others, especially strong-willed, opinionated people.
So what does all that have to do with toxic positivity or shame or trauma? So I'd like to define toxic positivity in like a couple parts. Um, the first part is that the person being toxic is a thousand percent sure that about what they're suggesting. To say that they have convictions is like a total understatement, which is a clue about their agendas.
When the trainer was like yelling from the mountaintop that life coaching is the only path, and therapy is a dead end, created by both the client and the therapist. So they've got the answer, they're superior in that answer, and it's the only answer, which is a red flag. Even if the thing that they're suggesting is kind of sound like there's nothing wrong with life, life coaching in and of itself.
It's about where it's coming from and the person that it's coming from. So that's the first piece. The second piece is toxic positivity has a quality of denying your emotional experience. Say a client who just had a narcissistic parent refused to come meet the newborn grandchild because they had dinner plans and is and is told by your friend, you know, it could be worse.
Um, is denying that client's emotional experience while selling it as like moralistic wisdom, but there's no bright side to that kind of retraumatizing event that I just described. The third part is, in my mind, toxic positivity has a quality to it that makes things really nice and neat for the person being toxic.
Say that statement could be worse. You could not have parents at all. Um, it shuts down the present upset. About the parent not showing up for their newborn grandchild. It also puts the recipient on the spot by shaming them. And it's also like, see, I fixed it for you. You know? Um, you get what you get and you don't get upset That.
Vibe. That's for toddlers, not for adults, but it's nice and neat for the person giving advice. They don't have to get deep into your emotional mess. Um, right in the middle of my own trauma work, I opened up about my situation and my story to a girlfriend's mom who seemed super cool. She was like an.
Burnout from the 1960s. She went to Woodstock. She was an artist. She was super into astrology, and when I opened up to her and told her that I was going no contact or I was in no contact with my family system due to the due, the abuse, she stated, well, before you were born, we choose our parents and the prior astral plane.
So you chose them back to those definitions that I just gave you. She to, she's totally convinced that that's how things work. This is the way, um, she totally erased and dismissed my truth and kind of zany about how she went there, that the adult abuse doesn't matter because. You kind of brought this upon yourself.
And the third part is like, see there I fixed the complexity of your pain about your, your childhood trauma and your abuse. You're now ready to drop out of that wacky childhood trauma group and reconcile with your family because you brought this upon yourself by the choices you made on an in another dimension.
Um, and as a side note, we can label that type of her fixing me as a. As codependency since a 10 codependency seems to usually make nice with the abusers on some higher road or turn the other cheek or from a distant astral plane like we're above it all. It's not true. Um, the life coach and the girlfriend's mother examples are examples of how toxic.
Positivity can be extremely triggering. Um, the girlfriend's mom thing wrecked me at that time and I, I've never been so pissed off, which was actually progress for me at the time 'cause I was working on withholding my truth. The life coach thing was like long after therapy and long after recovery. And as.
Clinician now it was like, meh. You know, like it's a super unprofessional thing to say, but I wondered where was that coming from for, for her, you know? So I'd like to focus on some ways in this video about how we can cut through shame and cut through our trauma and spot toxic. Positivity for what it is and not be so affected by it.
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Also email me for a 15% discount code. So here are a few toxic positivity statements that you might've heard before to make sure we're all on the same page about what that means to be toxic. Toxic positivity. So if you've ever heard stuff like, sounds like you're choosing to stay negative, or did you know that smiling releases endorphins, um, or holding onto all that is blocking your third eye and therefore your potential to transcend, you know what can help your relationship with your parents?
Jesus or don't let your anger get in the way of having a loving family. So that's the statements or stuff. That's what it sounds like. Here's what being on the receiving end of toxic positivity is like for childhood trauma survivors, there's usually intense shame. Shame that we didn't think about that.
Shame that maybe they're right. Shame that we are maybe overreacting to our upset once again. Or we're just being negative and messy like the person is suggesting. Um, we often interpret toxic positivity as a command versus crappy suggestions. There's also second guessing and anxiety around that stuff.
Like we'll flip flop, trying to figure out who was right, who was wrong, like we really wrestle with it, toss and turn about it. We also get caught up in something called dichotomous thinking, which is bouncing between polar opposites. Similar to the last one, like, well, Patrick said that therapy changes his life, but then the life coach says that therapy is garbage.
But then people on Reddit say this, so it's kind of exhausting. Another example of a clues that were triggered to it is like false starts. What I mean by that is we can bounce from one suggested thing to another. One friend says keto. Another one says vegan, one says Buy organic. Another one says It doesn't matter.
So we have a bunch of false starts due to from our own second guessing ourselves and shame, and we create these reactive messes in our life that just don't really work. So here are three therapy ideas, not life coaching, um, about how to check our childhood trauma and shame, and just let the toxic positivity like roll off our back and not engage.
The first one is something I call. Everybody has their own path. And as childhood trauma survivors, we tend to not realize this. Um, our trauma caused shame and it makes us worry that we're not acceptable to others, just like in our families. And we'll get caught up in fomo, which is fear of missing out and abandonment, and especially like what others think about us.
I think we've all had a friend that we've looked up to that seemed to have it more together than us, and they may have been like a surrogate kind of coach to us. That friend who could give us advice about our horrible love life because they might have had it more together due to being in a deficit of self-love and self-acceptance from our childhood trauma, we might try to assimilate or be absorbed into the lives of others that we want to be around.
And not catch the other person's dysfunction as if we have the market cornered on dysfunction like nobody else's. But we've got a down path because we've made the stakes so high in such relationships by giving people a lot of power over us, whether we're acceptable, we default to them and their path.
Is now our path if they would just let us be on it. So that word default is huge. As trauma survivors, many of us have defaulted to friends or coworkers or professors or religious people or guides. Either the woowoo kind of guide or the monotheistic kind of guide doesn't really matter. We'll just automatically jump on their path.
For not having one of our own and like the fear of we're not on the right track in life. Trauma also results in struggling to have developed an identity and selfhood, which it's actually impossible in our family systems if they're abusive and toxic to develop them. So it takes time to figure out that we're actually somebody with beliefs and opinions and thoughts.
Took me a long time. So working on this is to realize. Differences and separating between what works for that friend and what actually works for us. Everyone has their own path that can involve anything from it being okay for you to not like the Beatles, um, to not going on that yoga retreat because that's actually your friend's thing that's not yours.
So when someone tells us to meditate in context of our childhood trauma, and we've tried and we've tried, but we just can't make that a wellness thing for us, you can say. That doesn't work for me. Instead of sitting with the frustration or worse letting our inner child feel like they've got something wrong, again, it's kind of a very powerful phrase that doesn't work for me, but I appreciate it.
So moving on to the second therapy suggestion is mental boundaries. There are physical boundaries, which is like, I don't touch you. You don't touch me. There's emotional boundaries which are like, I'll be responsible for my feelings. You're responsible for your feelings, so what are mental boundaries?
They're essentially the whole focus of this video. Someone with solid mental boundaries feels safe in disagreeing. They're sovereign in their opinions, but they can also like recognize the opinions of others and growing up in childhood trauma and abuse. With the toxic family system, the mental boundaries are extremely porous.
Toxic parents don't want individuals. They want compliance and recognition, like being recognized, the parents being recognized, we are not safe to disagree or talk back, and we're we're also being controlled as kids about how to feel and how to think. Some examples, so when you grow up in dogma, like in extreme religion or in a cult where the control and abuse is around specific values and beliefs.
There's no boundary. It's also like brainwashing or just like inserting software in a kid's mind for them to just repeat indefinitely. So when you grow up with a toxic parent that say trash is the opposite gender or their own gender, like, don't trust your father 'cause he's a man, or all women are manipulative as kids in that mess.
We might see through that stuff a little bit. We might ask. Why does God say I'm born bad? Or are all women really that untrustworthy? My teacher's really nice and she's a girl. And as kids, like say before puberty, we are not safe to ask those questions or rebel and toxic parents aren't sane enough or safe enough to answer those questions in healthy ways.
So over time we often lose little bits of our curiosity or our light that would actually lead to healthy critical thinking. Which is crucial in this world. You can see it in our politics in America, where people are, choose drama or choose authoritarianism or choose like sort of black and white thinking instead of thinking for themselves.
We weren't growing up in systems that celebrated differences or even like to have the right to not like pepperoni on your pizza because you had to avoid conflict and mess to be, we had to be compliant for the parents' benefit because. Bay actually couldn't handle parenting. So, or kids' questions, you know, so when the life coach says therapy is lame, or the tart card friend says, you're bringing, unavailable people into your life on purpose, or the religious person is a good method actor, and they, they're, they're worried about your ability to be a good person without God in your life.
You can develop a good, healthy, mentally boundary by saying no to all that. And just saying it doesn't work for you even better to parent your inner child, that someone's opinion isn't a command and opinions are like butt holes. Everyone's got one. So the third one I'm moving on to is this idea of what do you think?
Um, I remember how my mentor would ask me that question. The way she asked it was, or the way she implied the question was just beautiful. It's like she was saying to me, you're safe to think for yourself now. And what do you think? I'm asking you right now, what do you think when the half Safe family member says, yeah, but family's all you have, right?
Or, yeah, but she's your mom. What do you think when that person in your life tells you that church or yoga or keto or looking on the bright side or tell you that you're the one attracting chaos in your life? What do you really think about that? You're safe now to think for yourself, but that wasn't true growing up.
This is really where shame and trauma kind of hit the road in our adult lives and growing up in all that we're shamed for liking the music we like. We're shamed for not thinking of others enough we're the trauma was about being gaslit. So much about the family that we've marinated in what I think is the worst part of childhood trauma, which is.
Self-doubt and abuse around perception. So going back to the next thing is self-doubt. Who am I to say that my family is abusive? Who am I to say that my dad isn't right? That my narcissistic mom has a point? Uh, who am I to know about anything? Who am I to know that I deserve respect? Does anyone get respect?
Um, does that sound familiar? That is a childhood trauma defense, actually. It's like the fawning mechanism. So later this becomes in our adulthood, who am I to judge the person who might be scamming me? Maybe they're really in trouble. Who am I to think that my partner is abusive? I usually get things wrong.
The wild part about this one really want you to take this in is that there's usually a small part of us that is aware that we're being scammed. There's a small part of you that knows what abuse is. There's a small part of us that knew something was off in our family system. We just didn't have the right to be on our own path, uh, with good, um, mental boundaries.
And we definitely weren't safe to know what we really think. I needed a lot of help with that. So when someone drops some toxic positivity on us and we feel self-doubt or shame or anger, or we kind of check out, that's the inner child reacting to the crappy statements or advice or, or like, or like.
Covert judgment and the toxic positivity. But no matter how small, there is actually a conflict in us. Just like Star Wars, there's really a part of us that's like, Ugh, church doesn't work for me. In fact, it's part of my abuse. Or, Ugh, meditation doesn't work for me or. That's not what I need or why I am talking to you about this.
The bright side doesn't help me deal with my abusive sibling. And it could be worse. It is worse. You know that conflict is telling you something, but the shame caused by the childhood trauma usually takes over. And historically we give in. So we have to cultivate that tiny part of us that knows because it's really like our trusty compass.
Pause, try to get some space, try to do some writing about what you actually think before getting reactive or giving in to the toxic positivity. So some final thoughts. I'm not saying, let me repeat. I am not saying in any way that spirituality or yoga or meditation or holistic practice is bad. What I am saying is that when they are used as toxic positivity, that erases our eternal experience or erases our truth.
I'm also saying that there is, for trauma survivors, there's really a time and a place for everything. I couldn't meditate or embrace a deeper sense of spirituality or even check my own negative attitude until I dealt with and did work around my childhood trauma. It's like first things first, and I couldn't really benefit from holistic or spiritual or attitude changes or take.
Them into my heart to have any real impact until my survival strategies were processed or acknowledged or validated by others and myself. Some childhood trauma survivors can make all of those things work, which is great, but the point of this video is that toxic positivity implies that the thing that the person is suggesting should work for everybody.
Therapy doesn't work for everybody, and, but I'm not gonna, you know, shame people or act morally superior to them or gaslight them that it should work and it must be something wrong with them. The reasons why it doesn't work, therapy is problemed and coming back to that life coach. You know, she was actually cool despite that wacky start to the training, and she was actually really good at what she was teaching, but I could take the good and separate, which was something that I couldn't always do.
The statement she made about therapy could have been like her own negative experience in therapy. Maybe that was like, like her truth or something like a mentor or another life coach kind of got her drunk on that idea that life coaching is the solution to humanities ailments. Um, and there's the agenda.
So that's what I mean by that. While I had a totally different experience in therapy 'cause I had a really good therapist, I can see multiple truths, which wasn't really possible for me when I had unhealed trauma and shame. And the mother of that old girlfriend, same thing. You know, an agenda was about her truth.
Like that she was so jazzed up about astrology that she found the answer in life. But like her agenda came before my truth. Which is a lot like a fundamentalist cult or a fundamentalist religion. So I really hope that this video was helpful to you or thought provoking. I would love to hear it about in in the comments for a nice discussion.
