The online lecture held by the Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH), Faculty of Psychology was held again on Friday (26/3). For the discussion of online lectures this time accompanied by Nurul Kusuma Hidayati, M.Psi., Psychologist and Wirdatul Anisa, M.Psi., Psychologists as speakers who discussed “Toxic Positivity” and Mental Health. This event was opened by a resource person who invited the participants to write their opinions about toxic positivity. Several participants revealed that toxic positivity is related to excessive positive thinking that becomes toxic to us. Then the other participants considered toxic positivity a bad action, but with good delivery and many more participant opinions regarding toxic positivity.
“So it does not mean that positive thinking is absolute, everything is positive, negative thinking considered positive,” explained Nurul. Whereas on the other hand, a person also cannot deny that there are also negative things that have happened, emotions or thoughts. Having positive thinking is not the same as eliminating or perceiving negative emotions is a bad thing. Precisely when this happens, it will lead to someone in a state that rejects negative experiences or emotions.
“Toxic positivity is when a positive attitude is then generalized to all situations and ignores negative feelings and emotions. It is not felt, listened to, even its existence is not recognized, ”explained Nurul. On the one hand, negative emotions are a bad thing, but that doesn’t mean a person can’t get anything good from these experiences or negative emotions.
Another thing that was also conveyed by this event was how to recognize toxic positivity. There are several things that can be used as a sign of a toxic positivity condition. Some of these things are hiding true feelings, feeling guilty for the emotions that are felt, underestimating things that are annoying by taking them as normal, and so on. “Dealing with a negative problem is not easy. Maybe back and forth and that’s normal. However, the point is to try to deal with it, just face it no matter how negative it is, ”said Nurul.
Besides discussing about toxic positivity, this event also discussed about healthy positivity. There are three things related to healthy positivity, namely the mindset to accept all forms of emotion, and learn from them to develop. Healthy positivity also requires hard effort and can change how a person sees the conditions around him.
Through this event, the resource person conveyed to the participants that we are managers of emotions. As humans, we have the ability to control these emotions.