Are you tired of being told you need to be positive all the time, no matter what is going on in your life?
I even have a word for people who are positive all the time and simply refuse to feel a negative feeling – those of you who follow my writing will have heard it before I call it ‘Happy Clappy.’
In the world of ‘Happy Clappy’ nothing is a problem, everyone is happy, smiley and super positive. Real feelings go unfelt, therein lies the problem. Feelings when unfelt fester.
I don’t hide behind a wall of positivity
People ask me how I stay positive and the answer is I don’t. I feel my feelings and I feel them deeply. I don’t hide behind a wall of positivity.
I have recently suffered a personal set back. It was hard and knocked the wind out of me. I felt anything but positive. Facing the implications of this loss was going to hurt, I knew that, but I also knew burying my feelings under a whole heap of ‘Happy Clappy’ would simply prolong the pain and keep me stuck in inertia. So rather than hide behind positivity, I did what I needed to do. I spoke to the people in my world who love me. I cried, I raged and I let go of my desire of how things ‘should’ have been. This is going to be an ongoing process as I come to terms with this new reality.
I needed to see beyond the positivity
The one thing I don’t do is to think that life is unfair, because fair doesn’t exist. Life is what it is. I have no idea how this new turn of events in my life will play out. If you had told me when I was in hospital nearly a decade ago, after I fell head first through a glass patio table just 10 days after leaving the refuge, that it would turn out to be the best thing that had ever happened to me, there is no way on this earth that I would have believed you. I realise now it took a long time because I was ‘Happy Clappy’ for a long time. BUT eventually I understood that by feeling my feelings, and learning the lesson that accident had to offer me, I could let go of the pain and see things in a genuinely positive way. I needed to see beyond the positivity.
I am now doing the same with my latest life event, making sense of it, feeling my feelings and reaching out for guidance where I need it.