07/16/2025

How to Banish Toxic Positivity at Work

Change your workplace culture by acknowledging some positivity is toxic

Sure, we know that feelings are highly contagious, and being positive can help others around us to feel the same, but let’s be honest for a moment: Sometimes, life isn't all rainbows. Some days are not great, and, sometimes, positivity isn’t the best way to handle it. And research confirms it: one 10-year study into using avoidance to cope—perhaps, by pretending things are fine, rather than addressing when they are not— finds that it can increase chronic, acute stress and be linked to long-term depressive symptoms.

In my experience as an emotional intelligence and human behavior specialist, our workplaces are becoming more focused on employee well-being, but it’s an easy way to compel us to fake optimism, regardless of the real circumstances at hand. In workplace cultures, toxic positivity compels people to remain optimistic or think positively regardless of the real circumstances—say, key clients lost, budgets and bonuses frozens, or team-wide layoffs. And it’s pervasive: one survey by workplace blog Science of People finds that almost 68 percent of people had experienced toxic positivity in the last week.

The fundamental basics of relationships between people is based on the ability to trust. Trust is created through being honest and transparent, being accountable and creditable, and being empathetic and vulnerable. It takes being real; fake positivity isn't real. If I can see that your optimism is a put-on, how can I trust the other things you say or do? Do I feel safe to be real, or do I, too, need to fake positivity?

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.