Toxic People: How to Avoid Being One

I’m not a psychologist. In this post, I document my experience dealing with toxic people. Please, if you have this issue and need guidance look for professional advice.

The toxic people I’ll be talking about you can’t avoid.

You find them at a family/friends gathering or at work, they are busy pushing your buttons and unsettling your life.

Their behavior can’t lead them to court. However, they are hurting your emotional well-being.

They have great marketing skills. They work hard to convince everyone they are good people and you’re not in a subtle way.

This person seems to enjoy annoying you, and two things are happening for sure:

You are generating stress hormones.
You are a candidate to be their successor.

If stress hormones become chronic, your personality expresses sadness, guilt, anger, grief, etc. As long as it’s an everyday feeling, it creates your personality. So you become a sad person, instead of feeling sad for 15 min.

Eventually, if you don’t have strategies and tools to deal with this toxic person you’ll become one. They are looking for the one to pass the baton to.

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What Shapes a Toxic Personality

Some toxic people were born with this mindset.

By contrast, I’ve known toxic people that became so after a traumatic event.

These people dealt with a toxic person and became one themselves.

They didn’t have the mindset and tools to deal with this toxic person, maybe they were kids, or naive, they trust and were betrayed.

They chose vengeance, got stuck in the past, and ruined their lives.

These people didn’t outsmart the toxic people in their lives and now they are looking for someone to handing over the baton.

They became addicted to the stress hormones fight-flight response. They didn’t know how to deal with whatever happened to them in the first place.

What’s next?

It’s difficult to have toxic people so close you can’t avoid and live in an environment of low emotions like hatred, sadness, jealousy, or envy.

Your brain creates connections that attract more of these toxic people at work or any place you go, and you behave more like them too.

Brake the pattern in yourself.

The moment you change and deal with this familiar negative situation, the pattern starts to vanish and replace with brain-heart coherence.

Types of Toxic People

I’ve classified toxic people according to a specific behavior:

First type: They keep in contact with you

These toxic people impose their presence.

Toxic people are addicts to negative emotions and they don’t want to change. However, their drama has no point without an audience.

These people are so into negativity that can pick a fight even buying a snack.

Second type: They wait until you’re near

They will never call you at home even though they know your phone number. However, the moment you are in their sight, they will come after you.

Often, they are close to the first type, that warranty they are going to see you when the first type imposes his/her presence and plans.

They aren’t as explosive as the first type. Unfortunately, they seem less toxic because they are slower to release their toxicity.

Toxic People Signs

These are the main toxic personalities traits:

They have a passive-aggressive behavior with you.

They’ll give you presents, and then pick a fight with you for no reason. Like addicts, they need to recreate scenes to release stress hormones. And this nonsense drama will increase as with any addiction.

They love impunity.

That’s why they like to be near family or friends. So they can be “loved” the way they are. That means you have to tolerate all their negativity without complaining.

Other people will go away the moment they realize their erratic behavior. They will be treated as the bad ones always.

They are judgmental.

They are never wrong. Whatever they do is perfect. They are the ones to point fingers. If you have a different opinion they will put you in the worst light. Your opinion will be dismissed.

Great marketing skills

They believe they are smart enough to manipulate anyone.

Toxic people will offer to help others, this way people will never believe what they have done to you. These people will understand you only when they become the target of these toxic people themselves.

Toxic people will do charity work is that make them look like the best of humanity.

They have allies.

They need people to set the scenes to get their addictions fulfilled.

Some people collaborate as long as they are not the scapegoat. So they’ll cooperate just not to be you.

How to Boost Your Brain-Mind Power to Get What You Want

What to Do With Toxic People – Don’t Receive the Baton

Apply these ideas and techniques to bring harmony back into your life:

(I’m not saying it will be easy. I’m saying it will be worth it.)

Focus

As long as toxic people get your attention, you’re no focusing on living your best life.

Connections in your brain are strong enough to make change difficult. It’s a habit to think like that. It’s familiar to be like that.

You have to be aware anytime you remember what these people have said about you or done to you. Any time you remember the experience the connections in your brain get stronger.

You can use a word to dismiss the thought. Change, out, stop, for example.

Any time you catch yourself remembering what they have done to you. Stop. Focus on your projects or the people you love.

In case you’re looking for a system to stay focused, I worked with the book the Lotus and the Lily for four years to go ahead with my projects and dreams. Read review

Advanced tip: After working on forgiveness, it will become easier to bless them and release the thought.

Forgiveness is amazing.

Well, it’s a nightmare at first. After a while it’s fantastic.

If you don’t want to forgive, it’s normal. You have to do it anyway.

Forgiveness means letting go of toxic thoughts and emotions.

An effective forgiveness technique in Catherine Ponder’s book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity consists in:

Sit for half an hour every day, and mentally forgive any person you’re out of harmony with. Forgive yourself and ask for forgiveness if necessary.

You don’t have to contact any person to forgive him/her.

A forgiveness statement from The Dynamic Laws of Healing is:

“I forgive everything and everybody who can possibly need forgiveness in my past and present. I forgive positively everyone. I am free and they are free, too. All things are cleared up between us now and forever.”

If you don’t forgive you are bonded to that person or condition.

Seriously, learn the lesson and move on before is too late. You don’t have to live by the same patterns. You deserve better than that.

Meditation to stop the chronic fight-flight response and regain balance.

Your brain will put a fight to keep the strong connection going on. It’s how the brain works. And it’s fine. It’s time to feed it with the right intention and an elevated emotion.

Stress hormones are present with high beta brain waves. Meditation helps to lead the brain to alpha/theta brain waves. It creates brain-heart coherence.

Dr. Joe Dispenza books are great to learn how the brain works, how the stress hormones affect our health and well-being, and how to get brain-heart coherence.

Journaling

Free writing is an effective technique to clean the subconscious mind and restore harmony. Writing Down Your Soul is the main book I’ve read to practice writing for healing.

Trying to prove how toxic people have wronged you will backfire.

People that support them are toxic themselves, or they don’t want to be the scapegoat. They couldn’t care less. Move on and look for your tribe.

The best revenge is to be happy.

Make a list of thing you love doing. Any time you realize you are producing stress hormones, try one of these activities. You have to break the pattern, and it’ll take some effort.

Stress hormones protect you in an emergency. However, the chronic fight-flight response will hurt your health and well-being.

Exercise: Choose love instead. Literally, focus on your heart and feel love for a few minutes every day. It’s a simple but powerful exercise to recover brain-heart coherence.

Ask the right questions.

The right questions move you forward.

Take responsibility for your behavior, not theirs.

It’s important to work on ourselves, our self-development.

However, there’s is a belief that whatever happens in your life is because you created or invited it into your life. That people in your life is a mirror of yourself or a belief you have.

I always picture emblematic people and how they were treated such as Mandela, or Jesus, and this belief doesn’t ring true to me. According to this belief, it seems like Mandela or Jesus deserved how they were treated because they created it or invite it into their lives. Like these people were a mirror of the bad in Mandela or Jesus. That’s nonsense.

I like Karl Jung approach to this matter. He believed we have to work on our own shadow (subconscious mind). When we do the work any other “evil” left is not ours.^[1]

At first is better to avoid toxic people as much as possible.

They are addicts and will have to look for other people to drain their toxic behavior or choose to change.

Gradually, after practising forgiveness, meditation, work on your brain-heart coherence, you can be before these people and not be moved by them. They’ll try to push your buttons as usual, and what they say will mean nothing to you.

Eventually, you can think about these people and feel compassion and move on with your life, as they are not in your mind any longer.

Keep creating, love and be loved.

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