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Welcome to episode 214 of The Non-anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today's episode was spurred initially by an article that I found in Ink, which was this is the best way to support a stressed-out person according to research. And that article focused on this idea of toxic positivity. And so I found an article. What is toxic positivity on very wellmind.com, I will put a link to both articles in the show notes. Toxic positivity is being positive to the extreme. It is ignoring or minimizing negative feelings, painful emotions and difficult challenges. You might think that positivity is a great thing, but toxic positivity has several downsides. The first is that it leads to shaming. It tells others that feelings are unacceptable. And when people are in difficult situations, the best thing you can do is to listen, which helps validate their feelings. We can't help how we feel. So when we tell people that they shouldn't feel a certain way if we're overly positive, if we're toxically positive, it actually can lead to them feeling ashamed of their feelings. The second thing that toxic positivity does is it fosters guilt. Now, this is similar to shaming.

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But when a leader is toxically positive, people can feel guilty. If they don't feel positive, they can feel they're doing something wrong. And then finally, toxic positivity prevents growth. It helps people avoid dealing with emotions, especially pain. And we know in family systems theory that it is in dealing with our pain that we grow more self-differentiated. And by helping others to work through their pain, rather than avoid it, we help them to grow stronger. So how do you know if you are toxically positive? One clue is that you are afraid of conflict. I know that in my own life, that is my own bias, I tend to shy away from conflict. But as I have done my own family of origin work, as I have worked on self differentiation, I have tried to be more aware and more intentional about leaning into things. Not to try to win a conflict, not to try to win a conflict of wills, but to not shy away from conflict, to try to be self differentiated and be able to take healthy stands. A second clue is that you lack confidence in your problem solving skills, and I would say actually in your challenge solving skills.

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Toxic positivity is actually a way to help us avoid taking responsibility for self because we don't have the confidence to address a challenge. And the third clue that you are toxically positive is you believe certain emotions, especially like anger and frustration, are bad. These indicators remind me that Edwin Friedman said that nobody gets the problem they can handle. If they could handle it, it wouldn't be a problem. And toxic positivity can actually turn a challenge into a problem because we are avoiding leaning into the challenge through our positivity. I think it's helpful here too, to distinguish between toxic positivity and optimism. Toxic positivity is an approach that enables us to avoid actually dealing with a challenge. Whereas optimism is a function of self differentiation, it is a function of knowing that we can control our response. That's the only thing that we can control, but that we are able to respond to the challenge. And in fact, it is our own response that has the biggest impact on how things turn out. Now, there are external things that may actually make it impossible to have a positive outcome, but at least optimism tells us that we can respond, that we can lean into a challenge and not avoid it.

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So if toxic positivity is not helpful, the question is how do we avoid being a toxically positive leader? How can we be a non anxious leader who is not toxically positive? There are two things that we don't want to do and two things that we do want to do so that we can be a non anxious leader that helps people and ourselves lean into challenge and thus avoid toxic positivity. The first thing we don't want to do is to minimize the feelings of others or our own feelings by saying it's not as bad as you think, or it could be worse or things happen for a reason. In many ways we make these statements actually to make ourselves feel better, to help shield ourselves from the pain of another because we are not willing to lean into it and walk with them through their pain. Remember that to the extent that we can increase our pain tolerance for the pain of others, we actually help them to grow in responding to their pain so that they actually can become more self-differentiated. The second thing that we don't want to do, which is similar to the first thing, which is minimizing people's feelings, is we don't want to tell people how they should feel.

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Statements such as just stay positive or look on the bright side or you can choose to be happy actually make people feel worse. It can increase the likelihood that they feel shame or guilt because they are not feeling positive or they are not able to choose happiness. So if you don't want to minimize people's feelings and you don't want to tell them how to feel, what can you do? Well, the first thing you can do, and you've heard me say this before, is listen. When you are leading others, the most important thing you can do is listen. Listening helps to validate their feelings and it helps them to process what's going on as they work through that and you avoid telling them how to feel so they can lean into whatever pain, whatever frustration, whatever negativity they're feeling. At some point you actually may be able to help them work towards a sense of agency, towards taking responsibility for self, towards self differentiation by asking questions such as what do you want to do about it? How will you do this? If they respond, there's nothing they can do about it. It means they haven't worked through their feelings yet.

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And you can go back, circle back and say what makes you feel that way? Or what might change that? The important thing to remember is that you cannot make somebody else responsible, you cannot make somebody else feel a certain thing. And so trying to tell them, trying to minimize their feelings is only going to get them to push back. Whereas listening with open ended questions and reflecting back their feelings will help them to work through it so that they can keep a challenge a challenge rather than making a challenge a problem. The second thing you want to do is you want to be optimistic, yet realistic. Our optimism is based in the fact that we ultimately believe that somebody can respond to a challenge. It's not that we want to tell them to or how to feel, but at some point we can say something like this really seems like a difficult situation, but I believe in you and I'm willing to support you in whatever way you need. This acknowledges that they are facing a challenge, but it also encourages them to figure out a way to respond without telling them what to do, as well as maintaining emotional connection.

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Because you are showing that you care for them and you are showing that you are willing to be supportive without over functioning, without taking on responsibility for their challenge. One of the things that is mentioned is that we can't tell people to be resilient. And I agree with that. All that does is make them feel guilty or shameful if they are not resilient. But if we can listen and if we can encourage them in terms of their own agency, their own response without telling them what to do and minimizing their feelings, we will actually help them to grow more resilient. I believe this is what nonanxious leaders do. That's it for episode 214 you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader. I haven't mentioned this in a while, but if you sign up for my email list you will get an email every Tuesday. I call it two for Tuesday with a brief reflection, often family systems-based, and two recommendations that I have found helpful in being a non anxious leader. These are typically articles, sometimes podcasts or books or videos. But these are things that have helped me to be a nonanxious leader and I think can help you.

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You can also find the show notes at thenonanxiousleader.com/214. and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.