I've come back, because I can't put this thought out of my mind. Why or how some people even can be LIKE that.

So...Some definitions/descriptions.

"If you know someone who’s difficult and causes a lot of conflict in your life, you may be dealing with a toxic person. These people can create lots of stress and unpleasantness for you and others, not to mention emotional or even physical pain."

That's one version of toxic, sure. IMO doesn't cover all of the types. This doesn't cover the subtly manipulative ones where you can just somehow end up in something that's unhealthy for you anyway (before you manage to run, of course).

"Toxicity in people isn’t considered a mental disorder."

I agree with that.

I do think a toxic person isn't the same as an abusive person, because the first one is more like, it could be just whatever they are doing that has a toxic effect, they are for example just like some negative person, while an abusive person attempts to, well, deliberately abuse people.

I spotted (still not able to read the thread for now) that someone mentioned there is the type that's just dysfunctional and not toxic. I like that distinction too, to me it feels like it can be a less negative effect for the former than for the latter and feels like a more general category overall

Toxicity overall just feels like it's about people with unhealthy enough negativity who don't try to deal with it and who easily and frequently infect others with it (whether deliberately or not). Manifesting in various ways, and it can be various negativities. Some really obvious, some really subtle. Maybe. (So for example it can be bad anger or meanness, but it can also be someone who gets extremely easily offended and feels entitled in doing so. Or entitled to their paranoia about others and acting on that)

And the real problem is how they don't try to deal with it themselves rather than letting it cause more destruction. Why, I don't know.


PS. I am writing all this out probably in an attempt to deal with some bad memory that would no longer let me escape from the past, I have to process it somehow .... While I am trying to define and think about these terms for myself (I'm not writing down everything), I'm trying to make sense of it all, I think. I don't really know (for now) how I can talk about the experience itself.

PS2: Reading the articles I googled on this topic. They are helping explain more of my past. Thanks for this thread directing my attention to this topic.