“It’s OK to Cry”: Expert Criticizes “Toxic Optimism”

Immediately, Nora McInerny noticed fundamental differences in the way people have responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

For some, the deadly virus and the sheer changes of it constituted the “first big thing they went through.” Meanwhile, McInerny and others whose lives have been shaped by grief, loss or tragedy have long known that “life is fragile and our pace in this modern world is unsustainable.”

McInerny’s first husband Aaron died three days before Thanksgiving 2014, leaving her to raise their son Ralphie alone. She had just suffered a miscarriage. And she had lost her father less than a month ago.

Her work – as host of the “Terrible, Thanks for Asking” podcast and author of the books “It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)”. It’s also alright to cry”, in translation”) and “No Happy Endings” (“No Happy Endings”, in Portuguese”), among other memories -reflects these losses, countering the social pressures to “live, laugh and love” with frankness, realism and ironic humor.

His new collection of essays, “Bad Vibes Only: (And Other Things I Bring to the Table)” offers a comic and cutting retort to “ our aggressive and overwhelmingly optimistic culture” and “obsession with self-improvement”.

The slogan “Good Vibes Only” is “cute for a mug, but a pretty sinister interpersonal standard,” McInerny wrote.

Here, she suggests honesty and failure as goals best suited to reality.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What do you hope people get out of your work?

Nora McInerny: I want my work to reduce the demands that people put on themselves. We have so much intense pressure to achieve and perform in the face of all the suffering and struggle of modern life. You don’t have to do anything but be a decent person and survive.

The year 2021 was the worst year of my life since 2014 when my husband Aaron died. this horrible disease [Covid-19] was sweeping our world and immediately people started to see the “positive side” of it.

I remember sitting in my office, cross-legged, trying to figure out how we could do more work with fewer resources. Meanwhile, people were trying to shine a light and insert it into some kind of self-improvement lesson. I resist it. All my work has been a kind of pressure against the optimistic industrial complex.

CNN: How does perfectionism relate to that kind of optimism?

McInerny: The stream that ranges from gifted children to professional women who have exceeded expectations is full of perfectionists. What is a perfectionist if not just a person who hates himself – who can’t just enjoy the act of being alive?

From the moment Aaron died, I felt like I had to earn my place on this planet – just doing, doing, doing. I had to figure out how to be a worthy person. When a therapist asked me who I would be without all my jobs and titles, I stared blankly.

The book is about existing in the contradictions of modern life. All the people in my life – except the few who don’t have social media – are starring in, producing and directing their own reality show for the consumption of mostly strangers, myself included. What a strange world.

CNN: You write: “Every beleaguered and exhausted millennial I know fantasizes about a life connected to something bigger than Wi-Fi […] yearning for a little silence in a world that is constantly yelling at us from little rectangles in our pockets.” Where does this connection come from?

McInerny: What has helped me is honesty and other people’s stories, which remind me that I’m not alone.

I will say that the majority in the self-help industry are crooks who sell millions of books touting the dream that you too can do the same when the vast majority of people cannot. There’s something to be said for just being realistic.

People who try to convince you to “do these five quick steps and everything will be fine” are scammers. Saying “the answer is within you” creates the trap that if you can’t find the answer, you must be faulty.

I’m not talking about qualified mental health professionals and researchers here. If they tell you to eat mindfully and go out and look at the grass for five minutes, do it. Sitting here, petting my dog ​​and not looking at my cell phone helps me. Getting my phone out of my way helped me, as I’m sure it would most of us.

Each generation believes it has never been worse. But all this existential dread and boredom is a very normal response to an unfeeling world where billionaires are trying to vacate this planet via rockets and we’re fighting over scraps. Why wouldn’t you be anxious?

CNN: What advice do you have for people who are fighting the tide of an optimism that feels forced or false?

McInerny: Do what you can. The need to do your best in every situation is a lie sold to you by a gym teacher, a coach and capitalism. No, you don’t owe everything 110%. In fact, you owe most things 70%, maybe even 60%. The world does not demand your perfection.

The second thing is that you are not required to be an open book. Not everyone deserves the full truth, but you need to find at least one person you can tell the whole story to – a person who knows what it’s like.

This book is a collection of essays. Readers are not going to walk away with five tips or tricks. There are no tips. There are no gimmicks – just the very confusing business of trying to be a person in a really difficult world.

*Jessica DuLong is a Brooklyn, New York-based journalist, book contributor, writing coach, and author of “Saved at the Seawall: Stories From the September 11 Boat Lift” and “My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America.”