Toxic People: 12 tips to spot them,10 tips to deal with them

Toxic people are energy vampires. They literally leach the positivity and energy out of your veins, so beware, and avoid them if at all possible. They are seriously negative folk. They get kicks out of playing you, pushing your buttons, keeping you tagging along …

Toxic people: it’s not them, it’s their behaviour

And because I’m a psychotherapist, I must add that it’s their behaviour that is toxic, not them as an individual, and yes there are probably good and valid reasons as to why some toxic people behave in such a toxic manner.

Why do some people shine from adversity while others rust?

However, I also come from the camp that encourages people to take responsibility for their behaviour. It’s incredible when you compare individuals who have had all sorts of terrible things happen to them during their lives while some have had every opportunity sent their way. Some of these people turn out as caring, loving, trust-worthy individuals, while others seem to get a kick out of making your life difficult.

Stress and what it does to us

It is a well-documented fact that prolonged stress causes no end of physical and mental harm to us. Stress causes the release of hormones called adrenalin and cortisol. Adrenalin works with cortisol to prime our instinctive fight or flight response.

These hormones slow down digestion as blood is diverted into our arms and legs where the larger muscles are found and which may lead to us shaking as the blood pressure increases as our muscles are primed for action, they increase the amount of sugar in our blood and cause our hearts to beat faster to drive more oxygen to our muscles, our temperature rises because our muscles function more effectively when they’re warm, we breathe faster to get oxygen into our cells and our liver releases more sugar into the bloodstream in preparation for action.

Finally, blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex, where we do our logical thinking is slowed down. This is all to prime the body in response to the fight or flight mechanism.

The stress response works perfectly

The protection responses the brain has developed throughout our evolution have been geared towards survival, to protecting us from becoming some other creature’s lunch or in more recent times by being attacked by a scary person in a dark alley, or hit by an erroneous bus that is heading in our direction … they cause our bodies to react instantly, bypassing the rational part of the brain, and making sure we get out of the way fast.

Stress bypasses the logical brain

Just imagine, if our logical brain was to get involved in the process.  By the time we’d weighed up the fact that the erroneous bus is driving too fast, and is coming across the road towards the pavement, and you’ve got all those bags to carry and you’re not sure whether to run now or in a couple of seconds, after you’ve really decided what to do … yes, you’d be flattened.

So our stress response helps to keep us alive by enabling our instinctive reactions to take over. However, when stress is constant, and is not being dealt with efficiently such as by running out of the way of the bus, or fighting the weirdo in the dark alley, those hormones build up within our bodies and lead to a whole host of problems.

Raised levels of cortisol for long periods of time impact negatively on our immune system, making us more sustainable to infections, inflammation and disease. Prolonged stress also contributes to memory loss. It can raise our blood pressure and causes the body to retain fats within our blood which increases our risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. It can also lead to increased fat deposits around the midrift section of the body. So not only do we feel crappy, we get fat around the middle too!

We have enough going on in our lives just by trying to survive in this busy, technology-driven world we live in, and unfortunately, most of us will have come across toxic people in our day to day existence. They are everywhere. They hide at work, in families and in “friends” … and they cause stress to us, often prolonged stress.

Toxic people can have a very subtle, gradual effect on your life. You meet up with them or spend time on the phone with them, and literally have to shake yourself down to get away from the invisble cloak of despair they have wrapped you up in. Sometimes you can dedicate whole chunks of your life to these energy-suckers and when you back away from them or it dawns on you that the “friendship” is a one-way street, you are left wondering how on earth that ever happened.

How to spot a toxic person? Here are 12 ways of helping you identify them:

1. Toxic people often will sever friendships and relationships so that they can create instability in order to make themselves appear to be the glue of the group.
2. They drain your energy. If you’ve ever spent time with a toxic person you already know how exhausting they can be.
3. Toxic people are jealous – they are never satisfied with what they have and they like it even less when good things happen to you. They are destructive and will try and hold you back from achieving your goals so that they don’t feel compromised.
4. They lie and they get so “good” at it, that they begin to believe their own lies, caught in a chaotic semi-existence of judgements, opinions and manipulated circumstances. They will lie to you about other people and they’ll do the same to those other people about you.
5. Toxic people like to gossip – the more they tell bad stories about others, the higher they feel they are placed on their ego-platform. By knocking you, they are trying to shoulder their way to the top.
6. They lack integrity. There are few things they won’t do to achieve their goal. Whether that is lying to others, manipulating circumstances or trading friendships off of each other. If you get in their way, they’ll trample right over you without a second thought.
7. They are experts at playing the victim. It’s never their fault, it’s always someone else’s. They enjoy wallowing in self-pity, removing themselves from taking responsibility for their actions, lack of action and the cruel and demeaning things they say about you.
8. They have split personalities. Sometimes you’ll get the nice version – often when they’re after something, and at other times you’ll get the naked, uncut version which is often in response to not getting what they want.
9. They’ll project their feelings onto you. For instance, they might accuse you of being angry with them, because they are being angry with you, or blaming you for being in a bad mood. By doing this they are passing the buck on to you and not owning their own feelings.   Projection can be very confusing. If you feel as though you’re having to justify yourself a lot of the time, but not really understanding why, it’s likely that projection is at play here.
10. They’ll play mind games – have you ever heard “if you loved me you would do it”. Toxic people are often very accomplished at this and will sometimes aim to set you up for failure, such as insisting you stay home and miss an important meeting, because they have a headache. If you go to the meeting, you have failed them in their eyes.  If you stay home with them, they have their control hooks into you and this behaviour will likely continue to seep into more aspects of your life, and you also increase the risk of upsetting your boss by not going to the meeting.
11. They are controlling. They may try and control who you are friends with and suggest, for instance, that your best friend looks at them funny, so they don’t want to go out with them anymore, or that your mother gives off bad vibes, or that your friends are stupid and boring. You may find that gradually your social life shrinks and contact that you once had with best friends and family has all but vanished.
12. They don’t apologise. They are so good at manipulating situations and lying about things, that you’ll rarely get an apology. The story of who to blame will be twisted to suit them best, and this means it’s you who will get the rap.

How to deal with toxic people:

1. Tweet: Some of the most toxic people come disguised as family and friends. If you have a toxic friend treat them like radioactive material. It’s often only after time has passed that you realise how you have been sucked into their toxic vortex. Get out as fast as you can. They’re not worth it, but you are.  You don’t need to explain why, just leave that friendship. If they get angry, leave it with them. You deserve better for yourself.
2. If you are in a relationship with a toxic person, when you speak to them, use “I” statements rather than “you” statements. Be assertive, polite and honest about how you feel. If they disregard your feelings regularly, you might want to consider how beneficial staying with that partner is in the long term.  Bringing an end to a relationship can be painful, but ultimately you will grow as an individual, you will demonstrate respect for yourself and you’ll make yourself available to positive and nurturing experiences with healthy-minded individuals.
3. Be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses – toxic people will take it upon themselves to suss out and work on your weaknesses while ignoring your strengths. Make sure you own your own strengths and weaknesses so that their flawed judgement doesn’t risk shifting your opinion of yourself.
4. Keep your boundaries strong. Remember who you are in all of this. Maintain your integrity and don’t get sucked into gossip or negative chit chat with a toxic person. Be factual, truthful and remember who you are.
5. Tweet: If they treat you like they don’t give a s***, they don’t!
6. Give up on expecting them to change. They won’t. They never do. That’s why they’re so toxic and if you shut the door on them eventually they’ll move on to try and sap the life-blood from someone else. Leave them to their own personal disasters and focus on your own personal success.
7. Avoid conflicts. Toxic people get a kick out of fighting and arguing. Often that’s the only way they can draw attention to themselves. It makes them feel important and puffed up. Smile and walk away – a powerful strategy that takes away the fuel of the venom. Don’t allow yourself to be their victim.
8. Let it go. Life is for living. There comes a time in life where you need to let go of the trivial dramas. Surround yourself with people who make you buzz with excitement and enjoyment. Tweet: Life is too precious to waste on human leeches.
9. Getting rid of toxic relationships doesn’t need to mean that you hate that individual, it just means that you love and respect yourself more.
10. Lastly forgive but don’t forget.  This is for you, not for them. Let it go, they don’t deserve your head space. Forgiveness doesn’t mean accepting their behaviour, it just means you’re letting yourself leave the negative situation in the past and not wasting further energy thinking about it. You may have heard the quote, you are what you eat? Well that also applies to our thoughts: we are what we think. Negative thoughts lead to negative behaviour, negative physiology and this has a negative impact on our stress hormones. Let it go.

Being aware of some of the tactics toxic people use to entice you into their webs of destruction can help you to more easily identify and deal with them when they cross your path in the future. Be aware and take care of yourself. You owe it to yourself, to those you love and those who love you.

How do you deal with toxic people in your life?

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