The Lesson Learned From Toxic People

jenkinrocket (64)in #abuse • 8 years ago (edited)

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There are some people in your life who want nothing more than to see you fail. If you're really unlucky, a few of these will be proactive about it in one way or another.

Toxic people come in all varieties. Mostly, they are people that are extraordinarily unhappy with themselves but have decided to express this destructive feeling by tearing everything around them down. That includes you or whoever else happens to be nearby or closest to them.

We've all experienced such people to varying degrees. They can be loved ones, significant others, friends, or even family.

The great difficulty is that these people usually aren't bad all of the time. If they were, it'd be easier to cut them loose and move on. More often than not, these people's damaging, hurtful actions are lightly sprinkled through good memories, companionship, and connection.

Hence the normal rationale: Well, I suppose even though they do these things they're not a bad person, actually.

And, of course, a person needs to be a "bad one" before you remove them from your life. But I've got news for you, something that it took me a long, long time to realize: there is no such thing as a bad person.

Everyone is a mix of the two, good and bad. More than this, a person always has reasons for the qualities they have the actions they do. Nothing in the Universe happens without a reason: I don't know why there's this persistent belief that people are different. We're just "good" or "not".

Whether a person remains in your life should have nothing to do with whether they are good or bad. All that matters are two things: the net effect they have on your life/emotional state and whether your relationship with said person has the essential things that must be at the foundation of every relationship (but we'll get to that in a bit).

Net Effect

The first thing to think about when considering the overall effect someone has on your life is not quantity, but quality. Sure that person may only be awful to you occasionally, but if on those occasions you walk away angry/upset/hurt to the degree that it has long-lasting effects in your relationship with yourself or other people... you have to ask yourself whether whatever that person has to offer is really worth it.

To many this will seem a bit cold, detached. But I assure you that I have just as many emotions as everyone else and used to let them dictate my relationships. Doing so, I went through the same cycles year in and year out. What I discovered is that the old adage is true: emotions make for a good servant but a poor master.

The Foundation of Every Relationship

I myself have had to say goodbye to people in the past in order to continue to grow and develop. Currently I have a relative who is incredibly toxic. That situation is harder.

But I've come to the conclusion that there's two things that any relationship, whether it's romantic, familial, or simply friendship, can't do without: trust and respect. Whenever one of these two bonds is repeatedly broken without repair it's a signal that you are in a relationship that cannot be saved.

You Don't Owe Anyone Anything

Don't fall into believing that you owe it something to someone who is being willfully destructive, whether that destruction is conscious or not. You don't. Even family members. Good practice is to make sure you have good boundaries with your parents. After all, if you don't even let the people who brought you into the world treat you poorly, why would you let anyone else?

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What to Do

There's only one thing to do when someone is being toxic: remove them. Many of you won't want to hear that. Those people often rationalize that their situation is unique, or that they've fixed it already. Maybe they haven't even recognized what's happening as a type of abuse.

From experience I can tell you: the only way to change the situation is to stop being around that person. If you can't/won't cut them off entirely, become 'suddenly busy' when they want to hang out and begin phasing them out of your life. Resolve to make new friends who treat you with love and respect and move forward to carve out the life you want.

Because life is brief, usually briefer than we suspected, and you don't have time to fix other people!

The only exception to this is a trained professional such as a therapist or counselor, and even with them it doesn't apply to people they know personally.

One Last Thing

There is a certain narrative that we as a world society have about abuse. When we think of the word we think of a beaten wife huddled in a corner. It's associated with weakness and is supposed to be something that only women, children, and weaklings experience or talk about (which is pretty sexist, actually).

But abuse comes in all shapes and sizes. We've all experienced it to some degree at some point (especially people who themselves are abusive - but again, this does not excuse their behavior!), from bullying at school or in the workplace to a friend that regularly takes advantage of your goodwill.

But don't let that turn you off to people. The meat and potatoes of life is and shall always be in relationships. They are, first and foremost, what makes life worth living. Human beings are inherently social creatures and while we have very different ways of expressing it the essential fact remains. But as we go forward, getting better at our attempt to build a life worth living, it is essential that we stay vigilant and remove those things and people that could not only impede our progress, but reverse it.

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