Senior Joy Tan, president of the Psychology Club, walks into the classroom.

A friend compliments her:“I love how you’re always being positive.”

She smiles: but inside, her thoughts grow complicated.

Tan said she often feels an expectation to stay joyful.

“I’ve always felt that pressure, especially because my name is Joy, so people expect me to be happy all the time,” Tan said. “But also now as the president of the Psychology Club, there’s this unspoken idea that if you care about your mental health, you’re supposed to be calm, positive and put together all the time.”

Tan is one of many students who feel pressure to appear happy or positive, and this pressure puts stress on these students.

Positive thinking can help people navigate life. Daniel Goleman, author of “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence” claimed that positive thinking heightens prefrontal activity in the brain, resulting in enhanced mental functions such as creative thinking, cognitive flexibility and even faster processing. And Tan said sometimes trying to view things in a positive way can actually help your mood.

“Positive thinking is a very transformative way to change how you perceive the world,” Tan said. “If you always perceive things negatively, it is not good for your own mental health and also the people around you. For example, if you have a very stressful test coming up, you don’t want to think that you’re going to fail it. You want to think that you’re going to do your best on it.”

However, the pressure to put up a happy front can sometimes force people to hide their true feelings, which may lead to toxic positivity: the excessive and unrealistic belief people should maintain a positive attitude, no matter the circumstances.

Tan said this behavior is called surface acting.

“We talk about the expectation to show certain emotions on the outside, even when you feel something different on the inside,” Tan said. “I’ve caught myself doing that. I’ve seen my friends also do that. It’s … basically putting on a smile even when you’re extremely exhausted and stressed.”

Anna Lembke, a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, said toxic positivity can harm emotional growth.

“I work with patients whose major problem is denial and avoidant coping, where they refuse to acknowledge their painful emotions and the very real problems in their lives,” Lembke said. “Instead, they pretend everything is fine, when it’s obviously not.”

Lembke said masking painful emotions can even be dangerous.

“When we ignore our psychological suffering, it usually gets worse and leaks out in unconscious ways,” Lembke said. “When we spend too much time ruminating on negative thoughts, we fail to see the good things in our lives.”

Positive thinking isn’t putting on a happy face. It’s finding joy in spite of problems. Tan said doing simple things can have a major impact on her mood and allow her to practice healthier positive thinking.

“I think just encouraging each other and also taking time to do what we want (is important),” Tan said.. “It could be taking 10 more minutes in the morning to do your makeup or buying that blind box. These little things can bring so much joy into our lives.

According to Tan, as interest in positivity has grown, students are also considering the question about how they can process their emotions in a healthy way.

“Last year, second semester, right before final season, we had a workshop dedicated to stress relieving and also positive thinking,” Tan said.

”:So that was just where everyone came in for a group therapy session where we all shared things about what was making us stressed, what we are doing about that stress and also what we hope to do. And just hearing what everyone had to say was really insightful, and it really broadened my mind on how many different ways there was to relieve stress and to be more positive in life.”

Psychology teacher Melinda Mattes said processing emotion requires space, opportunity and community.

“Cognitive psychology argues that our perception can influence our response in all ways: cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally,” Mattes said. “So even though staying positive at all times is neither possible nor desirable — and probably a bit delusional — taking time to gain perspective that may allow you to perceive a situation from a more productive vantage point is valuable. And it can be really helpful to have trusted people in your life who can see your situation from a different angle.”

Lembke agrees and said the key to a healthy perspective lies in positive thinking.

“It’s important to stay hopeful for a better future and grateful for the things that are going well, while also acknowledging our problems and doing what we can to solve them. So it’s a balance,” Lembke said.

Tan said students should focus less on competition and more on self-compassion, especially in Palo Alto.

“We’re often put in competition with each other, and that comes with a lot of stress,” Tan said. “So it’s important to not compare yourself to others, but to compare yourself to yourself because self-growth is incredibly important. But at the same time, it’s important that you’re being kind to yourself because life’s so short.”