We're a couple days into the New Year, and every New Year, countless people commit to being drama-free, but it's easier said than done. One of the most essential yet also most difficult steps to creating a drama-free life is recognizing and cutting out the toxic personalities you have surrounded yourself with.
But first, what makes a toxic personality?
A person with a toxic personality is a leech, in multiple ways. Emotionally, they drain you dry. They are demanding, time-consuming, attention-grabbing, needy - the list can go on. They can drain you financially, and of your resources, because they just need you. They continually play the victim so that you need to save them, and at first, it feels good. You feel good that you're helping someone, and it makes you feel effective and powerful, because you have the ability to help someone improve their lives.
But this is a kind of relationship that can't last - because they only get stronger by making you weaker. Eventually, it becomes harder and harder to give these people what they need, because they continue to need more and more - even when you don't have it. And then, you begin to feel guilty, and they begin to feel angry that you can't give them what you did before. Maybe, you can't let them borrow as much money. Maybe you can't always be their safety net.
A person with a toxic personality takes away your clarity. By this, I mean that they misconstrue situations in their interpretation, because they are hard-wired to always feel like the victim in a situation, and when you try to convince them otherwise, many things can happen.
- They misconstrue the facts. A toxic personality will pick and choose what they tell about the situation to others, and even what they choose to believe themselves.
- They become avoidant. If you try to reason with them that they have taken too much, they will shut you out and storm off.
- They become abusive. This can come in the forms of physical violence, verbal hostility such as cursing and swearing, or gossip.
You and a friend are walking in a museum and admiring the artwork - your friend didn't have money to pay for their ticket today, so you put up the funds for them, and you're both having a good time. Suddenly, your friend trips and knocks over a vase, which falls to the ground and shatters.
No one is looking, so your friend suggests that you run away. You try to point out that running away will not help anyone - that there are cameras in the museum, that they will find out and your friend will be in even bigger trouble than she would be if she just took responsibility and paid for the vase.
But all your friend hears, because of the haze created by their toxic personality, is that you want them to get in trouble for breaking the vase.
While toxic personalities come to be for many different reasons, many develop because a person lacks what professionals refer to as self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a sense of "Yes, I can!". It is an internal feeling that a person possesses the skills and abilities to solve their own problems in life. While a person with a sense of self-efficacy is able to take changes in stride, a person who lacks it is fearful and resentful - they don't feel they can do it alone.
They won't admit it. Many times, they will overcompensate in order to make it appear otherwise. They will claim not to need anyone. They will try to prove it by buying expensive things or living flashy lifestyles that are out of their means. But at the end of the day, they don't believe that they are able to make their own lives better. They believe only others can do that for them. This lack of confidence in their own ability to change their lives leads to another intrinsic trait of toxic personalities: they always need people on their side.
This is what can often make it difficult to take toxic people out of your life - because once you attempt to break free from their grasp, they begin to try and turn others against you. They need to always be the victim, so they also need someone to play the hero. That person was you. But now, because they have taken what they can and you need time to rebuild yourself, they look for a new hero at your expense.
Cutting toxic individuals out of your life can be a hurtful process. It is definitely hard. But in the end, you are being kinder to yourself for it - and you are helping them.
A person with a toxic personality and the need to be a victim can only do so if people enable them to remain the victim. While it's difficult to stomach, one of the greatest acts of caring that you can commit towards these individuals is to take away that ability. They will say you are cruel. They will say you are throwing them out into the cold. They will say you are trying to ruin their lives, and they will turn people against you - but this is all because they don't feel they have the power to change that. The greatest way to help this person grow is to help them learn to take responsibility for the vases they break.
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