Toxic relationships.
Let’s take a moment to chat about toxic people. Do you feel like you have one in your life? Have you ever considered it might be you?
I think on some level, everyone can be a toxic to someone. We can all be bad influences and bring people down without meaning to or intention. But does that make us bad people?
I don’t think so. If you have a toxic friend and you have realized it, they probably no have know idea they are toxic because they are so wrapped up in their own mental health issues that they can’t see the devastation they reep. But also, we all have mental health issues and sometimes we take them out on other people by accident.
When I started writing this post, I was worried I was the toxic one because I had a toxic relationship and I didn’t see it coming, it blew me sideways when I found out and I thought to myself, what if I am also toxic and I have no idea?! This was a real mind banana!
That’s the thing about crazy people, they don’t know they are crazy and that is what makes it so scary to have toxic person in your life. They make you feel like you are the crazy one and the asshole because you aren’t good enough for them.
But how do you know if a person is toxic or not?
When you hang out with them, do you leave you feeling drained, upset, defensive but you don’t know why?
You no longer trust them because they have lied to you on more than one occasion about something small but the truth came out and they weren’t apologetic for it. Or they say one thing and then say a completely opposite thing so there is no consistency to what they say.
You don’t like yourself when you are with them. Like they turn you into someone you’re not and make you discuss or do things that make you really uncomfortable
You KNOW they talk shit about you. You just know it. Because they talk shit about everyone.
They are two faced, as the toxic persons closest person, they will compliment someone and then turn around and insult them for the same thing. Full Regina George. “You look great in that skirt” next week to you personally one on one “Oh my god did you see that skirt? So ugly”
They compete with you about everything. Everything is a competition to beat you and they think they are better than you and try to assert that over you regularly.
You can’t depend on their advice, if they listen to you at all. Its like you try and talk about your problems but they get shut down or change the subject to their own problems or something they want to discuss and most commonly, that is giving backhanded compliments. Like Oh yeah but you are looking really skinny, you know whose looking really fat? insert friends name who is smaller than you.
You are Embarrassed by THEIR behaviour towards other. When they act a certain way or say things about other people and you are actually embarrassed by the terrible things they are saying.
And of course, you make excuses for them. If a toxic person has put you in a bad position and you keep making excuses for them, that is Toxic.
They make you feel belittled and insecure and you feel like you are getting their problems as well as your own.
Toxic friends are the hardest because they are not bad people but they are being bad friends. We all go through rough patches and we all struggle but I am going to say something devastatingly blunt so be prepared.
It is not your responsibility to help your toxic person. It is their responsibility. More often than not, toxic people don’t want to get better or improve because they think they are fine as they are and all the people turning away from them are the crazy ones. You are not responsible for their behavior.
But once you realize you have a toxic person in your life, you are not only responsible for your actions moving forward but also the choice you have to make and it’s not an easy one.
The choice is to walk away and protect yourself and your mental health or not.
If their behavior is getting so bad it’s bringing you down, you have to put yourself first. You don’t owe them anything. I know it may seem like you do because they have twisted it to seem like you need them or they are good so you’re the asshole for wanting to walk away.
You’re not. Walk away.
And yes, it could be really messy because they may make a scene intent on making you seem crazy because that control they have had over you is now gone and they will not react well to having that control they depend on being taken away.
Or they’ll just disappear out of your life because you never mattered to them, you were an tool to entertain them and now you’re a shriveled husk, they will go find another willing soul.
Toxic friends are one of the strangest things I have had to deal with. I’ve had toxic relationships before but friendships... it’s worse somehow because your loved ones don’t see it coming and then your mother is really upset that you’re no longer taking to your best friend that she likes. Your close family can see a toxic partner, they rarely see toxic friends coming.
The most important thing to do, which is something I was reminded of by my other friend, she told me to stand up for myself and stop being her punching bag.
I was so caught in the cyclone I didn’t even realize what was happening to me, until one day, the toxic friend turned on me and then I saw the nasty side of her. The side I have been justifying or brushing off for so long. Giving her a wide berth because “she’s having a really hard time right now” or “She struggling with her mental health issues so it’s okay” or the cherry on the cake “be a better friend, she is a good person, she tells me all the time and she does good people things”
You let it slide because hey, she’s your friend, she’s just joking right..?
So when this incident happened, my friend came to me and told me not to be treated like this, stand up for myself because I had done nothing wrong.
I did. It was messy. She did her best to guilt, manipulate and control me but it was too late, the illusion was shattered. It felt like she had created this fake world around me and that I had been living in, clearly oblivious to what was really going on and when it shattered, I felt like such an idiot for justifying her bad behavior all this time.
And for how much shit I had been taking without even realizing, when my friend said i was a punching bag, she had meant it and I was seeing it all now for the first time with intense clarity.
I tried to avoid it because she’s a good person, she does good people things and I don’t want to be that shitty friend that leaves when times get tough.
But being a good person and toxic are not the same thing. You can be a good person and be a toxic influence on someone. Good people have mental health issues and good people can be mean. No all toxic people are self obsessed narcissists, they come dressed in all shapes and sizes.
So the question then becomes, do you love yourself enough to become the adult. To step away from the drama and negativity you have been caught up in? Are you brave enough to face your own insecurities about why you are still in this toxic relationship and challenge your own preconceptions of what a good friend is?
Friends stick it out but friends also come and go, you will have many many friends in your life, you had a good time, it is okay for it all the end now or at the very least, take a large amount of space. Give the toxic person time to process their behavior because they are never going to change if you are enabling them unconsciously by being their friend and supporting their crappy decisions.
When I took my space and started really questioning our friendship, wanna know what happened to me?
All the good things.
Everything was nice and smooth and a lot of really great things happened like the universe was telling me I was doing the right thing. This has happened before to me but with a toxic guy I was dating. I felt so much lighter without that negativity and drama in my life.
And then the truth starts seeping in, more of your friends start to turn around and tell you what they really like because they have been too afraid to before because obviously, they are your friend, no one wants to be that friend who bitches about their other friend.
From the other side of the perspective, it will be okay. I know if feels like the end of the world because they have controlled you for so long and spun you a weave of their troubles and your lack of support will kill them.
That is not your responsibility. You have a responsibility to you and you alone.
You aren’t in control of their actions or their behaviors but you can put enough distance between yourself and them to give them the opportunity to develop and grow and for you to focus on yourself unhindered by the constant negative emotions that your toxic person is dragging you down with.
With enough space a time, it does calm down if you don’t respond, don’t react to their antagonistic rhetoric and don’t spread bad energy about them to all of your friends. Talk to your closest friends about the issue and stay neutral with everyone else. Even if your toxic friend is going around telling everyone you are the crazy one, it doesn’t take long for them to see the truth because toxic people are unstable. If they aren’t taking out their issues on you, it is going to go somewhere else.
But let’s refer back to the start of this post, How do YOU know you aren’t the toxic friend?
I really wasn’t sure how to tell at first, especially if you are the catalyst like I was. I caused a small disagreement with the toxic person blew out of proportion and control and used it to belittle to to the point of suicidal thoughts (something I have only ever had once before). So I took a lot of space to make sure I wasn’t the toxic one because to me, I didn’t feel like I was in the wrong. If you aren’t sure, you have a few options:
Seek help, go to the therapist and explain what happened and what they are like and talk it out with them. An outsiders opinion will be a fantastic help to help you work out if its your behaviour that is the problem or not.
This is the one I did, talk to your closest friends, the people who know and ask for some honest feedback and yes, it could hurt. Assure them that you aren’t going to get aggressive and over react and ask them to be 100% honest with you. Hearing the truth hurts but they will tell you if you are toxic or not and if you are, you now know! And you can work on these problems to they don’t affect your future friendships. Take the feedback on board in a calm manner, your friends are trusting you to be calm and collected, don’t get defensive, we all try hard to be our best and it is underappreciated a lot of the time and it can feel like a personal attack, but it isn’t. But if you are not, they will tell you and provide ample amounts of evidence as to why you aren’t the crazy one, even if you feel like it. Your friends and family will be honest with you about your shortcomings, if they think you have any. You could be the toxic person causing all the drama or you could be the victim caught up in the landslide.
But the one thing you should do is walk away. Cut contact with the person. I have, even if I am the bad influence or we are just bad for each other, walk away. Take space. Put yourself first. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this can just be partners or friends. This can be family members too. Co workers. They can be closer to you than you think. You just have to take a step back out of the whole situation and assess what is happening to you right now. Is it you? No? Then it is them? Find out and make the changes so you can both move forward away from the negative cycle.
But! How do you walk away from a volatile person who won’t go down without a fight?
To start with, say you are taking some space after your most recent argument. they will try and manipulate you but you need to take the space and not message or interact with them unless you have too (like seeing them at the bus station and saying hello)
Something I found really helpful was to journal all of my feelings, I actually wrote a goodbye letter to them several times over, each time refining how I best wanted to approach the subject to make it as un hurtful as possible because my intention isn’t to hurt them. Being the dumper is the hardest part of a toxic breakup, you have to handle the guilt and responsibility, being dumped you get to say “Oh they didn’t appreciate me for who I was” and they get to continue denying that they are the problem.
Second, set some limits. Have a limit on how much you are going to interact and stick to it, don’t deviate. If you said you are cutting it down to 1 5 minute conversation a day instead of 2 hours. Do it. Hang up.
Once everything has calmed down, do the Ghost. So start to reply slowly if at all, give it loads of time in between each conversation and just be polite but take as much space as they allow and hopefully, they will get bored and move on.
In the event that call you out on the fact that you are ghosting them, it is time to be more direct. Tell them you were really upset but what happened and you are taking your space and tell her the boundaries you have set. Remember that often toxic people have no interest in hearing about your feelings or anything that isn’t what they want, so keep it calm and neutral. In the nicest possible way, if you overreact and get aggressive, it will make you look bad if they send out screenshots to all of your friends (which is a possibility). Don’t rise to their bait. When they are attempting to goad you, say this is upsetting me, I am not going to talk to you while you are like this and stop replying. Even if 100 apology messages come through. Take at least 24 hours to recover emotionally from the altercation.
Now you have set the boundaries or told them your friendship was special but now it’s time to move on, there will be 2 outcomes.
They will happily go and be chill.
They will fight using their most underhanded methods. Often using things like gang mentality to make you feel like everyone hates you and if you aren’t her friend, no one will be yours.
Keep your emotions in check, stay calm and do bite into their reactive behaviour. Stay firm in your decision and by this point, it means you can cut them out :)
Breaking up with a toxic person is a endless plethora of feelings and emotions. One moment you are angry and then you see a photo or remember a good time and you are sad, you will go through the whole grieving process which is the hardest bit, you are suffering from a loss but you are in control of it. You will be angry, you will feel like a total idiot, you will feel guilty but also like you have been betrayed, manipulated and lied to. It is all part of the process of cutting ties with them. Stepping out of the cycle you are in will also feel like a breath of fresh air, like you feel like yourself again. You will also find people from your past that had drifted away, are suddenly coming back to you, they will suddenly pop up and start making plans with you again because your toxic person has made them feel so unwelcome in your life. The first thing I found myself doing is apologizing to all these people I rudely snubbed because the toxic friend made me feel so overwhelmed that I couldn’t handle anymore friends, so I pushed people away. And in true non toxic fashion, every single one of them replied with, It is okay, we all struggle. I was astounded by everyone’s compassion for me but in reality, it wasn’t the biggest deal ever, the toxic person made me feel like every slight snub was a unforgivable crime and nobody would ever forgive me like she would.
I felt a little traumatised afterwards as well, like I couldn’t trust anyone and everyone was judging me constantly. It took a while to remember not to not care what people thought of me but more to relax and remember that people, probably aren’t thinking about me. I am not the centre of the universe and I will not read into things that aren’t there. It’s easy to read into a tiny interaction where someone is in a bad mood and you instantly go, Oh My God, Its because my ex toxic friend has been spreading shit about me. But maybe they are just having a bad day. You will be able to see who is on your toxic friends “side” and who is not, just stay polite and neutral to everyone. With a side of pity, one day, they may come to you and ask you, “hey so what happened with you and (Insert name)”. That is when you ask them how they are feeling and maybe you can help someone else out who got caught in the cyclone.
You can do this, find your real friends and focus solely on them. Your real friends will come out of the woodwork and be there for you. This is the most helpful quote I have ever heard and when I was going through this, my friend gave this to me.
Those who mind, Don’t Matter.
And those that matter, Don’t Mind.
Those people that mind that you are putting yourself first over being a “Good friend”, they don’t matter. Those that matter to you or should matter to you, are the ones who will listen to you and won’t mind you talking about this over and over and over again. I swear, all I did was talk about this to my friends endlessly.
If I can give you any advice, it would be to reach out to your real friends you trust. See if you can find someone who has been through something similar, buy them tea and ask them about what happened to them. I was amazed when I reached out how much better it made me feel, it was really comforting to not only find other people who have been caught in the cyclone but also people who had been through a toxic break up and could guide you and understand how you were feeling, reassuring you that it was going to be okay in the end.
And don’t care about the haters, one day, they are going to be where you are right now and when they are, show them the compassion that they didn’t show you.
Thank you for reading, I really hope this helps you break away from your toxic influence and if you have any questions, reach out. If you don’t trust any of your friends, at the very least, I know what you are going through right now.