There is a belief that we have so internalized that it is often hard to realize how irrational it is. That belief consists of the idea that in any event or experience of our lives there is always something positive and something negative. We have a conception of reality in which anything can be both a blessing and a curse, if we learn to focus our attention on all its facets and nuances.

This belief is very persistent, and although we may not realize it, it is expressed in many different ways. Sometimes, however, it barely causes us any problems, while other times it can compromise our mental health. For example, when we are faced with a serious crisis in our life and we consider the idea of “thinking positively”, we focus our attention on the beneficial component that the situation is supposed to have.

Dealing with sadness is necessary

Can you imagine how absurd it would be to tell a person that he should get well? This is more or less what we do to ourselves if we insist on thinking positively at all costs when we have important reasons to be very sad or angry .

There are experiences in which, whether we like it or not, we must position ourselves in the face of sadness and anger. We can accept that it is there and make an effort to get out of that emotional crisis , we can make it part of our conception of life and assume that everything that does not consist in feeling bad is inauthentic, or we can try to ignore it. In theory, most people are able to see that the first option is adequate and beneficial while the second is not; however, the third generates more division of opinion.

In the end, isn’t ignoring pain the underlying motto of the philosophy of life based on “live in the moment, don’t make life difficult for yourself”?

If it only matters what we feel in the here and now, suffering seems an absolute waste of time, so it seems best simply not to do it: think positive even in the saddest or most disappointing moments . Of course, this is very consistent with the idea of always choosing an optimistic interpretation of things. The only problem you have is that many times it doesn’t work or, in fact, it can make the situation worse.

Why constant positive thinking can hurt us

The problem with this approach to sadness based on the philosophy of the here and now is that our decisions do not have absolute power over our emotions. When we realise that something makes us very sad it becomes impossible to distance ourselves from it and decide what to do with it as a scientist might do with a petri dish looking through a microscope. We must decide what to do with this emotion , not with it, and so ignoring it is not an option.

What if we prefer to pretend that we do have this power to manipulate our emotional state at will? Let’s take an example: a middle-aged man watches the dog that has been with him for twelve years die from being run over. Faced with a situation like this, he decides to focus on the positive, which in this case is having happy memories with the animal and being able to reflect on what that experience has taught him.

The first problem with this is that the first step in thinking positively is to appear to think positively, i.e. not to cry. Having to control crying makes the experience even more painful, since, among other things, it forces the man not to think about certain things he knows in advance that would make him cry. This means that, in practice, it is impossible for him to perform those actions that are supposed to be the positive side of having had a dog that has died.

But there is still another element that makes thinking positive at all costs harmful: it prevents us from normalizing experience. If we try to ignore the sadness that something causes us, we never come to accept it, which means that we get stuck in the process of mourning; we simply don’t know how to move forward. It is necessary to assume that it is not possible to make it seem that the emotional impact of a bad experience does not exist so as to be able to manage the relationship we are going to have with that feeling.

Repressing sadness or anger does not work

Many times we fall into the trap of thinking about emotions, feelings and sensations in too essentialist a way. We label sadness, anger and other similar states of mind as “negative emotions” and try to make them not part of our everyday life, just like that. In some contexts it is effective to de-dramatize certain situations, but when the discomfort is very intense, resilience cannot be based on the suppression of emotions.

When managing the emotions that make us feel bad, we must always take into account the most important factor in these cases: time. Given that from our decisions and our rationality it is not possible for us to control that emotional side that characterizes us as the animals we are, we must let the passage of time help us .

If we accept sadness, little by little time will accumulate opportunities to distract our mind with other things than thoughts about what makes us sad. In this way, a point will come when we will be able to think about everything, even about what made us feel bad, without experiencing the same pain we experienced a few days ago , when we did the same thing.

Mental well-being, in short, consists of being able to look back and remember experiences without feeling limited by our emotions. Thinking positively at all costs, which in practice is forcing us to ignore certain memories and ideas, is only one way of putting a name to that limitation and ignoring the fact that it will not go away by itself if our fight against the malaise is to reinforce its power over us.