Why Bright-Siding Brings Out My Dark Side
Personal Perspective: There is no bright side to grief so don't even try.
Posted June 27, 2025 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
I understand—truly—that people say these things with the best of intentions. But I don’t respond well to bright siding.
Bright-siding is when people respond to your grief or sadness or despair or anxiety with cheery exhortations to look at the bright side, to count your blessings. People who list all that you have going for you. People who start sentences with “Well, at least…” In my opinion, those three words never lead to anything helpful.
Bright-siding falls under the category of toxic positivity and it comes in many flavors. Once, when I was feeling very low, I posted on my private Facebook page that I don’t know what to do with my life since Tom died.
“Anything you want!” a friend chirruped.
I don’t remember what I said in response, but apparently it was not kind, the person pointed out later. I’m embarrassed and apologized, but I’m not surprised. To be bright-sided in one’s darkest hours is unbearable.
Bright-siding overlooks complexities
Bright-siding is facile—it doesn’t take into account the nuances and complications of life. It simplifies a problem or emotion . It comforts the person offering the cheery assessment without acknowledging the other’s pain.
Anything I want? That’s so enormous, it’s paralyzing. And it’s unrealistic—we all have constraints of some sort: financial, practical, even emotional. In this case, “anything I want” ignored my lament: that I don’t know what I want. It also didn't take into account that after being part of a couple for 35 years, I now must proceed alone. What I want is to have Tom back. Anything I want alone sounds exhaustingly difficult.
“At least you had that long relationship; I never did,” said someone else just days after Tom died. As sorry as I am that she missed out, this bright side just highlighted for me the unique value of what I’ve lost. I hope someday to feel the preciousness of having the relationship more than the pain of losing it, but that’s not today and it certainly wasn’t right after it happened.
You don't know grief until you have grieved
The trouble is, with loss, people don’t know what they don’t know. Grief expert David Kessler had been counseling people in grief for many years before his younger son died. When that happened, he often says, he wanted to go back to everyone he had ever counseled and apologize for everything he didn’t understand.
I’m not a cheery person. I’ll own that. I’m kind of a Debbie Downer and always have been, wrestling with depression for most of my life. This is exhausting and frustrating. When I step away for the long view, I can see the good in my life. But I perpetually teeter on the edge of despair. It doesn’t take lot to throw me—and losing Tom is a lot.
Yeah, I’m considerably better than I was when it happened five years ago. So yay that. That’s the bright side.
But I get to say that; you don’t.
The loss has thrown my life off its tracks in ways you probably can’t even imagine—I know I would not have been able to. If you haven’t suffered a profound loss, you can offer someone in grief nothing but sympathy. Your advice is, frankly, meaningless. In fact, while general grief support groups are helpful, most helpful to me have been support groups specifically for people who have lost a spouse. Their partner in life. Their support. Their heart. I have lost a brother, both parents, and numerous friends. For me, nothing has come close in terms of pain and life disruption.
Gratitude works except when it doesn't
It’s true that research finds all kinds of emotional benefits to gratitude . But sometimes the inherent unfairness of life comes through a lot more strongly than its blessings. I have tried keeping a gratitude list (although at my therapist’s suggestion—she knows me well—it was titled my “Things that don’t suck” list) but it didn’t feel sincere. I frequently remind myself how grateful I am for my friends; my home; my dogs; for the fact that I am unlikely to be snatched off the street and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador.
Sometimes thinking about these things brings me peace. When I'm in the dumps, I just want to fight with them.
Innocent people are getting snatched off the street, which is deeply distressing. Also, maintaining a house and large property alone is wearing me out; I think (obsessively) about moving, but the variables in that decision have me paralyzed. (See: Don’t know what to do with my life.) Also, the dogs are costly, time consuming, demanding, and one is intractably reactive, which is stressful .
So when you say “At least you have…” it just stirs up all these counterarguments for me. And none of these blessings—or even all of them put together—compensates for losing Tom.
I can’t help who I am. I try to keep my gloominess to myself most of the time, and it’s embarrassing when it spills out. But when it does, I’m not looking for someone to cheer me up. If you bright side me, instead of just being sad, I’ll be sad and annoyed.
And I’ve learned through listening to other grievers that I’m not alone in this feeling. Bright siding is rarely a good approach to helping someone in pain.
Well, at least I know no feeling is forever. But I can say that to me. You can’t.
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Sophia Dembling is a Dallas-based writer and the author of Introverts in Love: The Quiet Way to Happily Ever After.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.