https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/whitelighting-meaning-gaslighting-friendships-b2415776.html

It doesn’t make you stronger or teach you lessons: Making up reality with toxic positivity that damages mental health (msn.com)

Direct Quote from the title linked to above:

We’re talking about advice that, although theoretically convenient to integrate into our lives, catches us unable to digest it in the moment in which it is offered. If that wasn’t enough, its attempt to lighten up a negative situation leaves us feeling silenced, judged and misunderstood. This phenomenon of subjecting a negative experience to a filter of optimism and vitality is known as whitelighting. Although the person who uses the tactic doesn’t mean to devalue or dehumanize the other’s experience, paradoxically that’s precisely what happens when someone tries to put a positive spin on negative or traumatic feelings and experiences experienced by another person.

We Americans live in a self help culture. And most of us think that is a good thing. It’s not. A realistic assessment based on accurate information is the best choice when dealing with reality. But many prefer the idea that all adversity is a challenge and anyone, anywhere, anytime, no matter what, can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It’s enough to drive me to deep abiding anger and rage. This Horatio Alger just never seems to die.

But whitelighting people when they’re sad – having lost loved ones, pets, jobs, relationships, etc. is just cruel. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” “Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” “The school of adversity leads to success.” “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Countless times both I and people I know have been serenaded with these nuggets of folk wisdom. I’m reminded of the Monty Python movie, “The Life of Brian,” in which the crucified multitude join in a chorus of “Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Being a friend, a relative or just a fellow human being demands patient listening and comfort freely given when someone you know is suffering. Happy talk has its place, not very many places but some places. Whitelighting is very much akin to gas lighting. Don’t do it.

Let me give you a simple example. The other day I ran into a woman with a medical boot on because she had injured her ankle. I told her I was sorry she was in pain. I did not tell her the leg would heal back stronger, that her suffering would ennoble her or that we all get hurt and it would be best to get over it quickly and get back to work. None of that. What I did add was because I’m an attorney. I noticed that she was parked pretty far out in the supermarket lot so I told her that she was entitled to a handicapped sticker while she was in recovery and if she didn’t want to go to the doctor to get it, she could call and they would mail it. That’s useful information.

I suppose what really gets my goat is corporate happy talk. I once gave a carefully considered and reasoned statement about the difficulty in getting new clients in the county where I worked and my boss’s boss said I should be more positive. Corporate culture in the United States believes that in general lying is wrong unless dealing with business prospects in which case, a false and nonsensical optimism is the chosen means of communication. God help us all.

James Alan Pilant