Almost 10 years ago, the epic masterpiece called “The Lego Movie” came out. I am fortunate that rewatching this movie was required in order to write this blog. One character that stood out to me when I first saw this film was a character named Princess Uni Kitty. Princess Uni Kitty lives on Cloud Koo Koo Land where there are no rules, no bedtimes and most importantly, no negativity of any kind. If there is any negativity inside, you are required to push it deep down inside where you never, ever find it.
I was so intrigue by Uni Kitty because, well, I am Uni Kitty. My whole life I have based my existent on “always being positive”. It is all that I have really known. The typical “think of only good things and never think of bad things”, “you shouldn’t feel sad or angry”, finding cryptic quotes and reposting them on my Instagram story instead of having an honest conversation and facing the problem (side note-eliminating posting quotes and memes on my Instagram story will probably be another New Years resolution). Now that I’ve been taking the time to reflect on my own thinking habits, I think that positive thinking can get toxic quick.
So, toxic positivity is out. I know that I don’t want to be “here” anymore, but the “there” feels like it’s the other side of the pendulum. To me, that other side is playing the victim. I think that we all are in this phase of social media where we are giving ourselves a ridiculous amount of credit. Social media nowadays seems saturated with playing the victim, not accepting “what is”, thinking there is only right and wrong in every and any situation. While I am not a “therapist”, I work in a “therapist” based job and have a better grip on the therapy system. To me, all of these habits and bullshit rants online are just procrastination from doing the actual work. All of these things are just as toxic as positive thinking.
What I realized during this train of thought was that I don’t want to be on one side. I want to be in the middle. That feels like the answer for everything, doesn’t it. Balance. Now how do I define “balance” in the terms of positive and negative thinking? I came across a post from Dr.Amen who put in terms that made the most sense to me-”it’s not about positive and negative thinking, it’s about honest thinking.” Sounds like middle ground enough for me.
For me, honesty is easy with people that I don’t know or in professional circumstances. The difficulty is with those that I love and care about the most. Probably because the risk of rejection is even bigger and actually means something to me. But aren’t they the ones that deserve the honesty? To see the real me? More risks yet, high reward.
That leads me to yet another question/thought of “when am I being honest and when am I being just mean?”. If I had to define it in my words, being honest is when you are telling people or yourself the truth because you want what is best for them or for you. Being mean is when you are telling people or yourself the truth because you want to lash out and use this as a maladaptive coping mechanism.
My next step would be “how do I identify this in real life?”. The number one way for me would be good old trial and error. You are guaranteed to never learn anything if you do not put yourself out there-be vulnerable. Probably just being more aware of it in my daily life and recognize what feelings I am feelings when I am trying to be honest. What I hope to really get from this is genuine connection in all the relationships in my life and to practice being seen.
Kindly, Kat