The Illusion of 'Positive People': When Strength Is Really Avoidance

For years, I admired certain people in my life because they seemed so strong. They always looked on the bright side, never seemed fazed, and appeared to float through life untouched by hardship.

I wanted to be like them—resilient, upbeat, and endlessly forward-looking.

But after time in therapy and some deep reflection, I see things differently. What I once thought was “mental strength” wasn’t strength at all. It was avoidance.

The Myth of Positivity

At first glance, dismissive-avoidant people can look like they’ve mastered life. They never wallow. They never dwell. They move on—fast. They book the next holiday, find a new relationship, chase the next shiny milestone, and post it online: new marriage, new baby, picture-perfect bliss.

To someone like me—an over-thinker, a self-blamer, someone who reflects too much—that used to look like winning. But now I see the pattern: it’s not positivity. It’s dismissal. They’re not confronting their wounds, not facing accountability, not sitting with discomfort.

The Avoidance Trap

Dismissive-avoidant individuals avoid pain by running from it. They push it down, skip the reflection, and redirect attention elsewhere. If confronted, they’ll gaslight, minimise, or simply detach.

Meanwhile, people on the opposite end of the spectrum—like me—go to therapy, cry, heal, and sit with the hard truths. We process. They bypass. On the surface, they seem to get ahead. In reality, they’re stacking unresolved issues like debt that will one day demand payment.

The Slow Burn

The saddest part is that avoidance doesn’t work forever. While they look untouchable in their 20s and 30s, by middle age the cracks begin to show.

They end up in relationships that lack intimacy. They marry the wrong person and push away the right ones. They numb themselves with distractions, only to feel an ever-growing gnaw of dissatisfaction.

It’s not an explosive breakdown—it’s a slow suffocation. Over time, that numbness becomes the noose. No amount of money, cars, holidays, or curated social media photos can quiet the truth: they never did the inner work.

What You Can Do

Here’s the hardest lesson I’ve learned: you cannot help them. You can’t reflect enough for the both of you. You can’t force them to see what they refuse to see. The only thing you can do is step away, protect your own healing, and trust that life will eventually catch up with them.

Because it will.

For some, the reckoning happens late. They finally land in therapy, weary from years of running. But until then, their apparent “strength” is just emotional numbness in disguise.

The Real Strength

True strength isn’t avoidance. It’s vulnerability. It’s reflection. It’s accountability. It’s the courage to sit with pain instead of running from it.

The people who seem untouchable are not the strongest. Often, the strongest are the ones who do the work, who cry, heal, process, and rise again—this time with wisdom, not denial.

TR