How Toxic Positivity Leads to More Suffering | Mahmoud Khedr | TEDxMenloCollege
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Published 2019-11-22
At one point, Khedr’s despair was so great that he attempted suicide; in his talk, he showed excerpts of his suicide note. Khedr’s topic: “toxic positivity,” a forced optimism that many in distress are encouraged to adopt, masking their deep depression. Calling out to an audience member in the second row, he said, “Imagine if, God forbid, you broke your arm and instead of taking you to the hospital to treat your pain, I told you.. Just be happy!!” For Mahmoud, that’s toxic positivity. Instead, he posted a list of ways to start constructive discussions with people to show true empathy.
Mental health has increasingly become an important topic of discussion in today’s society. We live in a world where countless things fight for our attention and anxiety can become paralyzing in our success-oriented culture. Mahmoud Khedr shares how toxic positivity causes more suffering than good. Fueled by his own personal struggles and experiences with mental health he built FloriaMind to not only help teenagers academically but most importantly with their personal health and wellbeing.
Mahmoud is a Colin Powell Fellow, Clinton Global Initiative Fellow, Forbes Under 30 Scholar, Stanford University Innovation Fellow and LinkedIn Campus Editor. Mahmoud has previously worked at Facebook, Google, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Tech & Innovation and Echoing Green.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
All Comments (21)
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Insisting others act positively is a way of refusing to be empathetic. It invalidates the person's emotions.
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Thank you. Now I know why I feel so horrible and uneasy whenever people's say good vibes only.
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Every emotion is valid
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I like positivity as long as it's realistic.
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I think one of the best things I learned from therapy was that emotions are information or data.
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Thank you everyone for your kind words, reflections and responses to my story. I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to share my story and for thousands of people across the globe to hear it, and potentially benefit from doing so. :) It’s extremely difficult to unpack mental health, positivity, and wellbeing into a 13-minute talk. I can tell from some of the comments that some people may have misinterpreted my message. I hear your voices and I value your perspective. I always appreciate opposing views and people who point out things that may not resonate with them. I would like to make 2 points in response to some of the comments: 1. This is my lived experience. And only mine! Yours will probably be different! There’s a lot more that I wasn’t able to say, but I want to really hammer the point down that this perspective stems from my lived experience. This is how I experienced struggle, and how I synthesized my experience, pinpointing a value in society that I personally don’t agree with. I’ve seen it resonate with a lot of people, but of course, it will not with everyone! Finding my own solutions to cope, seek help, and heal is something I’m so grateful for. Your lived experience is different, and how you view the world will be different! So when it comes to healing and dealing with your own mental health, of course, it may be different as well. There is no one size fits all solution to mental health, and I hope you find your own way to cope, heal, and flourish! <3 2. Positivity is important. As a mindset! The big point of my talk is really that we should not be extreme on either side of the spectrum of feelings. We should not only welcome and focus on “negative” emotions, or only focus on “positive” ones. The idea is that we need to acknowledge all of our emotions and allow others to do the same. When we don’t allow others to experience all emotions, or shame them for feeling a certain type of way - it gets in the way of their healing journey. We need to cry, we need to be angry, we need to be upset — if something happened that causes it! Otherwise, it bottles up and feels worse. I am not saying positivity = toxic. I am saying that when positivity is pushed to an extreme and used as the only tool to heal and deal with our problems, it is a problem. While my individual interpretation of how the world has pushed positivity on me is that it’s unrealistic, toxic, and hurtful — I do think that positivity in general as a mindset is important. If I had more time, I would talk about how positivity should be valued as a mindset that helps us navigate life in general and to know that there are better days coming ahead. But not as a feeling that we want to experience all the time! That is where I am more of a fan of hope and optimism than what has felt like forced positivity. That idea that we always have to positivity never sits right with me! I thank you and welcome views for continued convo. Sending you all love, healing, hope, and strength.
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If you have problems, you must talk about them. Don't be one of those "love and light, always be positive" people. They tend to be delusional.
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Toxic Positivity is only to make those around you or with you feel comfortable. Toxic positivity has nothing to do with truly helping you. This is an excellent and important talk.
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EVERY SINGLE EMOTION HAS A FUNCTION
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I see toxic positivity in churches today. So sad! Thank you for this video!🙏
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its like everywhere in life: you need balance. Only negativity is bad, only positivity is bad.
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I cried hearing him say "all vibes welcome" at the end. I found out my husband had cheated on me throughout our entire marriage, and then he became distant and wouldn't console me when I went into a depression over it. He wouldn't engage in conversation with me, saying I wanted him to feel guilty and I was "taking his light away". He couldn't show any empathy for the pain he caused me and wanted me to just forget about it and not talk about it. It's been over 2 years and I'm still healing from all the trauma he caused me. When people are in pain, they just need to be acknowledged and heard. That is the path to healing.
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I used say the same things to myself” stay positive, be positive, positive vibes only”. It made me feel worse as I just couldn’t be and stay positive. Now, When I go through difficult time. I say to myself that I will get through it, I acknowledge the difficulties and allow myself to feel sad, not feel positive but also at the end I remind myself that I will get though it. It helps me.
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It's such a stressful society, what helps me is taking a vacation, just getting away. I make it a point in my life to destress myself.
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Always. There is no need to block off our negative thoughts or lie to ourselves to be positive. Acknowledgement within ourselves and not being dismissive of others less pleasant thoughts goes a long way. Very well articulated, you did good brother!
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Wow!! Really I thought only I felt awkward and frustrating when people were trying to counsel me to be positive which lead me into depression, panic attacks. It's ok to get through each emotion step by step n not bombard with positivity vibes.
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Yup. Toxic positivity will keep you in a jacked up relationship too. Be smart. I'm starting over again and being realistic this time...... Thanks for your speech
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"All vibes Welcomed"
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My inlaws side rejects negativity to an extreme. Once my mother in law told me some positive quip when I was going through something, and I was upset. After I hung up the phone, the Bible verse came to me, "Bear one another's burdens, and so fufill the law of Christ." This is what we are supposed to do. My husband even was warned not to cry at his own sister's funeral. We are supposed to lift each other up!
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Thank you so much for posting this. As someone with depression our culture of toxic positivity makes it so much worse. This message needs to be heard. This meant a lot to me.
