What's the problem with Positive Thinking? | Berkhamsted therapist Sean Heneghan
"Just think positive."
"Focus on what you're grateful for."
"Everything happens for a reason."
We've all heard these well-meaning suggestions when facing difficult times, and on the surface, they seem helpful, who wouldn't want to feel more positive? But if you've ever found yourself feeling worse after trying to think positively, or frustrated that your problems persist despite your best efforts at optimism, there isn't something wrong with you.
After two decades of working with people in my Berkhamsted practice, I've seen how positive thinking can so often become a sophisticated form of denial—a defense mechanism against the valid and difficult feelings that need our attention. The problem isn't that positive thinking is inherently bad; it's that trying to always implement it distorts what your actual experience is in the attempt to convert it into something more 'positive'. And you can't get rid of difficult feelings by simply denying that they're there.
When Positivity Becomes a Problem
The fundamental issue with positive thinking is that it can estrange and dissociate you from what you actually feel. I've worked with people in genuinely difficult circumstances whether it be a bad relationship or lingering grief, who've convinced themselves that their problem is that they're not sufficiently grateful enough, or positive enough to eradicate their difficult feelings. What they often come to realize through therapy is that it's natural and normal to be feeling a whole range of difficult feelings in their predicament—that's why they're feeling them!
The trouble with trying to be positive on top of whatever it is that you're suffering, is that you've now doubled the problem. It's one thing to suffer, say for example the extended grief of losing someone you love; it's another to feel that grief, and to on top of that now feel that you're a failure for not getting over it quick enough, or that you're not being positive enough, or grateful enough. The demand to be positive on top of legitimate suffering is a subtle form of cruelty, whether you do it to yourself or to someone else.
Painful feelings need honouring and legitimizing, not denied and treated as a failure. When we finally make space for actual experience—the sadness, the anger, or whatever it might be can then be worked with in a way that gratitude exercises can never achieve.
What Happens When We Stop Fighting Our Experience
When someone sits with me in therapy and stops trying to "think positive," something useful happens. They give up being at war with their experience and that immediately creates a kind of ease.
What I've observed repeatedly is that the actual experience of difficult feelings is much easier than people imagine. We protect ourselves from difficult feelings because we think it'll be an unstoppable wave, but it's quieter, safer, much easier than that and more importantly, there's relief in it. The experiencing of suppressed feelings brings relief in a way that trying to override them never does.
People often say things like "I thought if I let myself feel this, I'd never stop crying, but I feel calmer" or "The anger wasn't as scary as I thought it would be." There's something profound about finally allowing yourself to feel what you've been avoiding.
What I'm pointing to was brilliantly articulated by the great Carl Jung:
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular."
- Jung, C.G. (1945). The Philosophical Tree. In The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 13: Alchemical Studies. Princeton University Press.
The Both/And Approach
This doesn't mean we need to abandon all positive approaches entirely. I think these can be framed as different kinds of skills. To be able to generate a sense of optimism and possibility in difficult circumstances is useful and necessary. So is being able to be with difficult feelings—just feeling them, understanding them, being informed by them, being able to ride the wave of them till they subside.
It doesn't need to be either/or; it can be both. You can be skilled at finding a positive framing for your life, and you can also be skilled at being aware of the genuinely difficult feelings present and working with them as they are. When someone has been using positive thinking as their main coping strategy for years, they don't have to transition and lose something. They just need to develop their capacity to honestly be with their pain, and that can be developed gradually in non-threatening ways so it doesn't feel too overwhelming. It's an expansion of one's ways of relating to oneself, not having to swap one approach for another.
When Depression Tries to Tell Us Something
Let's take depression as an example:
Sometimes depression can be a kind of aftermath, it lets you know you've been through something damaging that's wounded your sense of yourself and the world. Depression can signify that life has become a place where the good things feel unattainable because they've been lost. If I've been damaged by life, I have to be able to feel how and work with it so that I come to understand it well. Damage comes in many forms with many kinds of impact. If I just try to plaster positive mantras over the top of that, I really make it much harder to find my real, often hidden feelings. Plastering positivity over the bits of yourself that are hurting is abandoning those parts.
Rather than being simply a problem to be overcome with positive thoughts, depression often signals that something in our life needs attention and a patient kind of listening that leads to understanding.
What Actually Helps
Real emotional wellbeing often involves becoming more comfortable with the full range of human experience. This doesn't mean seeking out suffering or remaining stuck in unnecessary pain, but rather recognizing that our most challenging experiences often hold the kernels of future growth.
When people develop the capacity to be with their difficult emotions without immediately trying to fix or change them, something shifts. They often discover that what they feared would overwhelm them is actually manageable. The feelings that seemed too dangerous to feel turn out to contain important information about their lives, their relationships, and their needs.
This doesn't happen overnight, and it's not about replacing positive thinking with negative thinking. It's about developing a more nuanced, realistic relationship with your emotional life, one that can hold both difficulty and joy, both struggle and gratitude, without needing to choose one over the other.
The goal isn't to eliminate all challenging emotions, which would be neither possible nor desirable. Instead, it's about developing the capacity to work with your full range of them in a conscious, intentional way. Sometimes the most positive thing we can do is take our difficulties seriously enough to understand what they're trying to tell us.
If you're tired of fighting with your emotions and ready to explore a different approach:
I offer therapy in Berkhamsted that helps people develop a more complete relationship with their emotional experience. Rather than trying to think your way out of difficulties, we explore what your feelings might be trying to communicate in the aim of opening up something new.
Phone: 07717 515 013
Email: sean@seanheneghan.com
Located at: Berkhamsted Chiropractic Clinic, 69 High Street, Berkhamsted
About Sean Heneghan
Sean Heneghan is a BACP registered counsellor, a traditional acupuncturist and a Cognitive Hypntotherapist with an extensive range of therapeutic experience. He specializes in helping people develop more authentic relationships with their emotional experience, moving beyond symptom management toward genuine understanding and growth.
Services include:
Gestalt counselling and therapy
Traditional acupuncture
Support for depression, anxiety, and emotional difficulties
Contact: 07717 515 013 | sean@seanheneghan.com | www.seanheneghan.com
Serving Berkhamsted, Tring, Hemel Hempstead, St Albans, and the wider Hertfordshire area.
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