How To Recover From Being Around A Toxic Person
March 24, 2008 | In Connecting With Others |
Lately I’ve been working on healing pain from my past. I’ve realized that a lot of my hurts came because I believed that I was incompetent and incapable. In the past, I fumbled my way through; however, recently, I’ve been working much more deliberately to tackle the self-critical feelings stirred up by toxic people. Some toxic people in our lives are very obvious; they criticize us and generally never make us feel good. It is best to avoid them and their negative influence. But what about those who are close to us who gave sympathy, advice, or both, and who thought they were being helpful, but in reality, were making the situation worse? While we may be able to avoid them to some extent, we don’t want to cut these folks off completely. What do we do then?
Photo by Vic Lic
Awareness Of The Bad Mood Trigger
As someone with depression, it is easy for me to numb out in an attempt to halt tough feelings. Often, I feel like there is no cause for the feelings; I attribute it to the depression itself affecting me. However, when I take the time to analyze the feelings, I often discover that there was a person, or a comment, that started off the chain reaction of a bad mood.
Recently, I was thinking back over some conversations I’ve had when I was feeling down. Looking back, I can see that the other person was trying to cheer me up. While I usually welcome support from my friends, I found I was depressed for days after these conversations. Finally, not wanting to feel this way anymore, I would replay the past several days in my mind and pinpoint when my mood went south.
Suddenly, it was like a light bulb went off. When I talked to so-and-so, I walked away feeling despondent. I thought about the words that were said, and realized that they were supposed to be encouraging, but they made me feel stupid and powerless - the exact opposite of the way the words were intended. Those words may have been good for someone else, but to me, the speaker was a toxic person.
Once you realize the person you were talking to is a toxic person to you, even if only for certain topics, you’ve taken the first step to distancing yourself from that person.
Critique The Other Person’s Relationship Skills
We all know that not everyone is good at saying what is on their mind. Usually we think of this in terms of someone who fumbles over their words or says things that clearly don’t make sense. However, people can be articulate and speak in a way that makes a lot of sense, but later you realize they didn’t communicate very well.
Someone who is toxic to us may speak to us with the best of intentions, but deep down, we still feel picked on. In looking over my conversations with toxic people, I initially felt deeply guilty for not appreciating the support they offered. Then, I thought about it from an outside perspective - what would a therapist, or a close friend who is not a toxic person think of the conversation?
They would realize that the toxic person just had a bad way with words. Perhaps it was a slightly negative tone, perhaps it was a subtle reference to superiority of circumstances. Whatever it was, the toxic person didn’t have the right skills to offer their opinion in a way that didn’t offend us.
Relationship and conversational skills aren’t automatic. They can be learned, and we learn them from others and from practice. The closer we are to someone, the easier it is to be loose in our skills, or interpret the other person’s speech in a way that wasn’t intended. By looking at conversations with toxic people, we can see that they just don’t have the necessary skills to make us feel better. No matter how much they want to help, they never manage to get it quite right.
When we realize that the toxic person was not out to get us, and there isn’t some reason they would want to put us down, but rather a lack of skill, we can release the guilt. We can see the other person as separate from us and have the mental clarity to also see that their difficulties make no judgments about us at all.
Cleanse The Last Of The Toxic Mood
Even after putting a conversation with a toxic person in perspective, you will probably have lingering traces of bad mood. What you’ll need is a mental shake to eliminate those last bits. So, take some time to refresh yourself. Read a book, watch TV, go for a walk. Do something that you know will help you feel better about yourself.
All it might take is thinking about something else. Or, it might take more. I’m sure I’m not the only one who needs a physical cleansing with a hot shower to banish particularly bad vibes. There is something cathartic about water running over the body. A bath relaxes me, but a shower feels like it’s washing away more than just dirt.
Another option is writing out your thoughts in a journal. Pop in a comedy video or call up a friend who makes you laugh. The mind not only needs a break from the bad mood, but it needs something to put closure on it. Like finishing a sentence with a period, complete mental separation from a toxic person needs an end point.
Confirm Your Capabilities
The first three steps were needed to separate from the influence of a toxic person. The last step is needed to restore your confidence in yourself. A laugh with a friend will go a long way, or maybe all the way, to restoring a good mood. But, without reminding yourself how great you are, you might loose that good mood when you meet the toxic person again.
If it helps, think of restoring your confidence as a way to get revenge on the person who hurt you. Some may see this as cruel, but remember this is only for you. The other person doesn’t have to know that you “got revenge” or that you rewrote the conversation in your mind to make the outcome go your way. The point is to build up a stockpile of confidence for the next time you encounter a toxic person. It might not eliminate the downward spiral, but it should help considerably with keeping the spiral fairly shallow.
How do you restore confidence? Work on a project that gives you a sense of accomplishment. Do something you know you are good at - a puzzle, writing, seducing your significant other (that one may be the most empowering of all!) Know that you are competent and capable and no matter what your problems are, you can find a way to make it through. Brainstorm solutions with a renewed sense of motivation, or decide not to worry about it for 24 hours. No matter what - take back your power from the inner critic who led you to believe your faults were who you are.
Dealing with toxic people isn’t easy, but it can be done. If the toxic person is someone you don’t have to interact with, the simplest solution may be to just avoid them. But, if the toxic person is someone close, the situation is much more difficult. Confronting them is likely to make the situation worse, but confronting your own feelings and beliefs around them will significantly improve it. I know from personal experience that the 4 step process outlined above works, even if you start out in a very dark mood.
What about you? Do you have other techniques for dealing with toxic people? Is there someone in your life you now realize is a toxic person? Please leave me your thoughts and comments below.
Photo credits: Thumbs Down by desi.italy; Conversations Silhouettes by b_d_solis; Shower by jurvetson; Playing Guitar by Ctd 2005
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Thanks for a great post.
I also have an issue with competence.
With toxic people who I choose to be around, I tend to the polite and distant. I also tend to analyse what they say rationally - to keep it away from my feelings if I can.
If not, then I need to identify what has been hooked in me. Working this through is a whole other story.
For restoration, I find I sometimes need to get into a different physical environment. Other times a long hot bath is enough. Sometimes getting absorbed in a novel. Funny ones especially.
Looking forward to seeing what others do.
Evan,
I do my best for the polite and distant as well, but I was thinking specifically of a friend who is usually fine to talk to and be around, but on certain subjects is toxic. In this case, polite and distant can be bad.
However, when it comes to coworkers, whom you have to be around, polite and distant fits perfectly.