"As Americans feel increasingly pessimistic about the future, the pressure to "stay positive" has never been more intense-or misplaced. Psychology has long shown that suppressing difficult emotions does not make them disappear. It makes the nervous system more reactive. When sadness, fear, and anger are treated as problems to eliminate rather than signals to understand, the brain remains on high alert. This is one reason forced positivity so often backfires, amplifying anxiety rather than easing it."
"I use a framework I call real optimism: a form of optimism grounded in emotional honesty, psychological flexibility, and trust in our capacity to respond over time. Real optimism does not ask people to deny what is difficult. It asks them to stay engaged with difficulty without assuming it is permanent. That distinction matters because optimism is not an emotion. It is a way of interpreting experience."
Anxiety, burnout, and emotional exhaustion are at historic highs while societal pressure to stay positive has intensified and often proves misplaced. Suppressing difficult emotions increases nervous-system reactivity, keeping the brain on high alert and amplifying anxiety. Real optimism is a skill of meaning-making grounded in emotional honesty, psychological flexibility, and trust in the capacity to respond over time. Optimism functions as an interpretive style rather than a mood. Explanatory style—viewing setbacks as temporary, specific, and changeable—predicts faster recovery and lower depression risk, whereas seeing adversity as permanent, personal, and pervasive predicts greater vulnerability.
Read at Psychology Today
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