positivity is a tool for self-deception

“I handled the day and my emotions well. I can feel the shift in my personal growth. I am slowly becoming the person I want to be. And I like it. I feel like I am more open to life, a little less fearful and a little more confident. I am excited for spring and I am eager to continue working on myself. I like who I am. I like who I am becoming. I feel inspired.”

From My Journal, Day 70

I was lying to myself in almost every journal entry. I told myself I enjoyed conversations which I did not. I told myself I was passionate about schoolwork, which I was not. I told myself life was good, which it was not.

I tried to show up as “my desired self” everyday instead of observing, accepting and simply being with the self that I was, the self that needed me.

I told myself that “my desired self [was] passionate about what she [did], and she [was] great at what she [did].” I heard somewhere online that passion grows with skill. So, I did my best to become good at whatever it was I was doing (and expected to do) at the moment, and to see the positive in it. I employed all my willpower and discipline to stay focused, aware and in the present moment. I eliminated distractions, set a timer and concentrated my mind. In fact, I was so zoomed in on the present moment that I missed the bigger picture. Fixing my attention on a task, circumstance or a person in front of me served as a distraction. It was even therapeutic. It was as remedial as a painkiller in case of a chronic migraine. It may relieve the pain but it does not change the fact that our lifestyle choices, or our environment, or a person, or an underlying health condition is causing a recurring migraine.

I often had the experience of losing myself in a conversation or my work, when I would not notice time go by. I believed I was achieving the state of flow. I convinced myself these moments of oblivion were indicative of my interest and passion. In reality, I mobilized all my faculties and became hyper focused in the face of perceived stress. When chased by a wild animal, we are also present and absorbed in the moment, but the biochemical pathways we activate are very different from those when in the state of flow.

I felt proud of myself. I felt gratified for pushing and persevering at becoming the person I (thought I) desired to be, or rather acting like that person (for short stretches of time because this charade was not sustainable). I was intentional about my time and behavior. More accurately, I attempted to curate my self-expression and the state of being to shape myself into the person I wanted to be. I remained mindful of my thoughts and feelings throughout the day, and the story I told myself. And I played tricks on my mind to change the story. I even believed I was enjoying myself. I fancied that my experiences – my physical environment, schoolwork, interests and social interactions – were enriching me. I felt happy. I felt I was becoming open to love, light and life.

When, in fact, my heart was encrusted with thick bark and overgrown with dense thorny shrubbery.

I was dishonest with myself and disingenuous with others. I was avoiding my inner experiences and escaping my outer reality.

I was discrediting my pain. I was disrespecting my actual thoughts and feelings, and disregarding my natural limitations. I was ignoring the reality that I was surrounded by people who were harming me. I was discounting the truth that I dreaded the work I signed myself up for at school. I was glossing over the fact that I constantly got distracted, and I talked incessantly because for as long as I was talking, I was not listening and paying attention. And it was all for the sake of feeling good.

Since it was too painful to be with the current self and in the current circumstances, I neglected myself in an effort to become someone else. Except this time around, it was not to please others by meeting their expectations of me, it was to distract myself by aspiring to some social media inspired artificially manufactured ideal of self. Working on myself was the means to bypass the acknowledgment of who I really was and how I really felt about the life I created. If I was a different person, and I had a different life, I would not have to look at the truth, let alone accept it.

In essence, I abandoned myself.

My life was a show, and the self I presented was a mimic. I simply was not there.

The messages of positivity and gratitude have saturated our culture. They are propagated by social media and western spirituality. There is this idea that we attract the energy we exude. Whether we call it by its spiritual name, i.e., the Law of Attraction, or refer to it by the term rooted in sociology and psychology, i.e., self-fulfilling prophecy, there is indeed some truth to this phenomenon. However, the key is that the point of attraction lies in our unconscious rather than our conscious. It is our beliefs which are unspoken and, often, unthought of, and behavioral patterns which are rarely perceived by the conscious mind, that selectively color our subjective and, to a degree, objective realities. Therefore, it is of little to no significance what we tell ourselves and others, what we write in our journals, proclaim on social media feeds and pin on our vision boards, and how hard we try to make ourselves feel a certain way. The forces that paint our fate will elude our conscious mind for as long as we turn a blind eye to what is for the sake of that which we want to see.

Whereas some encourage us to gloss over our reality, others teach us to merely cope with its symptoms. Although, the field of psychology is broad and sometimes contradictory, its most popular and palatable to the masses ideas, the kind we are most often imparted while sitting on a therapist’s couch, aim but to help us get by. That is until the next appointment. For example, challenging our thinking and reframing our perspective are valuable tools, which most certainly belong in a toolkit of any intelligent individual, but there is a fine line between being an objective critical thinker who is able to entertain multiple viewpoints and gaslighting ourselves. Similarly, emotional regulation is critical to our wellbeing and that of everyone around us, but when it is exercised in contrary to our inner and outer realities, it is but means to tranquilize and domesticate ourselves. Modern psychotherapy prescribes tools and pills that assist us in adapting to and managing our circumstances, our relationships, and our own body and mind to ensure we do not ruffle others’ feathers too much and fit into our societal structures just enough to survive and procreate.

And, of course, our friends and family want us to be cheerful and hopeful. They just love seeing us happy. Our smiles put smiles on their faces. Our joy warms their hearts. Our laughter tickles their tenderness. Our grit inspires their strength. Our faith gives them hope. Our positivity is convenient. Our brightness saves their energy. Our serenity lulls their distress. Our optimism excuses them from thinking. Our fortitude makes everybody else’s life easier. The truth is that our less than pleasant demeanor irritates the senses of those around us. More often than not our reality is bothersome, distasteful, troubling and threatening to the unsettled souls in our lives. We avoid our reality and we encourage others to do so. We are conditioned to separate ourselves, more accurately our ego, from our essence – sometimes exuberant and blissful, other times animalistic and sexual, and on occasion dark and violent – and we condition the next generations to follow suit.

It is but weak leading the weak.

Too afraid of truth, we build our lives on lies. In an attempt to feel good, we deplete ourselves of all that is good. We live the life of inauthenticity.

This is how I got in my way of co-creating the life that actually fulfilled me. And in order to end this sabotage, my stories, defenses and pretenses had to fail me.

I needed to fall apart.