Toxic Positivity

Ana Pereira Oliveira

As we all know, in the first half of the year 2020, the world was swamped by a wave of “wishful thinking” optimism represented in the phrase “Everything will be alright!”, that became a kind of universal mantra. However, by the end of that year, and for all the tragic reasons we know, with the increasing of fatalities and the struggles of the scientific community for a medical solution, that optimism gradually evolved into a feeling of uncertainty. That was the moment when different news articles about mental problems related with forced confinement, social distancing, and personal alienation, started to mention toxic positivity as a key reference.
It was, as one could say, quite ironic to see the so-called “ableist-society” realizing that the type of speech known as “Toxic Positivity” is after all, nothing but empty rhetoric.