Am I too negative in my writing? Or just too honest?
Some people don't like when I go negative... but is that their problem, or mine?
Last week, I shared my newsletter with a new friend who we’ll call James. (Mostly because that’s his name.)
James is probably genius-level smart. He understands a lot about human behavior, and he’s helped tons of other people understand themselves better — especially veterans like me.
I met James just a few days before my newsletter went out. I was having a really hard time, as you might recall if you read last week’s letter. I was spiraling really badly, and I needed someone to talk to. So I messaged my buddy Jimmy, and Jimmy got me in touch with James.
(I swear they’re not related, but that would be kind of cool but also kind of messed up to name your two boys James and Jimmy… anyway…)
James and I talked for almost two hours, and he helped me gain a lot of clarity, and release a lot of built-up emotion.
I got off the phone with James and I knew I had the tools and perspective I need to finally start doing things differently.
And that new perspective has stayed with me, by the way… because this last week, I have noticed myself thinking about all my past problems differently than I did before… so, thanks, James. You really helped me out of a tight spot, and I respect and appreciate the time and energy you put into helping me.
That whole weekend before I sent out last week’s letter, I felt like James was a God send.
The things we talked about helped me so much, it wound up shaping the theme and the direction of the whole newsletter, Why can't 'Lubbock Mike' be more like 'Road Trip Mike?'
James’s words to me helped me see a bigger picture and identify some of the major areas where I was, simply put, wrong in my approach to the problems I was dealing with.
I had so many breakthroughs as a result of our conversation, I wanted James to know how much he’d helped me. So I sent him a text:
“Hey James I wanna share my newsletter with you. It’s all about what we talked about.”
He wrote back:
“The answer… to being more like the person you know you can be… decide that is who you want to be every day no matter how hard it is.
And decide you won’t let the past or labels define you anymore.”
Like, okay, thank you… but I thought I’d made it clear in my newsletter that’s what I’m already working on?
He continued:
“The power of words is real and those words are strewn with negativity and being down.”
Um… yeah… because the whole newsletter was about my struggles with depression and anxiety, and not knowing how to handle it all when I’m at home… and I don’t know but it seems to me if I’m describing a depressing situation, then the words around it are going to need to be depressing, too.
“Try writing about the victories…”
Did you miss the part where I talked about all the exciting things I did on my road trip? About driving up Pikes Peak? About talking to a Vietnam vet in a roadside cafe? About enjoying the amazing view as I drove through beautiful mountains, plains, and valleys?
Or does the fact that I came home and got depressed discredit all the victories somehow?
Or did he think that I was discrediting the victories? Because that line of reasoning could make sense; after all I did focus pretty extensively on how hard it is to be home and feel so afraid to step outside… and perhaps those negative feelings eclipsed the excitement and euphoria of being on the road? If so I can kind of understand where James is coming from, but I still think there’s so much that he’s missing…
He closed his message to me with this:
“Try writing nothing but positivity into the world and escape the echo chamber of negative thoughts and complacency.”
Not gonna lie; his response stung.
I understand, from his perspective, why he would say things like that.
But I think he’s wrong, and here’s why:
When I moved to Lubbock in 2023… I tried speaking only positivity into the world.
I told my family everything was going to be great! I told people at church that I was loving my Lubbock life. I told Uber drivers Lubbock is the friendliest, happiest place I’ve ever been.
I prayed every day. (I still pray every day, just so you know! And it does make a tremendous difference…)
I took Tony Robbin’s Personal Power program — three times.
I set goals. I learned to make a budget. I figured out how to get around town (for the rare occasions that I do want to go do something…)
When I found AWAI, and I started learning about copywriting, and I started to make friends in their Facebook group… oh, brother! I was over the moon.
I was 100% focused on the positive. I was going to church, volunteering at the Buddy Holly Hall, meeting people in my apartment complex (okay, one person and it was the girl that worked in the leasing office, but she was cute and fun to talk to and it was outside my comfort zone, but I still did it!)
I was writing again, which I didn’t think I’d ever do, after the war.
I was setting one year goals, six month goals, ninety day goals, thirty day goals.
I was excited. I was engaged. I was enthusiastic.
I knew the negativity I had brought with me when I moved. I knew it was all still there, watching… waiting for me to get comfortable, to let down my guard, to make room in my day for all the bad things I was trying to get away from.
I was running. Trying with all my might to get out from under it all. Hoping that if I could reclaim my independence, and show God that I’ll do anything He asks me to do…
That maybe, that would be enough to take away all the negativity, and replace it with something better… something new…
But here’s the thing. One of the things James told me on our phone call — that I kind of agree with — is that “words are spells,” meaning the words we speak create the attitudes, ideas, and beliefs that shape us.
Put another way, if I go around and tell everybody I’m a disabled veteran with PTSD, then according to James, me saying that out loud is going to make it come true… or, at least, reinforce the ideas in my mind around, “This is what it means when I tell people I’m disabled, so now that they all know this about me now I need to make sure I measure up to their expectations of what a disabled person looks, thinks, and acts like.”
At least that’s my interpretation. Maybe James sees it differently. I’d like to know, actually, what he does mean when he says things like “words are spells” and “speak only positivity into the world,” but the truth is I’m too upset, a week later, to reach out and ask him.
I know I’m taking what he said personally, and I’m probably taking it out of context — but I’m so hurt by his response I don’t know how to turn these hurt feelings down.
I know I’m the problem in this scenario.
Well… at least, I’m “a” problem… or part of the problem.
Unlike times in the past, where I’ve had disagreements with friends, and thought it was all just their fault… I know I’m making this harder than it should be. I know I’m overreacting to his comments… but I can’t stop myself.
The so-called “negative” things that I talk about, that James thinks I shouldn’t speak into existence? No disrespect, but those things are already there, in my life. The problems I’m facing, and the way those problems make me feel… that stuff already exists.
I’m not “speaking it into the world” by putting it in my newsletter, or by talking about it on a phone call.
It’s already there. It has been, all along, waiting for the time that I’m ready to deal with it.
When I moved to Lubbock, two and a half years ago, I didn’t just move to “change my life…”
I moved to CHANGE MY LIFE!!!
And I’ve been at it, every day, for two and a half years. (Plus the two years or so leading up to the date I moved out of Mom and Dad’s… the time I spent preparing and planning for my move…)
James doesn’t know I spent 14 years of my life thoroughly withdrawn and isolated from society. Or if he does, he just doesn’t get what that does to a person… and I can’t hold that against him… if you haven’t been through something like that yourself, you don’t know what it does to a person’s self-esteem, to their worldview, to their ability to move through society and interact with the people around them…
I’m not excusing my negativity, by the way.
If anything, I’m including it in my story — which is something I think not enough people do effectively.
I told James (I texted him back a couple days ago, trying to get a conversation going but IDK if I did it right, or maybe we both got everything we needed out of that one conversation, I don’t know…)
I told him that I’m telling my story… and to tell my story correctly, I have to share the “negative” aspects. If I don’t, I’m not telling you the whole story.
In fact, I’m leaving out some really important things if I only speak positivity!
This world we live in is not a world of “exclusive positivity.”
Bad things happen in mortality. Sometimes, really bad things… and they don’t get better by not acknowledging them.
Everything I’ve shared in my newsletter since Day One, that could be construed as negative, or depressing, or discouraging, or me sounding like I don’t know what the heck I’m even talking about and who am I to think I can offer the slightest ray of hope to anybody?
All that kind of thing is necessary to the telling of my story.
I need you to know that I’ve suffered — that I’m still suffering — so that you and I both can know that good people suffer, and struggle, and sometimes, we fail… even when we’re doing good things… even when we’re trying to build good habits, and create a better lifestyle…
Nobody wakes up one morning, decides to randomly “speak positive,” and gets to automatically bypass all the problems at their own feet, that they’ve been running from for thirty-plus years, that are just waiting for the day the person stops running, so that the problems can finally be addressed.
You can’t run from your problems by moving halfway across the country (I really thought if anyone could do it, though, it would be me!)
And you can’t run from your problems by deciding you’re just not going to talk about anything “negative” ever again.
This world we live in is built on duality. Good and evil. Life and death. Right and wrong. Joy and sorrow. Positive and negative.
You don’t get one without the other.
You can’t hide from the negative just because you don’t like the way it makes you feel.
Granted, you can’t hide from the positive either, just because you’re afraid that if you finally do make it, it’ll all just get taken away from you again. But the truth is, it might get taken away. Nine times out of ten, though, that’s outside our control… and the tenth time, I believe it can be corrected, and once you know how to do it, success can be “maintained” to a certain degree…
Sometimes though, we’ll still lose, no matter what we do, because that’s what God, or life, or the Universe, or your angry ex-wife, or whoever, has planned for you. And sometimes that negativity is what you need to go through, in order to become the person God made you to be…
This has been true throughout history, though. Just look at all the Greek tragedies. You think they wanted that life? But look at what that life turned them into.
Meanwhile, the “life” we hold up nowadays as the American Dream doesn’t even exist in the real world.
There is no “good life” without the bad. There is no “easy living” until after you’ve slaved your life away. There is no magic pill that will take all your pain away and make every moment of every day happy, and comfortable, and easy, and free.
Every life is filled with ups and downs, with good and bad, with positive and negative.
You can’t escape the negative by refusing to address it. You have to face it. You have to incorporate it into your lifestyle. You have to allow it to be part of who you are in order to be complete.
Sometimes, we can flip the script on our own life.
Sometimes, maybe I focus too heavily on the negative — and maybe sometimes I could benefit from introducing more positive into my story.
And perhaps I could learn to be more solution-oriented than I have been before.
But you are never going to hear me say that you shouldn’t talk about your problems, or that it’s wrong or hurtful or dangerous to “introduce” negativity into the world.
Sir, that negativity has been here since before Eve took the first bite of that apple.
Negativity exists in the world. We didn’t bring it with us. It was already here, before we were born. It is the nature of our universe.
I wanted to fire back a nasty response to James, when he told me to only write positivity. Not because I don’t like James, or because I’m mad at him, or I think he doesn’t understand me… but because the advice to only focus on the positive is, in my opinion, some of the worst advice you can give a person who’s really struggling with mental health.
It negates the fact that there are forces in this world outside of our control… and that somebody like me might actually be struggling with things… with feelings, thoughts, or attitudes, that are bigger than our ability to just “wish them away by thinking happy thoughts.”
I don’t think that’s what James thinks he’s saying, when he tells people to be positive… but that’s the way it comes across when he says it to me.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m being difficult. Maybe I’m purposely misunderstanding what he wanted to say. I don’t know. I’d like to find out. I’d like to get on another call with him, and talk through some of this in greater depth, and see if we can come to a mutual understanding, or if our ideas and values are just too different and the best thing we can do for each other is to just cheer each other on from a distance…
I honestly don’t know. (I can use the excuse of 14 years of complete and total withdrawal and isolation, if it really comes down to it…) 😅
I do believe that James is a deep thinker. And I want to believe he has a good reason for saying what he did, and that his words were intended to help! And I’d like to believe that I simply misunderstood what he was saying.
(I will say, though, even if I’ve misinterpreted his message… it did spark one heck of a dialogue for today’s newsletter… so that’s pretty cool that it still got me to think deeply… even if it still makes me upset for reasons I don’t fully comprehend…)
I really liked the first conversation me and James had on the telephone. I came away from that, feeling like he was knowledgable, likable, trustworthy… and like he truly cared about my well-being.
And his text message, after I shared last week’s letter with him, really made me question everything. It made me put my walls up, and not want to let him know what I’m thinking, or feeling, anymore. It made me question his motives and his sincerity.
That’s on me, though. That’s the way I reacted to his words. It’s not fair for me to say that’s the way he intended those words to affect me. I’m guessing he probably didn’t mean it to hit me that way. But it did.
It made me angry and defensive. It made me wanna go off on James and be like, “Who do you even think you are?”
But here’s the cool part about it all: a year ago (hell, a month ago) if someone made me respond that way, I would’ve been like, “See ya wouldn’t wanna be ya.” But today, I’m curious as to why I reacted the way I did. I’m wondering if James meant me to feel that way… or if I misunderstood some part of it.
I’m not dying to reach out to him and find out… I mean, I’d like to know… I’d like to understand this all on a deeper level… I’d like to grow into a man who can disagree with somebody without feeling the need to avoid them or call them names or just downright cut them out of my life completely…
I’d like to start doing better… even though I don’t know how.
And maybe that’s not “only speaking positive.” But it is more than only being negative, and trying to run away from every problem.
And maybe that’s positive enough, for where I am in my journey…
I think it is. And I’ll bet James will think so, too. If I can work up the nerve to call him back and talk it all over.
The Criticism Toolkit: Transforming Negative Feedback into Personal Growth
When someone criticizes our vulnerable self-expression, it can feel like a punch to the gut. Whether it's criticism about our writing, our recovery journey, or our perspective, the sting can make us defensive, hurt, and sometimes even cause us to close off. This toolkit offers practical techniques for handling criticism - especially when it touches on the vulnerable parts of our stories.
Understanding Your Initial Reaction
The Four Common Responses to Criticism:
Defensive Reaction - Getting upset, feeling misunderstood, wanting to argue back
Withdrawal - Pulling away, putting up walls, deciding not to share anymore
Self-Doubt - Questioning your experience, wondering if you're "too negative"
Dismissal - Completely rejecting the feedback without consideration
I've experienced all of these. When James suggested I was being too negative, my first instinct was to get defensive. I put up walls. I questioned whether I should be sharing my struggles at all.
Pro Tip: Notice your physical response when receiving criticism. Are you tensing up? Is your heart racing? These physical cues can help you identify when you're having a strong emotional reaction that might cloud your judgment.
Separating Value from Delivery
When receiving criticism, try this three-step process:
1. Acknowledge the Emotion
Give yourself permission to feel hurt, angry, or misunderstood. These are normal human reactions and they don't need to be suppressed.
"I feel defensive when someone suggests I'm being too negative, especially when I'm trying to be authentic about my struggles."
2. Extract Potential Value
Ask yourself: "Is there anything useful in this feedback, even if I don't like how it was delivered?"
For example, with James's feedback:
Maybe there's value in considering the balance of struggle and victory in my storytelling
Perhaps the feedback highlights how different people respond to expressions of struggle
3. Consider the Source
Not all criticism is created equal. Consider:
Does this person understand my context?
Do they have expertise in this area?
What might be motivating their feedback?
The Balancing Act: Authenticity vs. Positivity
When sharing difficult stories, there's always tension between honest expression and hope-filled narrative. Here's how I navigate it:
The Truth Spectrum:
Raw Truth: Unfiltered struggles, pain, and challenges
Contextual Truth: Struggles placed within the larger journey
Aspirational Truth: Where I'm headed despite current challenges
All three can coexist in authentic storytelling. The key is conscious choice about which aspect to emphasize in different contexts.
When to Accept a Person’s Criticism (And When Not To)
Consider Listening to Feedback When:
It resonates on multiple levels
It aligns with your core values
It might help you interact better with other people
You've reflected and recognized truth in it
Consider Setting Aside Feedback When:
It asks you to deny your authentic experience
It comes from someone who doesn't understand your context
It would require you to present a false version of your journey
It feels like it's more about the critic's discomfort than your growth
Practical Techniques for Processing Criticism
The 24-Hour Rule: Wait a full day before responding to critical feedback
The Third-Person Perspective: Ask "What would I tell a friend who received this criticism?"
The Bridge Question: Ask "What's the principle behind this criticism that might be valuable?"
The Gratitude Response: Find one thing to genuinely thank the critic for, even if you disagree
The Curiosity Approach: Ask clarifying questions instead of making assumptions
Transforming Criticism into Growth
The most powerful response to criticism isn't rejection or blind acceptance - it's transformation.
When I reflected on James's feedback about positivity, I realized:
I don't want to silence my struggles
But I also don't want to lose sight of where I'm headed
My fullest truth includes both the darkness and the light
This doesn't mean changing your story to please others. It means taking ownership of how you tell it.
Final Thought
There's profound wisdom in understanding that our stories need both shadow and light to be complete. The goal isn't to eliminate negativity from our narratives, but to ensure that our struggles serve our growth rather than defining our identities.
Your challenges are real — denying them would be dishonest. But how you frame them, how you contextualize them within your larger journey, and how you connect them to hope — that's where the power lies. Don’t allow somebody else’s criticism to overshadow your journey, or your growth.
Self-Reflection Worksheet: Finding Your Authentic Voice
This worksheet is designed to help you explore your own relationship with sharing difficult stories, receiving criticism, and finding the balance between authenticity and hope.
We all have stories to share - this worksheet is meant to help you share yours in a way that feels vulnerable, yet empowering.
If you feel yourself going “too dark,” or not going dark enough… try setting it aside for a bit and come back to it later. Sometimes, those mental breaks can make it easier to dig deep when we come back to the story.
Remember: This worksheet is for your personal reflection. You don't need to share your answers with anyone unless you choose to.
Part 1: Assessing Your Storytelling Approach
Take some time to reflect on these questions. Write your answers in as much detail as feels right to you.
What aspects of your story do you find hardest to share with others? Your answer:
When you've shared difficult experiences in the past, what responses have been most helpful? What responses have been most hurtful? Your answer:
Think about a time when someone suggested you were being "too negative." How did that make you feel, and what was your initial reaction? Your answer:
When you tell your story, what aspects do you tend to emphasize most?
The challenges and struggles
The moments of victory
The lessons learned
The ongoing journey
Something else: _____________
Why do you think you focus on these elements? Your answer:
Part 2: Exploring Your Truth
When you think about being "positive" in your storytelling, what feelings or resistance comes up? Your answer:
What do you believe is lost if you only focus on positive aspects of your journey? Your answer:
What do you believe is lost if you only focus on the negative or difficult aspects of your journey? Your answer:
What would a balanced approach to telling your story look like for you? What elements would you include? Your answer:
Part 3: Creating Your Storytelling Compass
Based on your reflections, complete this action plan:
My Core Purpose for Sharing My Story:
(Examples: To help others feel less alone, to process my own experiences, to advocate for change)
The Elements My Story Needs to Include to Be Authentic:
How I Want People to Feel After Hearing/Reading My Story:
My Personal Boundaries for Sharing:
(What aspects of your story are you comfortable sharing? What remains private?)
How I'll Respond to Criticism That Doesn't Serve Me:
Final Reflection
The most powerful stories are those that contain the full spectrum of human experience - the darkness and the light, the struggle and the victory, the doubt and the hope. Your story matters precisely because it contains these complexities.
When you share authentically while respecting your own boundaries, you create space for others to do the same. Your voice - with all its nuances - is necessary in a world that often wants simple narratives.
What's one commitment you can make to yourself about how you'll approach telling your story moving forward?
This newsletter is meant to inspire hope as I share my own, unique journey toward healing.
Your story will look different from mine, and that's as it should be. Even though we're all on the same rock, each one of us has a unique path to follow.
I’m not a medical professional. The stories, insights, and advice I share are just that - stories, insights, and advice. They're not a substitute for professional help.
If you're struggling, please consult a qualified healthcare professional, or call the National Crisis Line at 988.
Please do not ignore your mental health — your life is too valuable.
Hi Michael
Hopefully you can get to the point where you're using the negativity as a point of reference for where you one were to illustrate the difference of where you will be.
I was so broken I created sexual victims. 8 now use it as a way to help others see the party they're heading down.
You'll get there.