Quote:
Originally Posted by seesaw
Well the reason you didn't hear the word 'toxic' in therapy is because it's nowhere in the DSM 5. It's a buzz word, and a lot of people have written about how it's used as a label to "other" the person being labeled and allow people to create a victim mentality for themselves.
I find it predominantly used by people who want to avoid responsibility for their own behavior and blame it on others. Typically people with poor conflict resolution skills.
It never helps to label others in our healing because you can't do anything about other people or their diagnoses, nor can we diagnose other people. As you suggested, Eskie, we have to address our own behavior and make our own choices about dealing with people we don't like. These are our choices that we need to take responsibility for and not blame on others by labeling them. Why do we have to label a person toxic and make it about them instead of simply taking responsibility for how we feel and saying we don't like them? Same with jobs and other situations that get labeled toxic.
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I’m not sure I agree. Knowing a person is “toxic” to me - basically poison to physical, mental, and/or emotional health - doesn’t make me a victim at all. It empowers me to make wise decisions to distance myself from that person for my own safety. It has absolutely the opposite effect to creating a victim mentality for me; it helps me make wise choices. That ability to make and hold healthy boundaries so that those individuals don’t continue to hold that power over me is perhaps the healthiest skill for living sanely and safely.
I don’t get into labels either, but I don’t see this so much about the label as it is in knowing that sometime there are people or environments that we have to separate from in order to be healthy.