What if I am the toxic person in a scenario?

Have you ever had reason to believe that you might be the toxic person in a relationship? Or maybe that you have toxic personality traits? If so how did you cope with feeling guilty about it and what did you do to change you your behavior?

First off I NEVER feel guilty about anything. Life is a live & learn process which means there will ALWAYS be a conflict of some kind we can definitely learn from, make the changes we feel are appropriate & necessary from what we learn....then get on with living life with the changes we have adapted into our life.

That being said....I always fought with my parents & I always fought with my husband (thank heavens, now EX-H). So everyone said....common denominator was ME....but I got along very well with everyone else....hmm.

By the time I left my husband (after 33 years of being married to him) I realized I was so fed up that I was being as abusive to him as he was being to me.....so yes, I was reacting with full force anger by that time. My mom died from cancer & I took my inheritance & left my marriage because he was fighting getting a divorce. I moved 2100 miles away & realized how wonderfully peaceful & quiet my every day life was & that I REALLY didn't have to fight to survive in life. It was an awakening to what being around "NORMAL" people actually was like without ALL the dysfunction I had lived around for 54 years. I had a computer engineering career & was around those normal people at work but my 24/7 home life I was always dealing with was always there in the background or foreground. When I left, it was gone or at least 2100 miles away even though I am still dealing with legal issues because of my EX.

It took therapy to put the pieces together & realize my angry (toxic) reactions were more NORMAL than they (parents & H) wanted me to think they were. Actually they all had similar related undiagnosed issues that when analyzed it made sense how I reacted. Could I have had better coping skills & not reacted in a toxic way?.....you bettcha I could have but growing up in all that dysfunction, those were the coping skills I taught myself. I learned better ones before going back there for a court case 3 years ago. I was afraid seeing him after 11 years would trigger the same angry/toxic response from me.....BUT IT DIDN'T!!!! I was finally in full control of my reaction & the conversations & I never allowed them to go in a direction that would create a toxic response from me. I also learned to walk away & it is ok. I don't always have to have the "last word" & that was usually where my anger & toxic behavior would want me to be. Getting in control of your own responses & behaviors & being mindful of how you are feeling like responding at all times is really the key to making the change whether you are the originator of the behavior or responding to toxic with toxic.....it works the same

I see that you suffer from depression and you are taking medication. What about therapy?

I have come to believe I was (and to some extent still am) a toxic person irl. It's part of the reason I now lead a mostly solitary life. (I consider it to be my gift to the world... or at least that tiny portion of it I inhabit.)

To be honest I haven't really found a way to not feel guilty about being a toxic person. Being older, though, most of it is now in the past; and I try to keep in mind that it's over-&-done-with and leave it at that. I also try to be mindful of the ways in which I have been toxic in the past & minimize the amount of new damage I do. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't...

If you don't like something about yourself, or feel that you are being problematic in relationships, you can change. It's called personal growth. You can't change anyone else, but you can change yourself. Try therapy. Try googling things. Example: if you're always arguing with someone, say, a particular person, and you find yourself being particularly hurtful in these heated exchanges, google "how to have a productive argument," or "'non-violent communication." Play around with the wording. You can also read self help books. And post here.

In terms of not feeling guilty, well, the fact that you feel guilty, means that you care and wish things were different. That's a good thing. Maybe learn more about self compassion / self kindness, and self forgiveness.

i think this is an important question. i agree with the other wise and wonderful posters that it is possible to change yourself and to seek therapy if you aren't already. Working on our flaws is a good thing overall i think. It is not easy to recognize if we are the bad people in a relationship but i think it may be useful to ask a third party who's not involved of course if one wants to get a bit of a clearer picture. i am not sure if that is recommended though and of course i don't mean that one should drag other people into it but ask for advice if that is needed. This is just my opinion of course. Sending many Safe, warm hugs to BOTH you, @annoyedgrunt84, your Family, your Friends and ALL of your Loved Ones! Keep fighting and keep rocking NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, OK?!

DBT in general is wonderful skills teaching therapy but the section "Interpersonal Effectiveness" was what taught me now not to respond in a toxic way to toxic people.... so it teaches EVERYONE how to relate in non-toxic ways

I believe that I'm mostly aware of my bad habits. Not all of course, but I know that my being very upset when someone breaks their promise can be off-putting. I notice these things when I reflect on what went wrong with my previous encounters with people. I used to hold grudges and seek too much attention and validation in those relationships. It's embarrassing when I remember my toxic behaviors in the past, but I've learned to see them as valuable experiences now.

Embarrassing is a good way to describe it. I have been the toxic one in relationships and it's sad to realize that years later. In a weird way, recognizing other people's inappropriate behavior helped me recognize my own. I have been a debbie downer in the past, negative, complaining. I try to limit that now. I want friends, not vent partners. Negative people attract other negative people, not in some sort of mystical way but just in a practical way - if I complain, then someone else will feel free to complain.


I took some notes from a DBT workbook that seemed to have a very good list of prompts for recognizing how our own actions contribute to distressing situations:

what happened in the distressing situation?
what past events led up to it?
what role did you play?
what roles did other people play in creating it?
what do you have control of?
what don't you have control of?
what was your response to the situation?
how did your response affect your own thoughts and feelings?
how did your response affect the feelings of other people?
how could you have changed your response to the situation so that it led to less suffering?
how could the situation have occurred differently if you had decided to radically accept the situation?

When pushed by toxic situations I can still react in a pissed off way but only some people push me to that point now that my glass is no longer full from what I dealt with in my marriage. However I find that the residual legal issues from that 33 year marriage 3 years after my divorce is making me less tolerant of stupid crap certain people cause in my life. I have noticed that I respond to their poor choices in a much more negative response the more they push my tolerance level after telling them over & over again. I actually hope that my responses to their behaviors make them miserable enough they will move back into the barn apartment instead of getting in the way of my taking care of my horse.