Toxic People
By Tiffany Nicole
What is a toxic person? Let’s define the word toxic first. Toxic is containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation or relating to or being an asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market. As toxic relates to people, it’s not that the whole person is toxic. Rather, their behavior is toxic or your relationship with the person is toxic. Often the person is deeply wounded and for whatever reason, they are not yet able to take responsibility for their wounding, their feelings, their needs and their subsequent problems in life. This general group of people — whom we can safely call “toxic” — might resent your progress for any number of reasons. Perhaps they think you’ll no longer be in their life if you improve too much. Maybe they feel like your improvement exposes their own shortcomings. Or perhaps they’re just threatened by the idea of change.
The causes are less important than the effects, which can take the form of anger, resentment, frustration, manipulation or cruelty (or a debilitating combination thereof). At any given moment, you might be finding yourself dealing with toxic friends, family members or colleagues who — consciously or unconsciously — are sabotaging your happiness and growth. Identifying these individuals and understanding how to manage them is absolutely crucial to your well-being. Because in a very real way, your future depends on it.
How to Know who’s Truly Toxic
“Toxic” gets overused a lot these days, so let’s be clear about what we mean.
Some people in life are kind of a drag — annoying, difficult, demanding, or otherwise unpleasant. These people are not “toxic,” in the strict sense of the term. They’re just generally undesirable. With this (admittedly large) group of people, you might want to create a little distance, but you won’t have the same urgency to cut them out of your life.
Toxicity really exists on a spectrum. On one end, there’s your old friend from high school who won’t shut up about how you don’t spend enough time together. On the other end, there’s your ex-boyfriend who is still capable of manipulating you into fits of rage. Your friend might be frustrating, but your ex-boyfriend is probably toxic.
What we’re talking about here is true toxicity — the kind that infects, metastasizes, and takes over your life.
Toxic people try to control you. Strange as it might sound, people who aren’t in control of their own lives tend to want to control yours. Toxic people look for ways to control others, either through overt methods or subtle manipulation.
Toxic people disregard your boundaries. If you’re always telling someone to stop behaving a certain way and they only continue, that person is probably toxic. Respecting the boundaries of others comes naturally to well-adjusted adults. The toxic person thrives on violating them.
Toxic people take without giving. Give and take is the lifeblood of true friendship. Sometimes you need a hand, and sometimes your friend does too, but in the end it more or less evens out. Not with the toxic person — they’re often there to take what they can get from you, as long as you’re willing to give it.
Toxic people are always “right.” They’re going to find ways to be right even when they’re not. They rarely (if ever) admit when they’ve messed up, miscalculated or misspoken.
Toxic people aren’t honest. I’m not talking about natural exaggerations, face-saving or white lies here. I’m talking about blatant and repeated patterns of dishonesty. Toxic people love to be victims. The toxic revel in being a victim of the world. They seek to find ways to feel oppressed, put down and marginalized in ways they clearly are not. This might take the form of excuses, rationalizations, or all out blaming.
Toxic people don’t take responsibility. Part of the victim mentality comes from a desire to avoid responsibility. When the world is perpetually against them, their choices and actions can’t possibly be responsible for the quality of their life — it’s “just the way things are.”
Do any of these sound familiar? They might help diagnose toxicity in the people around you, even if the toxic pattern isn’t always or immediately obvious. In fact, toxicity can easily go unnoticed for years until you stop to consider your own experience of a difficult person. Though our thresholds for toxicity are relative, that’s often because we fail to recognize the symptoms.
Removing Toxic People from Your Life | Why It’s So Important
It’s rare for a toxic person to totally sabotage your attempts at self-improvement, but it does happen. At the very least, they will certainly slow your progress. More to the point, would you want someone in your life who’s actively opposed to making your life better?
The answer, of course, is no. And yet that can be hard to accept, until you begin to recognize the effects of toxicity within you.
Under the influence of a toxic person, you might second guess yourself on an important decision. You might feel sad, uncomfortable and downright ashamed about your own progress and well-being. You might even take on some of the same toxic qualities you resent in others — something that happens to the best of us — because toxic people have a peculiar way of making you toxic yourself.
And more often, the pattern happens without us even realizing. If you’ve ever had a toxic boss, then you know how this works: His behavior makes you irritable and bitter, so you lose your temper with the team working under you, which causes your employees to become increasingly difficult with one another, which causes them to bring that attitude home to their friends and family, and before you know it, the poison has unconsciously spread.
That’s how toxicity works. It’s contagious and insidious, even in kind, well-adjusted people. That’s what makes it so dangerous, and that’s why removing toxic people from your life is so critical.
First, a quick warning: Cutting toxic people out of your life can blow up in your face. That’s part of the disease. With that said, it’s absolutely crucial to remove these people from your life in a healthy and rational way.
So how do you go about removing these toxic people from your life and reclaiming the time and energy you’ve been giving them?
Accept that it might be a process. Getting rid of toxic elements isn’t always easy. They don’t respect your boundaries now, so it’s likely they won’t respect them later. They might come back even after you tell them to go away. You might have to tell them to leave several times before they finally do. So keep in mind that distancing yourself is a gradual process.
Don’t feel like you owe them a huge explanation. Any explaining you do is more for you than for them. Again, tell them how you feel, which is a subject not open for debate. Or, if you prefer, keep it simple: Tell them calmly and kindly that you don’t want them in your life anymore, and leave it at that. How much or how little you tell them is really up to you. Every relationship requires a different approach.
Block them on social media. Technology makes distancing more difficult, so don’t leave any window open for them. You’ve set boundaries. Stick to them. This includes preventing them from contacting you via social media, if appropriate. Shutting down email and other lines of communication with a toxic person might also be in order.
Don’t argue —It’s tempting to fall into the dynamic of toxicity by arguing or fighting — that is precisely what toxic people do.
Consider creating distance instead of separation.
Most importantly, cutting toxic people out sends a key message to yourself. You’re saying: “I have value.” You’re prioritizing your happiness over someone else’s dysfunction. Once you recognize how toxic people can erode this basic sense of self-worth, it becomes harder and harder to allow them in your life.
Either way, here’s to improving your social circle and your happiness this year — by subtraction as well as addition.
Tiffany Nicole is a full time blogger and founder of The Diary of a Curvy Girl. She also owns a custom shoe business, Couture Creations and is the co-founder of the radio show, The Queen Code on 100.9 WXIR.