Negative Positivity

Positive think is preached over and over ad nauseam. Self-help books have been devoted solely to train people how to think positively, and have made fistfulls flying off the shelves. People don't like being depressed, so this positive thinking thing seems like it makes sense.

Wrong.

It took one session with my therapist to spark the thought that I may have been hurting myself more by using positive thinking than I already was to begin with.

Before I go further, I'm going to point out, again, that I have no formal education regarding this, nor do I have scientific results to spout off. I am simply me: a bipolar, possibly HFA, woman of 36 years on this rock we call Earth.

The reasoning is rather simple, though it may be difficult to put all my thoughts to words here. Let me try:

Every day I would wake up and tell myself, "Today is going to be a good day." I'd repeat it over and over like a litany, a chant, willing it to be true. No, I wouldn't necessarily have plans for the day, just that it was going to be good because I will it so.

Some days it would work. I'd be happy all day, productive and generally awesome.

However, may days I'd still be drinking my coffee an hour later wondering why I didn't feel more positive. The next hour I'd add, "I will accomplish something and be happy today." Two hours later I'd still be feeling like crap, wondering why it wasn't working. Instead of feeling better, I'd feel worse. Not because I was being negative, but because I wasn't accomplishing anything. Then the cascading spiral would fall into place.

I would start berating myself for not doing anything, for not being happy. I felt bad for being depressed for "no good reason at all." I blamed myself for not being positive enough. Its a viscous cycle.

I would forget that I AM bipolar. Sure, I'd tell people all the time, but I never really let it sink in that it is okay and normal to have bad days. Bad days happen, just as good days happen. No amount of positive thinking is going to change that.

I spent so much time and energy trying to be positive that I forgot that it is okay to be negative. "No" is acceptable. "Not today" is acceptable. It is acceptable and just fine to just be. Just breathe. Just have a bad day and not get a damned thing done. The world will not end if I have a bad day, and nothing is so important that having a bad day will ruin everything.

Screw the positive thinking. Sometimes I want to be negative. So now, when I wake up in the morning, I'll have a new first thought, "Today, I will just be." Positive or negative, I will just be. And that is just perfect for me.

~Kat