I’ve spent enough time in spiritual spaces to notice something unsettling. It happens in every community-online groups, workshops, retreat centres, healing circles. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
People smile through the pain.
They sit in their chairs, nod along, say the right things, and push the difficult feelings down so far that they forget those feelings exist at all. It’s subtle. It’s encouraged. And it’s dressed up as spiritual wisdom.
But here’s the thing: it’s actually making people sicker.
The Smile-and-Bear-It Spiritual Culture
Spiritual communities are built on a lot of beautiful principles. Acceptance, compassion, peace, unity. But somewhere along the way, a lot of these communities have twisted those principles into something toxic: the relentless pursuit of positivity.
You’ve probably experienced this yourself. Someone shares a genuine struggle-anxiety, grief, anger, confusion-and the response is almost automatic: “Everything happens for a reason,” or “The universe is testing you,” or my personal favourite, “Just stay positive. It’s all in your mindset.”
What’s happening here isn’t wisdom. It’s suppression dressed up as spirituality.
I’ve watched it happen countless times. Someone sits with a difficult emotion for five minutes before someone else swoops in with a silver-lining comment. A person mentions they’re struggling, and instead of being heard, they’re immediately offered a reframe designed to make the discomfort disappear. The message, whether spoken or implied, is clear: your difficult emotions are a problem. Your negativity is bringing down the vibe.
So what do people do? They smile. They grin and bear it. They push it aside.
And then they wonder why they feel bitter, resentful, and insinere inside these supposedly enlightened spaces.
The Tony Robbins Metaphor I Can’t Shake
Years ago, I heard Tony Robbins describe positive thinking like this: it’s like going into your garden and shouting, “There are no weeds! There are no weeds! There are no weeds!”
You can shout all you want. The weeds don’t disappear. In fact, while you’re busy denying them, they’re spreading their roots deeper, choking out everything else you’re trying to grow.
That’s what toxic positivity does. It doesn’t heal the underlying pain; it just builds a wall around it. And walls get heavy.
In spiritual contexts, this manifests as what I call “false reassurance.” Someone has a difficult experience-a relationship ends, a health scare, financial stress, genuine despair-and instead of sitting with that reality, the spiritual community rushes in to reframe it as a blessing. “It’s clearing space for something better,” or “Your soul needed this growth,” or “This is happening for you, not to you.”
Maybe. Or maybe sometimes things just hurt, and the appropriate response is to feel that hurt, not spiritualise it away.
The Real Problem: Repressed, Not Negative
Here’s what I’ve come to believe, and I’ll be blunt about it because it matters:
There’s no such thing as a negative emotion. There’s only real emotions and repressed emotions.
Let me say that again. Feel free to quote me if it lands: There’s no such thing as a negative emotion. There’s only real emotions and repressed emotions.
Anger isn’t negative. Grief isn’t negative. Fear, frustration, sadness-these aren’t flaws in your spiritual evolution. They’re real, and they’re real for a reason. They’re information. They’re feedback from your body and psyche about what needs attention.
But spiritual communities-and I’m painting with a broad brush here, but you’ll know if this applies to yours-have created a hierarchy of emotions. The “good” ones (love, peace, joy, compassion) are encouraged. The “bad” ones (anger, resentment, grief, rage) are discouraged, reframed, or spiritualised into something more palatable.
So what happens? People don’t stop feeling the “bad” emotions. They just stop expressing them. They repress them. And a repressed emotion doesn’t disappear-it festers.
I believe there’s something incredibly toxic about brushing these emotions under the carpet.
The Cost of the Smile
Think about what happens in a spiritual community where only positive emotions are welcome.
The bitchiness. The backstabbing. The insincerity that hums beneath the surface like a low-frequency hum you can almost feel but can’t quite name.
I went to a residential training at a spiritualist community once-a week-long immersion where I was genuinely shocked by the amount of cattiness, the passive-aggressive comments, the way people smiled at each other while clearly resenting one another. It was all so polite. So spiritual. So completely inauthentic.
Why? Because anger, frustration, and honest conflict weren’t permitted. So instead of people saying “I’m annoyed with you, and here’s why,” they said nothing. They smiled. They added another brick to the wall.
And the wall got thicker and thicker until what had once been a community built on connection became a space where everyone was performing their version of spiritual enlightenment while feeling profoundly alone.
When you’re not allowed to feel angry, you can’t have real conversations. When you’re not allowed to grieve, you can’t genuinely process loss. When you’re not allowed to be frustrated, you can’t advocate for your own needs.
What you get instead is resentment. Bitterness. A deep, quiet rage that people don’t even recognize as rage because it’s been repackaged so many times.
The Permission You Need: Feel It All
Here’s what I want to tell you, and I mean this gently but firmly:
Your anger is not a sign that your spiritual practice isn’t working. Your grief doesn’t mean you’ve failed at enlightenment. Your frustration doesn’t mean you’re not spiritually mature.
These emotions are your healing.
I’m not suggesting you go around being angry all the time, or that you use your emotions as an excuse to hurt people. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that when you feel something-truly feel it-that’s the moment real transformation becomes possible.
Anger can be fuel. It can tell you where your boundaries are being violated. It can motivate you to make changes you’ve been avoiding. It can crack open the places where you’ve been settling for less than you deserve.
Grief is how you honour what you’ve lost. It’s how you make space for something new. It’s sacred, even when it hurts.
Fear is your wisdom-it’s keeping you safe from things that genuinely could harm you.
These emotions aren’t obstacles to your spiritual journey. They are your spiritual journey.
The Question at the Heart of This
So here’s what I want you to ask yourself: In the spiritual community or practice you’re part of, are difficult emotions welcomed or discouraged?
Not in the abstract-in practice. What actually happens when someone expresses anger in your group? What’s the response when someone says they’re struggling and not finding peace?
Do they get heard and held, or do they get “reframed”?
And more personally: Where are you repressing emotions in the name of spirituality?
Where are you smiling when you want to scream? Where are you staying silent when you want to speak? Where are you accepting something that doesn’t sit right with you because you’re worried about being seen as “negative” or “not spiritual enough”?
That’s where the real work is.
The Path Forward
Genuine spirituality-the kind that actually transforms people-doesn’t fear your full emotional spectrum. It meets you there. It lets you be angry and still welcome. Grieving and still valued. Frustrated and still part of the community.
The spiritual practices and communities worth your time are the ones that understand this: allowing emotions doesn’t make you less spiritual. It makes you more human. And being fully human is the whole point.
So here’s my gentle challenge: the next time you feel an emotion that spiritual culture would label as “negative,” don’t rush to reframe it. Don’t spiritualise it away. Don’t smile and bear it.
Feel it. Let it be real. Listen to what it’s trying to tell you.
That’s where the weeds come out. That’s where the actual healing happens.
