What’s Wrong With Positive Thinking?

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What’s wrong with positive thinking?

I realize this question is provocative, so let me press my case. There’s nothing wrong per se with thinking positively. Rather, indiscriminate positive thinking gives me pause, such as focusing only on silver linings when your outer coat is in tatters.

No one, at least no one I’ve known—and I suspect no one with whom you’re acquainted—goes through life unscathed. Life has its ups and downs, and refusing to acknowledge personal loss, disappointment, frustration, resentment, and tears by focusing only on the positives is just as irrational as focusing only on the negatives. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, my focus is to help people process negative events and emotions, not bury them or turn a blind eye to them. My goal is to help clients come to terms with the vicissitudes of life and move on, not getting stuck in habits of negative thinking or mental traps, such as misplaced blame, catastrophizing, pinning nasty labels on oneself, or becoming resigned to expecting only negative outcomes.

Focusing only on the positives is like going through life with a silly grin on your face. Rather than turning away from negative emotions, we can learn from them by treating them as bodily signals that deserve our attention. Anger signals that we perceive we have been treated unfairly, anxiety signals that a threat is imminent, and so on. By tuning into the emotion, we can learn its signaling value and use it as a cue to action.

Is CBT just positive thinking?

I get this question a lot. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps people rethink negative thoughts and challenge negative beliefs. But it doesn’t preach that we should just discard reality in favor of thinking positive thoughts all the time. Unless your thoughts match up with your life experiences, they will seem hollow and forced.

When bad things happen, we need to recognize and process them, not simply gloss over them in the face of a grimmer reality. If you lose someone close to you, it’s reasonable to experience a profound sense of loss. If you lose a bundle in the stock market, it’s understandable to be upset, perhaps even upset with yourself for making some uninformed investment decisions. These situations involve genuine emotions that are proportional to the situation at hand. Jumping for joy when true disappointment occurs is a form of denial, not rational thinking.

What about self-affirmations? Don’t they work?

Occasional affirmations have a role to play in motivating us, as when a young man I was treating prepared for a stressful situation by looking at himself in the bathroom mirror and saying out loud, “I’ve got this.” But spending your day repeating simple affirmations (“I love myself... Life is good... You’re doing great”) may not mirror reality, becoming as much of a distortion as exaggerating negative or disappointing events. When spouting affirmations becomes a daily mantra, it begins to sound hollow.

Life can be good, yes, and even in times of trouble, there is much for which we can be thankful, even just for drawing breath. But life experiences can also be frustrating, disappointing, annoying, and upsetting. In CBT, we encourage patients to step back and take a closer look at their life situation and judge it for what it is. When bad things happen, it is reasonable to be upset, but it is not reasonable to feel hopeless or helpless. As the Star Trek character Mr. Spock famously said in an early episode, “There are always alternatives.” Indeed, the sun will still come up in the morning (though in some parts of the Pacific Northwest, you might not know it), and the electric bill will still come on time.

Putting on a happy face

There is scientific thinking behind putting on a happy face. When we engage facial muscles involved in smiling, it can trigger associated emotional reactions. It’s called the facial feedback hypothesis, and it posits that mimicking emotional expressions can activate related emotional states. So, a frown may bring us down, but a smile may give us a lift.

But a forced smile (called a Duchenne smile) is not genuine. Observers are quick to recognize when a person’s smile is genuine or forced. The telltale signs are fairly obvious to observers. As such, I’m not suggesting you walk around with a plastered smile on your face, but you may want to practice smiling in your private moments to see what associations it might call to mind, perhaps happier memories that can lift your mood at least temporarily.

I remember seeing the film version of the classic musical Carousel early in life and being moved by the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (Google it). What moved me was the sentiment that if you hold your head up high and keep hope in your heart, you can weather any storm. Practicing this form of positive thinking can be inspiring, but it doesn’t mean you won’t get wet. Positive thinking can be a coping skill, but it needs to be balanced by a dose of reality.