Feeling sad, tired, alone, or drained doesn’t make anyone less of a person. Suggesting others to disregard those feelings and force themselves to be positive all the time should be avoided. Being upbeat at times may be important, but it may come as a surprise to some that it is both okay and important to feel your more difficult feelings.

The phrase “toxic positivity” refers to the concept that keeping positive, and keeping positive only, is the right way to live your life. It means only focusing on positive things and rejecting anything that may trigger negative emotions. But that sounds pretty good, right? Not so fast.

When you deny or avoid unpleasant emotions, you make them bigger. Avoiding negative emotions reinforces this idea: Because you avoid feeling them, you tell yourself that you don’t need to pay attention to them. While you are trapped in this cycle, these emotions become bigger and more significant as they remain unprocessed. But this approach is simply unsustainable. Evolutionarily, we as humans cannot program ourselves to only feel happy.