I cannot emphasize enough that this was not the original intention
The textbook version of positive psychology, however, is noticing those encounters that normally make us feel awful about ourselves and re-learning how to see them in another, brighter light. It’s not an objective rejection of reality or brushing things under the rug that truly should have been removed a while ago, but re-teaching our mind to assume the best instead of the worst in any situation.
Back to Dr. Seligman. Few people know that he came up with Positive Psychology as he was seeking to understand depression and other mental illnesses. He observed that people who experience the same event may end up describing it in a variety of ways depending on their general outlook of life, and those who were able to look at things in a positive light were less likely to be depressed. His goal wasn’t to create constant joy in people, but rather to make it a fundamental pillar (one of five, actually) of our well-being.
In terms of psychology as a science, he simply wanted to highlight the good emotions we feel as much as we had previously highlighted and focused on the bad ones up to that point. Right now, we take only the things wrong with us and study solutions for them. Instead, he proposed, we should study the things that we do that make us feel good and use them as an example of good mental health.
It’s not that Positive Psychology is unhelpful, it’s that for those dealing with Depression, imaging another thinking pattern or really having control over the chemicals in their brains is impossible. And the improper interpretation of Dr. Seligman’s idea created a social pressure to be nothing other than positive.
Every person has to overcome hurdles. Some appear smaller to others, others are bigger than someone might let on. It is exactly at this cross-section of objectivity and relativity that mental health understanding currently lies in the public eye. Sympathy is still an uncommon commodity in a world where we recognize 1 in 4 will experience depression in their lifetime. We need to stop measuring our positive experiences up against someone else’s negative ones and vice-versa. We need to walk in one another’s mental shoes.
Positive psychology is absolutely a must on the list of things that will help us manage the world us depressed folks see as gray all the time. Even if it’s just to help us view it as others do. It might be best to avoid comparing your gray day to someone’s rose colored glasses too. Be you, and be all of it.