After seeing the how some people feel this pressure to be positive and in response, create this façade of positivity while beneath there are some real emotions that need to come out. Yet the view that anger, sadness and despair are "negative" emotions causes people to swallow them and try to be "positive". I decided to find out what the medical literature says.
So I've done some research on what scientific trials have investigated the effects of positvity and emotions in outcomes of patients. The results were surprising.
The article is at http://ucanlive.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-be-positive-or-not-to-be-cancer.html
but to sumarise:
* True positivity that is in alignment with how you feel is good for your health; it improves survival times. So does ranting, raging and crying.
* Superficial positivity and suppression of emotions is not good for you health; it reduces survival times. So does grin-and-bear-it attitude and a tendency to avoid problems.
hope it helps.