We fail. We stand up. We try again. We fail again. And then? We improve.

Recently I listened to my favourite Podcast, and one of the main statements was: “Framing every failure as a success in progress is neo-liberal toxic positivity”.

What to make of it? First, I would remove the bias “neo-liberal”, because I am strictly unpolitical about my sobriety. At least here and in other sobriety communities. Second, I would say so-so.

Why that?

I think the most important aspect about failure is that you should not let it drag you down and make you question everything in your life, your choices and your personality. If you have been alcoholic, or have anxiety or depression, it very often comes down to that. So you start thinking about how to not get into this vicious circle of thoughts. You can either dampen the feeling by drinking more alcohol, or indulge in other activities that help you getting rid of the spiral for a little while, or you avoid the situations.

Or, you start re-framing your failure into something different. You can do so by telling yourself that everything is gonna be alright and that your failure is not a failure but another step to a success.

As I understand it, the pure going from failure to reframing it to success leaves would be the same as suppress the feeling by indulging in other activities. A shallow feeling, a glimpse of the failure emotion will remain as an echo. You may have success building on you first unsuccessful attempt. But you will not confront yourself with the underlying emotion or the real reasons for your failed attempt. This is, at least as I understand it, toxic positivity, because you only very superficially approach the problem on its material form, but you will hurt your psyche.

You can, however, reframe failure into success, if you confront yourself with the feeling of having failed, but with all the techniques that help you remain in the borders of resilience and resources:

Analyze why you have failed on the factual level (here, the concept of “toxic positivity” and confronting yourself share a similar, maybe congruent process. When you analyze your failure, try to incorporate your underlying feelings. The feeling arises again. Accept it, surf it, name it, deconstruct it, visualize what you can do instead. Be self compassionate. Take a step back and reflect, go into introspection, but don’t dive too deep into the void, because the vicious circle is down there someplace. You can take small steps. You can practice. You can tap your resilience, you can tap your self efficacy expectation.

That’s what I did. Is this a recommendation? No, not necessarily. It is more the try to give you an insight and, for me, it is a jotted down reflection of what I would and will do next time I am caught by a vicious circle or the temptation to take the superficial way of dealing with a failure. That would be like taking every tipp for optimizing your life from social media or a wall calendar with shallow truisms.

Until then: Take one step at a time and don’t lose the faith in yourself

PS: And no, a mantra or a self affirmation is not necessarily toxic positivity. Make it meaningful. Then you can avoid superficial toxic positivity.