Dealing with Toxic People

[Magnolia44]

Dealing with toxic people


Toxic people. If you are experiencing this in your life, let me share with you what I have learned. I think I can help you to feel better.

* Be comforted in the fact that you are not alone. Every person walking the earth knows at least one toxic person in their life. The toxic person is a family member, friend, associate, workmate, boss, etc. Toxic people come in all shapes and forms as they know no boundaries.

* Realize that until you stop allowing a toxic person to hurt you and your life, they will continue to do so.

* The most important thing to remember is that you have the power to stop a toxic person. You do this by controlling your own actions and reactions. As you probably already know, you cannot control the actions of other people. But the good thing is you can control yourself and your life. You have the power to walk away from a toxic person and not allow them into your life anymore. Freedom is a wonderful and liberating experience.

* Realize that toxic people can drain your health, energy, well being and sanity. It helps to move away from toxic people and move towards people who are positive and uplifting. Positive people are a blessing. Rely on your instincts, they never lie. Train yourself to move away from what hurts you and move towards what feels good. This is one of the smartest life skills you can learn, and also one of the best gifts you can ever give to yourself.

* Toxic people are extremely negative, nasty, miserable, whiny, jealous, inconsiderate, financially irresponsible, selfish, and abusive. They can be criminally minded, mentally ill, or just plain evil. Toxic people are also the ones that abuse alcohol or drugs and then hurt other people. The toxic individual exudes the dark side of human nature all of the time. They cause other people pain, craziness, and aggravation. They are not hard to recognize. Just take notice of how you feel when you are around one of these people. It will be easy to determine. You will immediately feel sick and experience physical symptoms like a headache or stomach pain. Or you will just feel like you are going crazy, but don't worry that is the true mark of being with a toxic person. Remember this so that you will be better able to identify a toxic person. That is the first step towards eliminating one from your life.

* Know that when a person is toxic it is because of their own issues. Sometimes these issues can consist of mental illness. Accept that a toxic persons behavior has nothing to do with you. In life, each of us has to take responsibility for our own actions. Toxic people do not do this. They have a habit of turning things around so that you feel bad, you feel guilty, and you feel like you are at fault. Remember that when dealing with a toxic person, they are responsible for their own actions, but often do not. Realize this and you take back your power.

* The best thing you can do when dealing with a toxic person is to walk away and not allow them to hurt you anymore. If you cannot walk away, then mentally walk away. You can do that by being kind to yourself. Allow yourself to disengage, disassociate, and detach. Detachment is a process of not caring.
It is something you do for yourself. It is a mental skill that takes some time to learn at first, but once it is mastered, it can help you to become stronger mentally and physically. Detachment is a necessary skill for preserving your own mental health. Detaching from people and situations that are not good for you is healthy and can help you to feel better. Begin detachment by repeating affirmations. Affirmations are powerful because over time, the mind believes what we program into it. The following are some good examples to help you, but feel free to make your own that speak to you personally.

I do not care about ***.
I will not allow *** to hurt me.
Detaching from*** will help me to be healthy on many levels.
I control my own life and decisions.
I am strong.
I feel good about the decision to detach.
Detachment is healthy and necessary.

* When dealing with toxic people remember that exercise is your best friend. Exercise relives both mental and physical tensions. It helps the body to produce healing chemicals that will repair your body and help you think more clearly. Exercise also encourages the release of endorphins, chemicals that relieve pain and help you to feel good both mentally and physically.

* Most importantly develop supportive relationships with your life partner, friends, family, workmates, and associates. There is strength in numbers. Talking things over with the people in your life who love and care for you, can help you to overcome the negativity of toxic people. Just as animals and children instinctively can sense when someone is good or evil, the people who love you are very good at recognizing when someone is toxic and hurting you. Loved ones are a good defense against toxic people because they can offer you good advice and support for eliminating negative influences in your life.

[Sela]

What great advice!  Thankyou for posting it.

Copying and pasting away here!

Did you write this?

  Sela

[Certain Hope]

Thanks for this, Magnolia.

I'm thinking that, instead of "I do not care about ***", I'll substitute:  "My expressions of care for *** does nothing to change/help him/her."

Then there's that old bugaboo that keeps hangin around in my mind tellin me, "If you were just stronger & wiser, you'd be able to deal with ***". 

I'm struggling now with a friend who has expressed from the beginning that she's terrified of abandonment. I'm seeing that now as a guilt trap upon which she's built regularly and consistently, brick by brick, to blur the boundaries of personhood and create an enmeshment between us. I've tried to remain positive and reassuring (providing encouragement), consistent (emailing daily), and honest (confronting false beliefs as she expresses them). But just as with N, it's never enough, and it's never right. She has this way of invalidating everything I say or do and leaving me with the feeling that I've been talking to a wall for the past year. She's not overtly abusive, except for a recent tirade where she projected all of her own thoughts and feelings about her family of origin onto me.
Mostly, I want to know why I'm struggling so much with this person in the first place. It feels like she's in my head, which is a most unpleasant situation. Honestly, if I believed in voodoo, I'd think she was a practicioner. I guess I have some notion that if I continued to relate to her, I might get to the bottom of why she has such an effect on me. On the other hand, I sense that I could lose myself in the process. I am convinced that she knows that and, whether conscious or subconscious,  that is her goal. At a gut level, I sense that she wants to bring out the very worst in me in order to convince herself that nobody is worthy of her trust and everyone is just as messed up as she is. She's miserable, and so she wants everyone else to be that way, too. When she is on her best behavior, her attempts at offering support and encouragement are flat...toneless, emotionless. The only time she gets really fired up is when she's spreading her darkness to the corners of the earth. Very much like my late aunt. It's like being enmeshed with the grim reaper. Yuck.
Hope

[Hops]

Oh VERY yuck, Hope:

her attempts at offering support and encouragement are flat...toneless, emotionless. The only time she gets really fired up is when she's spreading her darkness

A close friend of mine is more animated by anger than by affection...but she has PTSD.

I'm sorry for your friend but I think you have the right to withdraw. (And I had a friend withdraw from me this year. We are just not able to mesh at all...we weren't enmeshed.) I know that it might hurt her, in other words. But it also could be a gift. A wakeup kind of experience that might trigger her to do more serious work on her issues before she alienates everyone everywhere every time.

Even if she does choose to never change, though, that's not your responsibility. Being your sister's keeper does not mean, Be Your Sister's Enabler. Maybe you could get the strength to severely distance yourself if you looked at it that way?

Hops

[Certain Hope]

Hey Hops,

   Thanks for your comments    I've been doing some reading online re: detachment and boundaries, just trying to work out how all of that can/should be applied to this particular relationship. I'm thinking that much of the strangeness I'm feeling is due to the fact that initially, my role with this person was more that of a counselor. "Somehow" along the way, the element of friendship was introduced into the mix and I'm not so sure I was a willing participant in that metamorphosis. Some of what I've read about the transferrence bya patient to his/her therapist seems to be exactly what's happened in this situation, with my ignorance allowing it all to go too far. I think she's already pretty much alienated everyone who's remotely healthy from her life, leaving only a few family members (all of whom sound extremely dysfunctiona) with whom to relate.
    Right now, I'm trying to come up with appropriate words with which to announce my need to apply the severe distancing you mention. I feel that it's a given she will twist around anything I say to suit her own self-fulfilling prophecy of abandonment, and yet it's important to me to be clear. I'm just struggling with exactly what to set as a boundary, since she relates from such an emotionally immature position. At this point, I'd almost like to say, "Look, if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all (to me)", but then aren't I stifling her voice, just like those in her family of origin did? argh.
Hope

[Hops]

You're welcome, Hope.
I think I resonate to this because my ...friend... shocked me by abruptly ending our friendship by email. I think there wasn't a right or wrong involved, so much as she had a place of need, but overshared (very negative feelings about her new husband) and then couldn't bear to be around me.

Sort of like shooting the person you delivered a message to. But except for it distressing my D, I find I am not missing this friend (D's stepmom).

I don't know if anyone can do these things perfectly, but I think it would have made a great difference to me if, instead of sending an email, if she'd just said something like: "I have shared too much, this marriage is new and I want to stay married, and seeing you reminds me of those other feelings since I told you all that stuff. I hope you'll forgive me but I have to pull back from you."

I really would have understood. I actually had to give up a friend when I was first married as well. She and my hub had a lot of tension, I felt trapped between the two of them and I was pregnant. So one day I just told her, I can't do this, I've got to focus on my family.

Anyhow, enough about that. Sorry for digressing into my own junk. My point was only going to be, whatever you decide you need to tell her, I think it can be the truth without being cruel, and I think what matters is to make it about YOU and YOUR needs when you tell her, and be sure to say what you need to say as briefly and simply as you can and say it in person, and then go.

It will be sad for her, then, but not destructive. (If she goes blooey about it because she lacks the maturity for any other response, that's regrettable...but not your issue.)

I also briefly wondered if you have developed a distate for her since you've been "demoted" from the counselor role. Unconsciously, I mean. It's a very pleasant thing and I think protective. I know I've done that with people. In my case, it used to be major knowitallitis. I'm sure it was obnoxious but when I look back, I believe it was all about fear of being genuine and vulnerable.

For what it's worth...two more cents.
You're a good person, Hope. It's a sign of that that you take the question seriously.

Hops

[Certain Hope]

Hi again, Hops

I've been in that position you describe.... where I've shared too much with a person and subsequently cut her out of my life... shame, I think. Lack of integrity, too. I guess that's what happens when venting turns into dumping and then the venter walks away feeling relieved and refreshed, charged up to dive back into denial and not wanting any reminders of the other side of the coin left behind.

Thanks for being open to share your stuff (definitely NOT junk!)     It's helping me alot to see where I've been. At those times in the past, I've been so busy simply trying to survive, that alot of it got sealed up without being examined. It's in the examination that we learn, I think. Like studying history, so as to avoid repeating mistakes.

I've come to realize a bit more about why this friend I've mentioned has such a strong effect on me. I sat down this morning and began to write, just trying to let thoughts flow freely without the usual concerns re: how it might be received. What I came up with was: Fear. I have been afraid that the darkness within this person who has been my friend would flood my heart and mind. I want to share with you part of what I wrote, for what it's worth:

I've had people in my life who have had that effect on me in the past and now I realize that if I don't face up to it, then they are still controlling me. This is how I've seen it play out:  Jane Doe sympathizes with me. She appears to understand and appreciate my struggles, how hard I've tried to do the right thing. I'm flattered and I think I've found someone who really sees me for who I am. She offers me empathy and comfort, which encourage me to determine to do even better in my daily walk. I gain strength. But Jane doesn't like strong people because they make her look bad and feel worse about herself, so she keeps coming back into the picture to try to tear me down. Under the guise of sympathy and support she keeps trying to plant these dark seeds in my mind, telling me that I'm working too hard, that I'm not being appreciated, that it's so sad the world is in such a mess and ... oh why oh why do people do such awful things ... 
It's always the same, over and over. If I'm up, Jane is down. If Jane can bring me down, then she's up. Jane is a great encourager, once she's got me down in the pit... then she feels better about herself. The trouble is, in order to keep up her game, she's compelled to continually drag me back down again. When I resist that and stop communicating, Jane rages.... "Don't you even care about me???"   uh huh. Sorry, Jane, you care enough about you for the both of us.

I'm not afraid anymore.

Thanks for helping me work through this, Hops.

Hope

[Hopalong]

I'm glad you see the pattern. I doubt that she does.

So glad my stuff helped.

(Im-bossy-o, your challenge is still to own your own piece of the dynamic, whatever that piece may be...and communicate it in a gutsy, integrity-full way, without blaming her.) I am sure you can do it, and equally sure you will feel so much better about the end/reduction of this relationship! It'll be really healing for you, and help you release your shame over some earlier friendships.

We all learn, and sometimes leave teethmarks out of unawareness.
That's why loving and forgiving OURSELVES is such a huge piece of everything.

I swear, I'm 56, but that was not real to me until about 6 months ago. Though I'd known the abstraction of self-love forever. (Not selfishness, but forgiving compassion for your inner self.)

Thank you for sharing this, Hope. You're brave and honest and I respect you.

Hops