Positively Toxic or Toxically Positive?

What is Toxic Positivity?

Imagine waking up mentally drained after a terrible night’s sleep, only to scroll through your feed and see post after post saying, “Choose happiness,” or “Good vibes only.” It’s not just annoying, it's exhausting. In today’s wellness world, the message is loud and clear: if you're not smiling, you're doing it wrong. This trend of relentless optimism, known as toxic positivity, is everywhere, from social media influencers promoting gratitude journals to companies selling lavender candles as a cure for anxiety.

Wellness culture, originally rooted in genuine care and healing, has taken a sharp turn. What was once a space for self-connection and emotional awareness has become a filtered parade of half-truths, where “thinking positive” is pushed as the one-size-fits-all solution to everything from heartbreak to burnout. On the surface, it might seem harmless; after all, who doesn’t want to feel good? But beneath that sunny exterior is a more troubling reality: toxic positivity can invalidate real mental health struggles, silence vulnerability, and leave people feeling ashamed for experiencing normal human emotions.

In this blog, I argue that while positivity has a rightful place in wellness, the “good vibes only” mindset has become a harmful oversimplification. Instead of promoting healing, it often pressures people to suppress real emotions in favor of performance. Through examples from influencer culture, marketing, and everyday language, I’ll explore how toxic positivity masks pain, discourages growth, and ultimately undermines the true meaning of wellness.

The Role of Influencers and Social Media

Social media plays a massive role in shaping how we see wellness today. A lot of what we understand about self-care, healing, and even mental health comes through the filters of Instagram posts or TikTok videos. And while it can be a great tool for spreading awareness, I’ve started to notice how easily it turns wellness into something you perform, rather than something you feel.

What stands out to me most is how influencers present this curated version of what “healthy” and “happy” should look like. You’ll see people meditating on rooftops, drinking green juice, and talking about manifesting your dream life. The captions are full of phrases like “positive energy only” or “you attract what you are.” At first glance, it sounds inspiring—but after a while, it starts to feel like there’s no room for anything but positivity.

This can be harmful, especially for people who are going through real struggles. It’s like there’s this pressure to pretend everything’s fine, even when it isn’t. A Psychology Today article talks about how toxic positivity, basically forced optimism, can make people feel worse by invalidating their feelings. I’ve felt that before. You try to open up, and someone responds with “just think positive!” which, in the moment, kind of shuts everything down.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how these influencers often aren’t trained to advise on mental health, yet they’re speaking to millions of people. A Vox piece dives into how social media wellness trends can blur the lines between encouragement and misinformation. It makes me wonder: how many people skip professional help because they’re being told that journaling or manifesting should be enough?

And then there’s the algorithm. Posts that are happy, aesthetic, and easy to digest get pushed to the top. But when was the last time you saw a vulnerable or messy moment go viral? That kind of content usually gets overlooked. So people start to only share the highlights of their healing journey, and the rest gets hidden. It’s like the platform itself is encouraging toxic positivity.

All of this makes me question how we define “wellness” in the first place. Is it about looking calm and collected? Or is it about being honest with yourself even when that means sitting with uncomfortable emotions? In the next section, I want to look at how the language used in wellness culture reinforces these ideas and why that matters more than we might think.

One of the things that keeps wellness culture feeling so surface-level is the language it uses. Phrases like “good vibes only” or “choose happiness” sound nice on the surface, but they create this pressure to push away anything that feels heavy or uncomfortable. When you hear that kind of messaging over and over, it subtly teaches people to ignore real emotional experiences in favor of appearing "high-vibe."​

Even the branding behind wellness products leans into this mindset. You’ll find pastel-colored supplements labeled with words like "calm" or "balance," or skincare lines that claim to “heal your energy.” It’s no coincidence that these products are often marketed to women, especially on platforms like Instagram. An article from Wisterian Woman discusses how toxic wellness culture takes advantage of people's genuine desire to improve their lives and health, but does so in ways that are manipulative, harmful, or misleading.

There’s also a lack of inclusivity in how wellness is presented. A lot of the mainstream representation shows white, able-bodied, conventionally attractive people engaging in yoga or spa routines, leaving little space for those who don’t fit that mold. According to Green Left, the cult of forced happiness acts as a conscious program to defang and dilute opposition, maligning critics who refuse to join the authoritarians of the forced smile.

When everything becomes about branding and catchphrases, it waters down the actual meaning of wellness. It becomes harder to talk honestly about things like grief, trauma, or burnout because those feelings don’t “sell” as easily. And yet those are often the very things that people need space to process.​

What Real Wellness Looks Like

All this talk of “positive vibes” and shiny influencer routines might look harmless, but the consequences run deeper than most people realize. When wellness culture centers only on optimism, it creates a false reality—one where sadness, anger, anxiety, and grief are seen as flaws to fix instead of emotions to feel. That mindset doesn’t just ignore mental health—it actively undermines it.​

Research shows that suppressing emotions can intensify them. The American Psychological Association notes that emotional suppression has been linked to increased stress, lower life satisfaction, and even physical health problems like high blood pressure and poor immune function. And yet, the wellness industry rarely addresses this. Instead, people are often left feeling guilty for not being able to “rise above” their emotions or “choose joy” on demand.​

The worst part is that this culture can make people delay or avoid seeking professional help. An article from Verywell Mind explains how the normalization of toxic positivity can make people feel like failures when basic coping tools, like therapy, medication, or rest, don’t produce immediate happiness. That pressure to “heal fast” or always be grateful keeps people stuck in silence, ashamed to admit when they’re hurting.​

But there’s another way to define wellness, one that isn’t curated, branded, or sold back to us in a bottle of supplements. It starts with letting people be honest about what they’re going through. Real wellness means creating space for vulnerability, not just curated positivity. It’s being able to say “I’m not okay today” and knowing that doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.​

We can begin to reclaim wellness by embracing emotional honesty in our communities, schools, workplaces, and yes, even online. Mental health advocates and educators have been pushing back against toxic positivity by encouraging practices like emotional check-ins, open dialogue, and better access to therapy and support. As Psych Central explains, validating someone’s feelings rather than denying them helps people feel seen and safe, which is foundational to any kind of healing.

Instead of “good vibes only,” what we need is real vibes always. Because when we stop pretending and start listening to ourselves and others, wellness can become something deeper than a slogan. It becomes a shared experience. A process. A human one.​

Works Cited

American Psychological Association. Emotional Suppression: Effects and Risks. APA, www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2017/emotional-suppression.

Green Left. “The Cult of Forced Happiness.” Green Left Weekly, 10 Dec. 2022, www.greenleft.org.au/content/cult-forced-happiness.

Psych Central. “What Is Validation and Why Is It So Important?” Psych Central, 2023, psychcentral.com/health/validation.

Psychology Today. “Toxic Positivity: The Dark Side of Positive Vibes.” Psychology Today, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-grief/202103/toxic-positivity-the-dark-side-positive-vibes.

Verywell Mind. “How Toxic Positivity Leads to Guilt and Shame.” Verywell Mind, 2023, www.verywellmind.com/toxic-positivity-5195114.

Vox. “How Wellness Culture Can Blur the Lines Between Encouragement and Misinformation.” Vox, 4 Aug. 2023, www.vox.com/culture/23817564/wellness-influencers-misinformation-social-media.

Wisterian Woman. “The Problem with Wellness Culture.” Wisterian Woman, 2023, www.wisterianwoman.com/articles/wellness-culture-critique.