Flourishing After Adversity

S2:E21 How to Know You're Truly Healing

• Laura Broome

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0:00 | 13:45

Toxic Positivity vs. Post-Traumatic Growth: Are You Healing or Performing?

Host Laura Mangum Broome opens with a wound metaphor to explain how forced optimism can cover unresolved pain, then introduces the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and a free resource, “Reframe the Spiral.” She describes how common phrases like “stay positive” can pressure people to bypass grief, leading to anxiety, numbness, and breakdowns, and shares her own experiences of bilateral breast cancer, chemotherapy-related heart damage, congestive heart failure, a heart transplant, her teenage son’s suicide, divorce, and her father’s passing. 

She distinguishes toxic positivity (surface-level “I’m fine” bypassing) from post-traumatic growth (feeling what’s real and growing through pain), referencing Viktor Frankl and his quote about choosing one’s response. She offers four self-check questions and a brief journaling exercise to identify bypassed emotions and begin honest healing.

00:00 Wounds And Bandages
00:22 Podcast Welcome
01:11 Pressure To Stay Positive
02:05 When Positivity Turns Toxic
03:03 My Story Of Survival
03:51 Healing Or Managing Appearances
04:10 Toxic Positivity Vs Growth
05:15 Viktor Frankl And Meaning
06:50 Four Questions Check In
06:57 Bad Days Are Allowed
07:35 Processing Vs Performing
08:31 Changed Inside Not Highlights
09:12 Name What You Lost
09:55 When Your Brain Pushes Back
10:46 Three Prompt Exercise
11:34 Recap And Next Steps
13:02 Closing And Resources

Schedule a free 15-minute Clarity Call with Laura: https://bit.ly/15mincallLMB

 Imagine you have a deep wound. Instead of cleaning it out, letting it heal properly, you put a bandage over it and tell everyone, and yourself, that you're fine. It looks okay from the outside, but underneath, it's festering.  If you ever felt this way during setbacks, today's episode is for you. 

Podcast Welcome

Welcome to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. I'm your host, Laura Mangum Broome.  If you've ever been knocked down by life--grief, illness, loss, or unexpected change, you're in the right place. Here, we turn setbacks into stepping stones because healing, growth, and joy are not out of reach. They're available to you even in this season.   

Before we begin, if you ever felt overwhelmed by negative thoughts after a setback, caught in loops of worry, self-doubt, or mental exhaustion, I created a free resource for you called Reframe the Spiral:  5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. You'll find the link in the show notes. 

The Positivity Pressure

Let me ask you something.

When adversity hit, the diagnosis, the loss, the divorce,  the life that no longer looked anything like what you planned,  what did the people around you say?  If it sounds anything like, "Stay positive," or, "Everything happens for a reason," or, "At least you have..." and fill in the blank,  I want you to know something.

Those words came from a good place, but they also send a message:  Get to the better part faster. Skip the hard stuff. Don't stay in the pain too long.  And so most of us do exactly that. We smile. We post the uplifting quote. We tell everyone we're fine. We bury the grief underneath gratitude and call it growth.

And then we wonder why we still feel so exhausted . 

Toxic Positivity Within

Here's what I want you to understand.  Toxic positivity isn't always something other people do to you. Most of the time, it's something we do to ourselves because sitting with difficult emotions feels unbearable.

But here's what I also know to be true:  bypassing the pain doesn't make it go away, it just drives it underground,  and underground feelings don't disappear. They show up later as anxiety, numbness, sudden breakdowns over something small, or a puzzling sense that you're falling apart even though everything looks fine.  I know this for a fact because it happened to me. 

Today, I want to help you tell the difference between performing your healing and actually doing it.   I want to share this from my own life because I know what it's like to feel pressure to be okay.

My Breaking Point

Within a five-year window, I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. I went through chemotherapy. The chemo damaged my heart, and I developed congestive heart failure. I eventually needed and received a heart transplant.  And the day before my double mastectomy, I lost my teenage son to suicide.  I also went through a divorce and lost my father in that same season.

People called me strong. They told me I was an inspiration, and part of me held onto that because it felt better than admitting how broken I was inside.  But there were moments when I had to get honest with myself, not about what I was surviving, but about whether I was actually processing it or just performing my way through it.

Healing Versus Performing

The turning point for me wasn't a big dramatic moment. It was a quiet question I started asking myself: Am I healing, or am I just managing how I look while I'm hurting?  That question changed everything, and today I want to give you the tools to answer it for yourself. 

Toxic Versus Growth

What's the difference between toxic positivity and post-traumatic growth?  Let's name the distinction clearly.   Toxic positivity is focused on the surface.  It's saying, "I'm fine. Everything happens for a reason.  I should be grateful. Other people have it worse."  It glosses over the pain with forced optimism. It's a bypass. You skip over the feeling to get to the better part faster.

 Post-traumatic growth is focused on what's real.  It's saying, "This is hard, and I'm going to feel it.  I can hold grief and gratitude at the same time.  I didn't choose this, but I can choose how I move through it."  Growth doesn't come instead of pain. It comes through it.

Post-traumatic growth doesn't pretend the wound isn't there. It cleans it out. It lets it sting. It gives it time.  The difference is not what you say out loud. It's what you allow yourself to feel in private. 

Viktor Frankl Lesson

And I want to introduce you to someone whose story makes this distinction impossible to ignore.   Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.  He spent years in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.  He lost his wife, his parents, and his brother.

He had every reason to be destroyed by what happened to him.   And yet, in the middle of unimaginable suffering. Frankl made an observation that would later become one of the most quoted insights in the history of psychology.  He said, "Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom."  He didn't bypass the pain.

He didn't tell himself everything was fine.  He sat in the full weight of what was happening, and he chose what he would do with it.  After his liberation, Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most influential books ever written. He went on to help millions of people find purpose in their suffering.

He didn't grow instead of his pain. He grew through it. - That is post-traumatic growth in its purest form.  And if Viktor Frankl could find meaning in a concentration camp, I believe with everything in me that you can find it, too, right where you are, with what you've been through

Four Self Check Questions

So how do you actually know where you are? Let me give you four specific questions to ask yourself. 

Question one:  Do you allow yourself to have a bad day?  Even if one rough day feels like a personal failure or a step backward, that's a signal.  Genuine growth includes room for grief, anger, and "I'm not okay today."  Toxic positivity doesn't.  Real healing doesn't require every day to be good. It requires you to have a hard day without deciding it erases your progress.  Ask yourself,  when did I last let myself feel something hard without trying to fix it or reframe it immediately? 

Question two: Are you processing or performing?  Processing looks like crying, journaling, or talking to a trusted person,  sitting with discomfort without rushing to resolve it,  asking, "What do I need right now?"  Letting the feeling exist without trying to fix it or avoid it.  Performing looks like  Posting inspiration you don't actually feel.  Saying, "I'm fine," before you've even checked in with yourself.

Rushing to find the silver lining before the wound has had time to breathe.  Here's the key difference:  processing has an exit ramp, performing is a loop.  You can give your pain the space it deserves, just don't let it take up permanent residence. 

Question three: Has your story changed you or just your highlights?

Post-traumatic growth rewires how you see yourself, what you value, and how you relate to others.  It's a shift that happens in the quiet moments, not just in public.  If you're mostly curating a narrative of strength without feeling any of it privately, it's worth pausing.  Ask yourself, "Have my values shifted? Do I treat people differently? Have my priorities actually changed, or am I just telling a better version of the same story?"  Growth is internal before it's external. 

And Question four:  Do you know what you actually lost?  This one matters deeply.  Real healing requires honest grieving, naming what was taken from you, what will never be the same, and what you genuinely miss.  Skipping that step shortcuts the whole process.  You can't fully heal what you haven't named. Not the sanitized version,  not the version that makes everyone else feel comfortable. The real version. What did you lose? What will never look the same?  What do you miss?  Name it. That's where healing actually begins 

Answer The Inner Voice

Now, if your brain is pushing back right now, if it's saying, "  But I am staying positive. That's how I cope.  If I let myself feel it, I'll fall apart.  This sounds like it'll just make things worse."  I hear you, and I'm not dismissing any of that. You can answer that voice without fighting it.  Try responses like, "Maybe, but I can try one honest check-in today and see what happens."  Feeling it doesn't mean drowning in it.

I can feel and still move forward.  I don't have to process everything today. I just have to name one thing.   You don't have to leap from toxic positivity to post-traumatic growth overnight.  You just have to stop covering the wound and take one honest look at it. 

Three Prompt Exercise

Try this exercise today.  Grab a notebook or open your notes app and answer these three prompts.  "One thing I've been covering with forced positivity is," and complete the sentence.  "One emotion I haven't let myself fully feel is,"  and complete the sentence.  And the last one,  "One way my story has genuinely changed me in private, not just in public, is..." and complete the sentence.  Then ask, "Where am I bypassing something I actually need to feel?"  You don't have to fix it. You don't even have to process the whole thing today.  Just name it. That's the first step toward real growth.

Recap And Closing

Let's recap what we covered today.  Toxic positivity is bypassing pain with forced optimism, and the feelings don't go away, they go underground.  Post-traumatic growth is real, documented, and starts with letting yourself feel the weight of what happened.  The four questions to know which one you're doing:  Do you allow bad days?

Are you processing or performing? Has your story truly changed you? Do you know what you actually lost?  Viktor Frankl grew through unimaginable suffering, not around it, and that same path is available to you.  When your brain fights back, answer it with one honest check-in, not a perfect plan.  And complete the exercise. Name one thing you've been covering, one emotion you haven't felt,  one way you've genuinely changed. 

If you're in a season where you're not sure whether you're healing or just holding it together, I want you to hear this.  You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to feel strong right now. You just have to be willing to take one honest look.  The scar you carry isn't something to hide. It's proof of what you've survived.  You're right where you need to be. Growth happens one step at a time. 

Thank you for listening to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. If this episode helped you, please share it with three friends who need hope.

Leave a review or connect with me online at iCope2Hope.com. The link is in the show notes.  And don't forget to download your free guide, Reframe the Spiral:  5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. The link is also in the show notes, along with other free resources. 

Until next time, remember, adversity can make you bitter or better.  Choose better! You've got this!