What is state shifting and how is it different from toxic positivity?

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What is state shifting and how is it different from toxic positivity?

State shifting is the ability to consciously choose to be happy for no reason.

Through using a mental technique, you can change your state of mind or mood to a happier one, by self-generating positive emotions. Practicing this over time can shift your baseline mood.

On a technical level, practicing shifting to the state of joy will build new neural pathways and strengthen them, until it is much easier to access the state of joy.

Our brain often runs on autopilot, but you can reprogram that autopilot to be happier, through repetition. This doesn’t eliminate negative feelings that arise due to your real experiences and needs. Instead it will eliminate, over time, negative feelings that are purely habitual—not through trying to eliminate them, but through practicing joyful states so much that it changes the emotional habits of your brain itself.

This is not toxic positivity

Toxic positivity means avoiding or denying negative emotions or experiences by focusing only on the positive. The dangers of doing this include self-delusion, being out of touch with our genuine feelings, living a shallow existence, avoiding grief, and getting on everyone’s nerves. I am not advocating that.

Habitual feelings vs spontaneous feelings

Our brain largely operates on auto-pilot. It repetitively thinks the same thoughts, and feels the same feelings based on those thoughts. This is sort of our background mood, or baseline emotional state.

Then, throughout our day, specific feelings arise spontaneously that have to do with what is happening in our environment, or specific things we are thinking about.

We want to keep those spontaneous emotions, as they are useful and help us navigate our needs and tend to our wellbeing.

But the background thoughts and feelings can often be stuck in a negative gear for no real reason except habit. That’s what state shifting can change.

So to review (this is important!):

Habitual feelings with no clear cause – that is what we are working to change here
Circumstantial feelings caused by events – we do NOT want to try to change these, because they are messages about our needs. To change these feelings, the solution is to listen to what they are telling you, and most importantly meet your needs. (Read about NVC for more on feelings as messages about needs).

State shifting is practicing being happy for no reason, until it becomes a habit.

State shifting is repeatedly interrupting a habitual negative mood and practicing a positive mood, for no reason at all. It is the practice of self-generating positives states. (And by “positive”, I don’t mean fake positivity, I mean genuinely feeling happy to be alive, for no particular reason.)

State shifting rejects the idea that we can only feel happy in response to external stimulus. We actually have the power to change our state to one of happiness through internal stimulus. And the more we do it, the easier it becomes—until it becomes automatic.

Once you realize this is a possibility, it becomes pretty darn attractive. We are so conditioned to think we have to have external things to be happy, that it often never occurs to us that it’s not actually true.

There are many ways to actually shift your state. The way I did it was to bring to mind memories that made me feel joy, and then once I was feeling it, drop the memory and focus on the feeling itself. (I describe it in more depth here.) Over time, I became able to feel joy purely by deciding to.

Remind yourself to practice in a non-demanding way.

I recommend a sticky note by your computer or on your phone that just says, “Be happy anyway?”

It’s worded as a question on purpose – think of it as an invitation, not a task. This takes any pressure off of it.

If you are not able to shift in any given moment, don’t force it. When you can shift, do it. When you can’t or you have some internal resistance to it, don’t worry about it. It will still work gradually over time. (If you feel a lot of internal resistance, I address that more here.)

Caveat: Do not use state shifting to avoid pain or trauma.

Using state-shifting the wrong way, IMHO, is to try to shift out of painful or overwhelming spontaneous feelings, simply because they are painful or overwhelming and you don’t want to experience them. That is almost guaranteed to just lead to emotional suppression or compartmentalization.

State-shifting is not a trauma healing technique. You should not use it to deal with triggers. It isn’t meant for that. In fact, what I recommend for processing trauma is turning toward the pain, not away from it.

State shifting has made me a much happier person.

After a few solid months of practicing “being happy for no reason”, my internal baseline really did shift.

It didn’t heal my trauma, or fix my insecure attachment style, or anything else it wasn’t designed to do. But it did significantly help with my depression (along with a lot of other work, like befriending the inner critic and doing trauma healing work).

It also didn’t destroy my motivation. Hating your life is not good motivational fuel to begin with, so don’t worry about losing it. Passion, meaning, and enjoying being alive are much better motivators.

It also gave me a sense of power over my mood. I don’t feel at the mercy of habitual negativity anymore. I know I can feel better by my own choices, and that is very empowering.

For more on these topics, I recommend two of my other articles:

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