Toxic Positivity Is Very Real, and Very Annoying

Sometimes the worst thing you can say to a person who’s feeling bad is: “Cheer up!”

Chip Hooley learned this the hard way. At the beginning of the pandemic, his daughter, Hilary, called him in a panic. She and her husband had recently purchased an apartment in Brooklyn. Now, she was worried that real-estate prices in New York were falling and her friends were leaving the city.