There’s an old myth that frogs will pull down other frogs trying to escape a pot of boiling water. That’s likely the ryska heta kvinnor stuff of folklore, but the dynamic is real: in everyone’s life, there will always be people who will resist, threaten, and sabotage the possibility of self-improvement.
This general group of people – whom we can safely call “toxic” – might resent your progress for any number of reasons. Perhaps they think you’ll no longer be in their life if you improve too much. Maybe they feel like your improvement exposes their own shortcomings. Or perhaps they’re just threatened by the idea of change.
How to Cut Toxic People Out Of Your Life
The causes are less important than the effects, which can take the form of anger, resentment, frustration, manipulation, or cruelty (or a debilitating combination thereof). At any given moment, you might be finding yourself dealing with toxic friends, family members, or colleagues who – consciously or unconsciously – are sabotaging your happiness and growth. Identifying these individuals and understanding how to manage them is absolutely crucial to your well-being, success, and happiness.
So in this piece, we’re going to discuss how to recognize toxic people and navigate the often difficult and emotional process of removing these toxic people from your life.
How to Know Who’s Truly Toxic
Some people in life are kind of a drag – annoying, difficult, demanding, or otherwise unpleasant. These people are not “toxic,” in the strict sense of the term. They’re just generally undesirable. With this (admittedly large) group of people, you might want to create a little distance, but you won’t have the same urgency to cut them out of your life.
Toxicity really exists on a spectrum. On one end, there’s your old friend from high school who won’t shut up about how you don’t spend enough time together. On the other end, there’s your ex-girlfriend who is still capable of manipulating you into fits of rage. Your friend might be frustrating, but your ex-girlfriend is probably toxic.
Of course, tolerance for toxicity is relative to each person – you have to decide when someone requires distance and when they need to be cut out of your life. Those lines vary from person to person. For example, your sister will probably get more leeway than a coworker, but everyone’s sister and coworkers are different, and everyone has a different threshold.
What we’re talking about here is true toxicity – the kind that infects, metastasizes, and takes over your life. Here are a few classic signs of toxic people:
- Toxic people try to control you. Strange as it might sound, people who aren’t in control of their own lives tend to want to control yours. The toxic look for ways to control others, either through overt methods or subtle manipulation.
- Toxic people disregard your boundaries. If you’re always telling someone to stop behaving a certain way and they only continue, that person is probably toxic. Respecting the boundaries of others comes naturally to well-adjusted adults. The toxic person thrives on violating them.
- Toxic people take without giving. Give and take is the lifeblood of true friendship. Sometimes you need a hand, and sometimes your friend does, but in the end it more or less evens out. Not with the toxic person – they’re often there to take what they can get from you, as long as you’re willing to give it.
- Toxic people are always “right.” They’re going to find ways to be right even when they’re not. They rarely (if ever) admit when they’ve messed up, miscalculated, or misspoken.
