I hate positive mantras with a passion. Or rather, I hate empty positive mantras with a passion. It’s been a bugaboo all my life–positive affirmations that had no basis in reality. I know that there have been studies that say that positive affirmations are, ahem, a positive thing and that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT, which I hate) uses them, but I disagree vehemently. And in Googling it, I found this article that pretty much says exactly what I was going to write, so go read that instead.
Only kidding. Come back. Please! I was reading one of my stories this morning, Care and Feeding, which has a subsection of Ask a Teacher. There is one teacher who responds who I think gives the most schlocky advice ever–and sees things from a cis het white male (liberal, yes, but still) point of view. I’m not saying he’s all of those things, but that’s how he comes across.
I read the question about how to help a child deal with bullies using positive mantras (CRINGE) and then started reading the response without checking who wrote it. As I continued, I knew. It was him. Not only because of his writing style, but because of his positivity bullshit, which is a big component of his responses.
Side note: America is so caught up in toxic positivity and believing that we have much more control in our personal lives than we actually do. “We can think it into being” is such bullshit and a neat way to keep people perpetually oppressed. Your life is shitty? It’s your fault because you didn’t believe hard enough.
Side Note to the Side Note: This is one of my issues with Christianity. Anything goes wrong, it’s your fault. You should pray to God to help you, but if He doesn’t, then you just didn’t believe enough. There’s no accountability there. Much like toxic positivity. It’s a neat trick as it puts all the blame on the person and not on, say society.
I will give him credit for ‘What is wrong with you?” as a response to bullies. I don’t have a problem with that one. But the ones like, “My future is bright. Bullies can’t stand that.” and “You tease me because you fear me.”? Hard no. Not only because it’s not true, but because that’s just going to make the beatdown/ostracization worse.
Want to know what worked best for me? When a girl in my high school teased me every day in homeroom, I tried to ignore her. I was also given that as advice, and, guess what? It never worked. So when this girl teased me (and I still remember her name and face) for months on end, I snapped. I grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back, and told her that I would fucking kill her if she ever bothered me again. She tried to scoff and say that I looked foolish, but I saw the fear in her eyes. I replied that she was the fool as I let her head go.
She never bothered me again. I wished the takeaway from that would have been that I could stand up for myself and not be pushed around. Instead, I was mortified that I had lost control and castigated myself for years after that.
Decades ago, K (my BFF) and I were at a bar, grousing about platitudes. Why? Who knows? That’s just how we roll. I really hate ‘that which does not kill you makes you stronger’, in part because it’s so smarmy, but mostly because it’s flat-out untrue. Like when women used to say it was different when you had your own kids (that I would automatically love them). Which is bullshit, right? Obvious bullshit! There are plenty of people who hate their own children and/or abuse them.