Do you consider yourself a positive person actively looking for the good in situations, circumstances, and people? Being a silver lining detective can be great and can also be a way to protect yourself from negative feelings or having to initiate a difficult conversation.

I know this to be true from personal experience. In my younger life, before I was psychologically healthy, hyper-positivity was how I got by. I understood the benefits and power of positive thinking and longed to feel true empowerment, but didn’t. I did experience the downside of hyper-positivity by denying what needed to happen because I was afraid of rejection. It became a means of ‘spiritual bypassing.” I used spirituality or kindness as an excuse to avoid having the hard conversations, asking for a raise or confronting other’s bad behavior. I told myself that I was taking the spiritual high road (I wasn’t). Hyper-positivity can be used as a way to avoid the real self-help work. That work is complicated, messy and at times painful but will actually yield results if you stay the course (which I eventually did.) Bypassing will not.

In this week’s Real Love Revolution video, I cover:

• The downside to hyper-positivity (spiritual bypassing and magical thinking)
• How we use positivity as a defense mechanism
• How hyper-positivity is keeping you from being authentic
• How to create balanced feelings in your life rather than relying on hyper-positivity

I am certainly not discounting positivity and optimism – having an authentically optimistic outlook on life raises your energetic vibration and is still one of my most powerful tools for being happy in my life. On the other hand…

Using positivity to avoid speaking truthfully equates to living inauthentically. @terri_cole (Click to Tweet!)

The key is to not let your positivity create an illusion of control so great that you abandon your truth for the bright, sunny, easier (and less honest) path.

Balancing positivity with your truth is the key to authenticity. Learning to draw boundaries with ease and grace and honor yourself by speaking authentically lessens the need to hide behind hyper-positivity. So much of the time FEAR is what drives hyper-positivity. And eventually, passive aggressiveness becomes inevitable from constantly denying your true feelings. According to Freud, feelings are like smoke in a fireplace and no matter how much paper you stuff down the flue (denying true feelings), the smoke will find it’s way out anyway. When your feelings “find their way out anyway”, it is confusing to you and those around. This creates displaced aggression and does not generally solve issues.

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Thanks for watching, reading, and sharing!

And as always, take care of YOU.

Terri Cole is a licensed psychotherapist, transformation coach, and an expert at turning fear into freedom. Sign up for Terri’s weekly Newsletter, check out her blog and follow her on Twitter.