SPIRITUAL TERMINOLOGY AND MEANINGS
Browse spiritual terminology and meanings by letter:
Toxic Positivity
What is toxic positivity?
The phrase toxic positivity refers to a culture of spiritual bypassing generated by the New Age community and Wellness industry. Toxic positivity involves ignoring, suppressing, minimizing, or invalidation of emotions that are perceived as negative and may also lead to avoidance of confrontation and healthy expressions of negative emotions that are natural to an authentic human experience. Toxic positivity leads to the denial and repression of emotions, stunted emotional development, and a low emotional intelligence. Prolonged practice of toxic positivity can lead to a variety of psychologically unhealthy behaviors, as well as emotional numbness, anxiety, and depression.Symptoms of toxic positivity:
- “Good vibes only”
- Consistently intentionally using positive thoughts to negate, ignore, or suppress sadness, anger, depression, anxiety, and grief
- Conflict avoidance
- “Don’t worry, be happy”
- “Don’t think negative thoughts”
- Hiding or masking true emotions
- Shaming and invalidation of others who express any emotions that are perceived as negative
- Mislabeling others who engage in healthy expression of negative emotions as negative people and cutting them off
- Avoiding confrontation with regard to social responsibility
Where did toxic positivity originate?
Toxic positivity originates from a overly simplistic understanding of the Law of Attraction wherein proponents believe that any recurring thoughts they have will manifest into their reality, and therefore, in order to manifest positive things, they must always think positive thoughts. This is an incorrect interpretation of the Law of Attraction. Please visit the entry on Law of Attraction for a full explanation.
The rising popularity of the Law of Attraction through books like The Power of Positive Thinking and The Secret, and popular Law of Attraction and manifestation teachers such as Abraham Hicks have widely contributed to the spread of toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. A lack of emphasis on shadow work and its role in the manifestation process in these teachings is also a factor. Many wellness influencers and business coaches have incorporated the concept of manifestation and positive thinking into their messaging as a marketing gimmick, further popularizing these concepts and exacerbating toxic positivity culture.
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Check Your Spiritual Elitism
It’s important that we recognize when and how systems of oppression and classism show up in our community and in our own spiritual and business practices. Here’s a few ways that may be happening and what you can do about it.
Spiritual Narcissism
For those in the know, “spiritual ego” is quite rampant in the spiritual community. The more mainstream spirituality has become in the west, the more it has been influenced by individualistic Western cultural values, resulting in what social science has now termed spiritual narcissism.
Western Individualism and Spirituality
I reference individualism frequently in my posts and point to it as one of the underlying problems with Western spirituality. I wanted to take some time to do a deeper dive on this so everyone understands what I’m talking about.
Disembodied Spirituality: Is it Really Zen or is it Dissociation?
Spirituality and holistic wellness is supposed to be about the mind, body, and spirit, but a lot of toxic, ungrounded spirituality completely ignores the entire body part and only focuses on the mind or the spirit. Here’s how to discern whether or not a spiritual teacher/teaching is disembodied (and thus, not holistic).
Victim Consciousness isn’t What You Think it is
The concept of victim consciousness gets thrown around by New Agers a lot as this motivation for every single person needing to take 100% personal responsibility for everything that happens to them, but this label gets thrown at the wrong people most of the time and I’m going to tell you why.
The Fine Line Between Boundaries and Bypassing
Are you actually setting boundaries? Or are you using spiritual concepts to avoid accountability and having to face your own cognitive dissonance? Let’s discuss.
On Cancelling Cancel Culture
Digging into cancel culture, racism, sexism, bias, and bigotry today. Oh my! As well as what these all have to do with spirituality.
Why QAnon Infected The Spiritual and Wellness Communities
I’ve been receiving a lot of comments on my posts lately from people within the spiritual community and outside of it all saying the same thing: “I don’t understand how people got from spirituality to QAnon.” Hold my beer, I’m gonna draw you a diagram…
The Shadow of Spirituality
The time has come for the spiritual community to confront its own shadow.
How to Spot a Spiritually Immature Wellness Influencer
Learn how to identify people who’ve placed themselves in positions of power and authority who perhaps have no business being there.
Check Your Spiritual Elitism
It’s important that we recognize when and how systems of oppression and classism show up in our community and in our own spiritual and business practices. Here’s a few ways that may be happening and what you can do about it.
Spiritual Narcissism
For those in the know, “spiritual ego” is quite rampant in the spiritual community. The more mainstream spirituality has become in the west, the more it has been influenced by individualistic Western cultural values, resulting in what social science has now termed spiritual narcissism.
Western Individualism and Spirituality
I reference individualism frequently in my posts and point to it as one of the underlying problems with Western spirituality. I wanted to take some time to do a deeper dive on this so everyone understands what I’m talking about.
Disembodied Spirituality: Is it Really Zen or is it Dissociation?
Spirituality and holistic wellness is supposed to be about the mind, body, and spirit, but a lot of toxic, ungrounded spirituality completely ignores the entire body part and only focuses on the mind or the spirit. Here’s how to discern whether or not a spiritual teacher/teaching is disembodied (and thus, not holistic).
Victim Consciousness isn’t What You Think it is
The concept of victim consciousness gets thrown around by New Agers a lot as this motivation for every single person needing to take 100% personal responsibility for everything that happens to them, but this label gets thrown at the wrong people most of the time and I’m going to tell you why.
The Fine Line Between Boundaries and Bypassing
Are you actually setting boundaries? Or are you using spiritual concepts to avoid accountability and having to face your own cognitive dissonance? Let’s discuss.
On Cancelling Cancel Culture
Digging into cancel culture, racism, sexism, bias, and bigotry today. Oh my! As well as what these all have to do with spirituality.
Why QAnon Infected The Spiritual and Wellness Communities
I’ve been receiving a lot of comments on my posts lately from people within the spiritual community and outside of it all saying the same thing: “I don’t understand how people got from spirituality to QAnon.” Hold my beer, I’m gonna draw you a diagram…
The Shadow of Spirituality
The time has come for the spiritual community to confront its own shadow.
How to Spot a Spiritually Immature Wellness Influencer
Learn how to identify people who’ve placed themselves in positions of power and authority who perhaps have no business being there.
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