Dealing with Toxic People

Throughout our lives we all encounter toxic people. These are people that are so full of anger, or sadness, or negativity that it overflows and they begin to poison the people around them. It can be very hard knowing how to properly deal with them being in your life.I want to first say that this article is a generalization. With human beings it is impossible to cover all the possibilities on any topic when it comes to how our minds work. We all live a completely unique journey through life. It is on each of us to take the time to really learn about our own situations and the people around us and decide what needs to be done.

First of all, it is important to know the difference between a person who is angry, sad or negative, and somebody who is toxic.

Just because someone is suffering from negative emotions doesn’t make them toxic.To expect yourself or somebody else to never be overcome with the hardships of life is not realistic. You should always try to help people who are going through a bad time. A person becomes toxic when they get to the point that they aren’t getting better from people trying to help them, and start dragging others around them down with them.

You can imagine a toxic person in the same way as you would think of something that is literally toxic. It is a source of poison and it slowly spreads that poison to everything that is in contact with it. That is exactly what a toxic person does.

Toxic people will get to a point where instead of fixing what is making them suffer. They give up on the possibility and lose faith in their own happiness. This can lead to them starting to spread it to other people to make them feel less alone. Misery loves its company.There are also people out there who have become sick from everything they have had to deal with in life. Some may even act in a toxic matter because they find a joy in hurting other people.

“Toxic people attach themselves like cinder blocks tied to your ankles, and then invite you for a swim in their poisoned waters.”
― John Mark Green

This is why you need to distance yourself from people that start doing this. It tends to be a lot easier for negativity to slowly bring a person down than it is for positivity to bring them up in many situations. Trying to help them can backfire and give them power over you because of how much you care for them. They will most likely not be doing it consciously, but they will begin poisoning you.

Here are some examples of the effects of toxic people:

A lack of self worth
Feeling stupid
Ruining your hopes and dreams for you
Feeling accomplishments discredited
Being treated like you are crazy for what you believe without a real explanation of why
Mental and physical abuse

“There’s folks you just don’t need. You’re better off without em. Your life is just a little better because they ain’t in it.”
― William Gay

Not everybody that acts toxic is hopeless though. Toxicity is something that spreads out from multiple sources. People usually get poisoned by the toxicity of someone or something else. It’s possible that all they need to get better is to remove that source of negativity.

It is up to all of us individually to judge the situations with people we find ourselves in.

It isn’t easy. Especially when we are put in a position where we may need to distance ourselves from family members, friends, co-workers, and companions, or even remove from them our lives completely.We all want to help other people. It’s one of the greatest ways to achieve happiness, but there is a point where we need to worry about ourselves as well. If we are being brought too far down we may not even be able to help ourselves properly, let alone others.Letting go of toxic people may make you feel like you aren’t compassionate to those who need help, but that isn’t the case.Letting go of toxic people happens when you need to be compassionate to yourself.