During the course of our life we
meet many people, some are important to us and enrich our life and some are
not. But there is also a third kind, which are commonly referred to as toxic
people and they poison our life, without even being aware of it.
This doesn't mean that those people are bad persons
they are just bad for us. It can be anyone from an old school buddy who gets
you drunk and in trouble, it can be your ex who you stay in touch with only to
be always hurt upon hearing how good he or she is doing, the former working
colleague whose life story depresses you within five minutes. What do all these
people have in common and what is more important: What do we keep them in our
lives?
I believe that we keep these people in our lives
despite their ill effect mainly because of our conscience. We are taught since
early childhood that the people in your life are extremely important and this
is a good thing but sometimes the message gets "distorted" in our
minds. Therefore we believe we should keep people in our life at all
cost.
We are led to believe that removing someone from our
life or letting them go makes us a bad or weak person, because we didn't fight
enough to keep things working but actually this is wrong.
In German there is a term for a partner in a
relationship which is "Lebensabschnittsgefährte". You could translate
this loosely with "life period companion" which I think can be used
for all sorts of relationships not just the romantic sort.
Maybe someone was very important to you for example
during school, that doesn't mean this person has to be important for you all
your life. You could choose different paths in life and develop in different
directions. Is it is a failure if you can't keep the friendship up? Of course
not! The fact that the time you shared was limited doesn't mean it was less
valuable for any of you, is simply means that you reached a cross roads where
you decided to take different paths. Your companionship is over.
This leads me back to what we have learnt about
relationships as children. We learnt that everything has to be forever and so
we perceive any ending as failure. It is not in vain that all fairytales end
with "and they lived happily ever after". And let's be honest: This
is incredibly appealing and in some cases it is true but in some it just
isn't.
If we can't accept that a relationship has run its
course it can become toxic to us, since they have no longer a natural place in
our life and you could say the relationship is past its expiry date and therefore
is has gone sour.
But then there are also other toxic people, which have
never had a positive influence in our life, not even for one minute. Yet
somehow we can't seem to distance ourselves from them, we are like moths flying
into the fire. In these cases we have to ask to look inside ourselves and ask
ourselves why? Are we masochistic? Do we believe we can change this people? Are
we blind to the true essence of the rotten relationship? I think in most case
we lie to ourselves and actually believe we gain something after all. We
believe we can put up with all the crap because after all we get something out
of it. It can be social standing, irresponsible fun or another thing the gives
us a certain kick. Because that is what it is all about after all a kick, which
makes this sort of relationship addictive.
These people are toxic to most people in their life
yet they are always surrounded by others because they are charismatic which is
what makes them in a way dangerous. Their presence has an addictive quality.
Good examples for people like this are cult leaders like David Koresh or
Charles Manson. Those people gain huge numbers of followers, despite their at
best mediocre education, looks and knowledge.
Of course these are extreme cases but they are helpful
when proving the point. Some people have an unreasonable appeal, which is why
we keep them in our lives despite their lack of human qualities. The problem
with these people is that they are aware of their appeal and use it to
manipulate people around them and this is where is gets dangerous. They start
using their "followers" for their own advantage, which in harmless
cases is just for fun but in the cases of the above mentioned cult leaders it
had deadly consequences.
The most important thing about toxic people or
relationships with them is to view them for what they are: An unhealthy thing
in our life! The next step is to carefully remove those relationships from our
life. You can do it the harsh way by announcing it to the people in question or
you can do it the soft way by letting the phone ring, taking more time than
before to answer message and not being so "available". That is
something you have to choose for yourself because some of these people can be
very possessive and they will try to cling to you if you try to get rid of
them.
At first it will be hard or awkward but once this is
done you will feel better, not just because a negative influence in your life
has vanished but because you will have more time and energy for the things and
people that really matter to you.
