How Toxic Positivity Aggravated One Of My Worst Experiences

RECENTLY, I SUCKED. It was a city mile event.

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Fast. But as soon as I started to run, I lost my breath. I didn’t even make it through two blocks before I had to slow down, then watch the backs of other runners fade away. I spent so much time walking that I was reduced to nothing but my own worst thoughts: how embarrassed I was. How out of shape. How I have no friends, my life has no meaning, and my running is never going to improve.

Did I spiral? Well, yes, of course I did! It took me 13 minutes to walk that 1 600 metres. A few days later, looking for some running advice, I told a coach I’m friendly with about how badly I felt. In response to my sadness, she said, “But you did great!”

Now, in case you need a reminder, ‘great’ means ‘considerably above or better than average’. In my head and at that moment, there was no reality-based metric in which I had done ‘great’. The one person who responded appropriately to my suckiness was the young spectator who shouted at me while I walked my long mile of the race. “Hey! You're better than me!” she said, because she was merely standing still. That stranger made me feel better than my running-coach friend did.

Why, I wondered, do some people insist on being cheerful in response to another person’s sadness?