Describing others as toxic people

I'm sorry for what you went through, but I would refrain from assuming what one person or another went through. I don't call the family member who tried to kill me toxic. I call him a monster. Same with my father. You could also call them abusers. But those are much more discrete descriptors than "toxic" in my opinion.

So you are indeed speaking to people who have been at the hands of others who tried to kill them, and yet still believe that calling people toxic is a label.

The sad thing in my case is that I can't even use this "label" to vent pain or even anger. How can you vent pain at all? I find that releasing anger in whatever ways doesn't remove a lot of the pain. Only a part of the pain was removed by anger and rage for me. Some of it was removed by reworking the memories, by understanding what even happened, how it happened, what these people really were doing, all the cold hard reality, and how I even got into these situations and relationships in the first place. That helped remove some more pain. All that enabled me to actually live the emotions I could not live on the spot originally, and that converted some more of the pain. And me finding positives afterwards also helped remove some more. A lot of the pain was really hard to remove overall, in the above ways, it took time, a lot of time, several years, and I still have some of it left. It's all affected me on a visceral, biological, chemical level. In several ways, not just by giving me lots of pain that took so long to drain. A lot of damage was caused overall.




There are objective behaviours, such as killing a person, that is plenty objective too. It's not just you thinking something that really says something about yourself. It's an actual event and action.




Agreed. Except, unfortunately, most of society doesn't really understand the type of damage caused, especially PTSD/cPTSD.





That therapist sounds good. My last therapist tried to shut down everything that could mean intense emotion.




I agree. I find hate very draining. I only like "clean anger" if you get what I mean. It's the kind of anger you mention here (i.e. useful for doing things).

You mentioned dark triad..... I'm thinking that toxic stuff often originates from pervasive hate too. Not all of it, but sometimes yes.



This reminds me of one of the toxic people I had in my life.

I also don't know how to grieve, or any of that. And yes, hate is too draining and I don't like it. I'm okay with just distance. Distance both internally and externally. No Contact.






Yes. I find it very important to be able to describe destructive behaviours in an accurate way. By going beyond just saying it's toxic - that category is good to call your attention to how it's important to deal with the issue, but you need to clarify further as to what behavioural and emotional patterns are going on.



I figured that one out for myself. I used to ignore negatives in people and repressed many of my own negative feelings too (along with too many positives too tbh). That was my problem mainly. When I was 18 was when I started to ignore the negatives to survive a difficult childhood and the positives just went underground together with the negatives. I never recovered from that for a long time and I lost much of my "compass" about people. And then I was also temporarily isolated (long story) and that made it worse, that made me more easily exposed to these manipulative and toxic people.


So basically those two things. Been hard work reversing them. Been working on these problems for almost a full decade now. As part of it, the toxic people stuff too. I've developed pretty good antennaes to sense the bad, overly negative and manipulative things. cPTSD gave me hypersensitive antennaes that sensed even the smallest negative things that I blocked out before (since age 18) and I had to tone down the sensitivity by adding the rational framework for the emotions and behaviours. This rational framework also enables me to set up boundaries asap if I detect problems. Keeping away from dangerous people and from many other negative people too. I feel so much better this way. I learned so many useful things that have already helped me in many ways. I've accepted much more of the bad side in people and in life. I've accepted the existence of these things. It's been very hard work.

I think I won't post more about my experience with toxic people. The one thing I personally find important to say is:

@AzulOscuro I understand what you are saying here and I do agree that such a phenomenon exists, like I said before. This is actually why I do believe that trauma processing is supposed to surpass the phase of simplifying people into negative labels. I've got personal experience with such processing and so I thought mentioning this issue is maybe useful or helpful for this thread's topic.

If someone doesn't process their trauma, then it could look like what you described about labelling and simplifying and I've seen that before. On the other hand, I think that identifying actually pervasive and damaging behaviour patterns - carefully and in a fair, unbiased and accurate way - helps stop us keep blaming ourselves and this contributes to healing. Without blowing it out of proportion either, and without trying to label everyone as toxic or as abusive, etc etc.

And because of this, I think that for your thread's topic it could be a valid and interesting question about how we differentiate between these two things.

1) There is the issue that you pointed out about how some people just label others too fast, which is extra sad when sometimes people feel like they have to do this to feel safe because of unprocessed trauma. (Bonus issue: 1b) Sometimes people may do quick labelling without being traumatised too)

2) And then there is the issue that traumatised people do experience real damage and where it actually helps such people heal if they stop blaming themselves, and instead name damaging behaviour as actually damaging, without putting blame and labels too fast on innocent people either. Without oversimplifying labels.

How do we make the distinction?

How do we move past oversimplifying and move past seeing everything as toxic or abusive even when it's not?

I feel like this is an important question and can be helpful to many people when this type of topic comes up.

It is a complex question so I can't answer it in detail in a short post. After trauma, in my experience, it requires lots of processing and learning and re-learning to recognise what is a pervasive pattern or an occasional behaviour, what is too extreme and what is just a mistake or a fleeting little conflict. Only much learning can help us avoid oversimplifying things.

I hope this thought helps someone, I don't know if I can add more. It's still a hard topic for me in general.

Wow, well I just had an experience that I won't get into details about, however, it was most certainly wreaking of toxic/unhealthy elements for myself having to do with people who don't know me whatsoever - literally strangers on the street.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Molinit Agree - "toxic" is the trendy word now. Used to be described as a challenging or difficult person.

Almost as trendy as saying everyone has bipolar when something crazy happens!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In my opinion, you made a great and valid effort to understand what this thread is about.
Yes, there must be a search for the truth, for the objectively. Because many times, we put out the blame outside. We can’t carry with more disappointment, we have already enough damage. I do understand it.
Also, the world we are living in is not very pleasant. There are so many spaces for prioritising the economical profits, superficial stuff and appearances, void feelings stuff that it’s not easy. But, most of people are like us, only they find themselves immersed in this spiral of insanity.
There’s nothing more beautiful and releasing than trying to understand the other person, be faithful and fair, accept them as they are.

My two cents.

The first time I heard the word 'toxic' as applied to relationships instead of chemicals was when Oprah pushed it out into the mainstream. At the time, I didn't hear it applied to people though perhaps it was, only relationships. So I've never used the term in regard to people. If someone is unhealthy for me, I remove them from my life.

I also want to point out that there are extremely dangerous people that no label can accurately describe. These are the ones who everyone says is just the nicest, most wonderful person who would never hurt anyone. Behind closed doors the mask comes off and the monster is revealed to their chosen victim. My own mother is the most violent person I've ever had the misfortune of knowing. It has taken decades of meds and therapy, years of EMDR sessions, and multiple trips IP.

I don't know, nor do I care why she is the way she is. The fact is, violence is always a choice. For what it's worth, I don't hate her. Like love, hate requires passion. I'm just indifferent. I don't see nor communicate in any way with her and she being elderly now, I won't be attending her funeral.

These people are very few. This is what I want to stress on this thread.

I’m trying to put the stress on what some people seem to find as an excuse to put the responsibility out there, looking for culprit or targets.
It doesn’t occur.
Before targeting somebody, you have to look at yourself first. To see what’s going on there.
This is my motive in this thread.

I don't know if people generally look for targets or culprits. Sure, some people like to blame others for everything and many people project their own issues onto others. This is a sub-set of our society that does this. Like an abuser may say that their victim is the abuser, when it's the other way around. I don't know if people who use the word toxic are necessarily doing this to look for culprits or targets. Bullies and abusers deliberately target certain people, yes. But I have found in my travels in life that toxic is generally used to describe something that is unhealthy.

Generally speaking, and in my experience there are indeed people who create unhealthy relationship dynamics - people who themselves are not healthy-minded or healthy emotionally. This does create what is often referred to as a toxic relationship. To me, toxic simply means unhealthy, and there are certainly many emotionally and mentally unhealthy people in the world.

The thing about putting the blame out is not an exception from abusers. We, all, since little kids have this instinct of manipulating or get rid of the compromising situations. Only, some people overcome this self-defence mechanism and change it for another more suitable with social benefits.

It’s up to us to get rid of our primary instincts and use our rational brain not only to overcome our primary instincts but the ones dictated by our social needs instincts as well.

So are you saying that generally speaking, people tend to project blame onto others, including claiming that others are toxic? I agree that many people in society project blame - yes. But in terms of the use of the word toxic, I don't find that to be the case. In my experience, when it's been used, it has been used to accurately describe an unhealthy situation.

Yes, in my opinion is a very human thing to notice and see the straw onto the other’s barn.
I agree with this of an unhealthy situation since it never put the spot on anybody in particular but on the concurrence.

I guess I am confused. Are you protesting the use of the word "toxic" to describe someone else's behavior that is unhealthy? Meaning, are you in general disagreement that people should not call other people's behavior as toxic or unhealthy? And that people should look in the mirror first before labelling someone else's behavior as toxic? I guess I don't really get where you're coming from. I find many people's behavior to be toxic for me - meaning, I become unhealthy-minded being around the person, and therefore, I choose not to be around people who are emotionally unhealthy for me, and I choose not to engage with people whose behavior negatively impacts my mental health or mental and emotional well being. I had one friend that I had to sever the friendship with because she definitely was toxic/unhealthy for my mental health. She dragged me down instead of lifted me up. To me, toxic means being around a person who feels like poison to your soul and spirit.

This makes me think of one more thing. So, you mention that only very few people are truly toxic like that.

And then somehow I thought of this question: What if someone was not toxic / doing toxic things originally but then they somehow change?

Would this be really rare too...if it's rare for people to be truly toxic, it must be a rare thing also to see someone change into that?


I would imagine that that is really hard stuff to process. That is, if that can actually happen. I don't know if anyone here has seen it happen. (I won't go into the details about my experiences though, this question is more general.)

That is another issue I was thinking of. Poison, that is a strong word but I think you did find a good alternative wording to define what is toxic. Actually, I think "toxic" specifically refers to the effect exerted on you (as the subject).

It doesn't even really say anything specific about the other person's personality, instead what it focuses on is the effect of the behaviour/whatever the person does/whatever's going on in the relationship. It points out how it *affects* you. In contrast, to me words like "abuse" point out the action itself. But that's maybe just my own personal view/interpretation of these words.

So this is the same you are describing, I think. And I do find that I have to avoid such stuff even more while dealing with trauma and depression. Because I take longer to clean it out than I used to, so that is why I have to pay so much attention to avoid all that for now.

What she is talking about are the real special snowflakes that run around accusing every other person of being toxic or a bully or an abuser and they take no responsibility for themselves. Funny how everyone them around is a bully, an abuser or toxic when the common denominator is them. But they go on pointing at everyone but themselves. A good long look in the mirror is what they need

Thank you @Alive99. And I agree. I think that most people who use this word are referring to the effects that another person has on them. And it is best to avoid the types of people who cause such feelings. I think poison is the perfect word.

In my life, I had one friend who blamed everyone else for everything and never looked in the mirror, yet she didn't run around calling everyone toxic or an abuser or a bully. In my experience, usually people who use these words are accurately describing the negative and unhealthy behavior of another person.

The fact of the matter is, there are plenty of abusers and bullies in this world. The world is full of them. Many work environments are described as "toxic" because of bullies and negative behavior. Many relationships fall apart because of abuse. This world is rampant with abuse and bullying. When an environment or a person effect one's mental health negatively, it is typically described as "toxic", which to me, as I said above, simply equates to being poisonous to your spirit and soul.

The OP said she is referring to just a few. I don't think it's the norm for many people to run around calling everyone else toxic, a bully or an abuser when it's them who has the problem. I'm 50 years old, and I've never run across such a person in my life, which doesn't mean they don't exist.

The word "toxic" when it comes to labeling people no longer has any meaning. The word "narcissist" is also being overused into oblivion.

One thing I know is if you repeatedly have these people who take advantage of you (whom you label "toxic"), then there is something about YOU that attracts them to you.

If you are 80 and have had maybe a couple of people in your life like that, okay, that is chance. But when you have a series of people you describe as "toxic" in your life, whether they're friends, family or relationships, then you need to do some digging into YOU to keep that element out by learning how to identify and take action to keep them out of your life.

Throwing names/labels at people does nothing to solve the root problem. People cannot treat you badly unless you let them. They can't abuse you unless you let them. They can't take advantage of you unless you let them. When you are healthy, you don't attract these people and should one slip past the boundaries by being a little less obvious, you identify and remove them from your life much earlier. Just calling people toxic or narcissistic without you taking responsibility for how they got past your healthy boundaries to treat you badly or abuse you is a victim type of position. Get healthy and these people can't hurt you.

Are you addressing me personally? You used "you", so I am not sure if you are speaking to me or to the general "you" meaning, the public.

I have been a victim of many abusers and toxic types of people including bullies. I am an extremely nice person to a fault. For most of my life, I have had a people pleasing nature and am very open and friendly, which has invited abusers and bullies to take advantage of my good nature and of my good heart. And I have been far too nice to most people and to many who don't deserve it, which has allowed me to be taken advantage of or abused But to sound blaming towards people who often fall victim to abusers and to toxic types of people such as bullies in my opinion is just plain wrong. Get healthy and people won't abuse you. I agree with this to an extent, and I am personally working on that in my own life. But your tone sounds very negative towards those who have bean abused and bullied repeatedly. As though it's their own fault. And that I disagree with. Again, there are toxic people everywhere. And the nicer people tend to be the victims of toxic people the most, and those who were abused in their childhoods, such as myself. But now, as a result, I am not as nice, open or friendly and I don't trust many people anymore. I have become far more cynical as a direct result of all the bullying and abuse I have experienced. It hardens and sobers a person right up. People who were abused in their childhoods tend to become the victim of abuse in adulthood. It's not the victim's fault for developing into someone who doesn't have strong boundaries or self esteem. It takes years to heal from abuse, and it can take years to develop strong boundaries and a wall so that people can no longer hurt you.

While I know there are people with particular personalities who are prone to blame the other guy when the problem is within themselves, the problem is in generalizing that anyone describing someone else as toxic is doing that. Generalizing (in general - LOL) is a bad habit. But I find most people I've personally run into (not generalizing here - actually working from specific personal examples) who have a person in their life who is genuinely dangerous for them/ toxic for them (whatever term they use) aren't using that term except for one particular individual in their life - and those "toxic" individuals tend to be highly abusive, narcissistic, manipulative SOB's and the use of "toxic" to describe them is probably kinder than those "toxic" individuals deserve.

What I'm hearing is that there is a minority of people who use excuses to deny their own responsibility and project it on to others. I agree.

I've never targeted anyone. Being mentally ill, we are statistically more likely too be the ones targeted. I was. Looking at myself. I see someone just doing the best she can in spite of it all.

Sounds like you don't really understand how it is for people who have much personal experience with this. I say that because it's a lot of oversimplification with the idea that it's just about labelling and avoiding solving the actual problem. Why would the two be mutually exclusive anyway? It would be nice if the biggest problem was just labelling in those cases, anyway. No, the biggest problem is far bigger than that. Trauma, PTSD, cPTSD is no joke either. And so on.

I'm actually finding it an interesting question lately as to what percentage of the population is toxic people. It doesn't seem like a high percentage, but it's unfortunately higher than it should be, according to my understanding. They are definitely not the majority of people (thank god for that), but it seems like, you can still run into them pretty easily. Not on a daily basis, but still it's something I've really had to toughen up about to make sure I don't get affected by any of them. Because it does just happen more often than I would like it, even once or twice every month is too much, I have only one life and I don't want to waste time on such interactions.

So, of course, I totally agree that keeping them away is what's most important. No engagement whatsoever.

My sister's husband is one of them. That one isn't going away, unfortunately but I do avoid him as much as possible (luckily I don't actually have to meet them).

And then the most important comments I wanted to make about your post. I am going to call a spade a spade, if you are not okay with hearing about the negative side of life, you do not have to engage with this. But I want to put this out there in case someone hears it and it helps them recognise and avoid such negatives more effectively.

It is a misconception that people cannot treat you badly or abuse you unless you let them. Now, if there was psychoeducation available to everyone right from elementary school, I could then perhaps agree with you. But as things are now, no. Definitely do not agree.

So, it's just a theory that you have to get healthy and then you'll be OK and that there won't be any problems for sure. I feel like it's a theory that skips over some of the actual evidence. It would be nice if it was that simple.

Again, it just doesn't work like this though. It's not like "should one slip past the boundaries by being a little less obvious". Nope, unfortunately. I don't know if you've spent much time with truly manipulative people in a close relationship, people who are anything but straightforward, people who know what specifically to manipulate about you. To make the manipulation just that much more effective. It's not about being a "little less obvious", that's a vast oversimplification unfortunately. I do wish life was that nice without any dark spots in it.

This has nothing to do with a victim position, either. This is simply about calling a spade a spade. Admitting that life has dark sides instead of trying to escape them and their existence. Since that's how I originally became a target. A long time ago, I refused to believe that there can be those bad things but they do exist. And that knowledge helps me avoid such people in future.

The other big misconception in my opinion is the idea that healthy people cannot be approached by people with less than nice intentions. That in my experience is very much a misconception. I was friends with someone, who was a well-adjusted, healthy, positive, optimistic, strong woman. Yet her boyfriend traumatised her as he turned out to be a psychopath pretty much - She got PTSD from the whole experience, of course.

How he got to her? So she was not feeling very well and was vulnerable when he found a way to get her trust and exploit her eventually. He pretended to be this nice, attentive person, supportive of her in her troubles, of course. I could go on but what's the point?

In general also, there are tactics to make someone who was originally healthy, well-adjusted, not co-dependent by nature at all, to be vulnerable, emotionally confused, messed up, "crazy," dependent and so on. Read up on trauma bond, too. Things like that exist.

So. It's not like healthy people cannot ever be vulnerable to anything. That again has nothing to do with claiming to be a victim.

It can be hard to face the thought though of course, that you (general you) could have vulnerabilities that manipulative people could exploit intentionally or they could even create vulnerabilities or deepen existing vulnerabilities, or that other toxic people could even unintentionally engage with these vulnerabilities. But admitting that such things exist does not mean taking or endorsing a victim position whatsoever. It is simply not denying the dark side of life and being prepared to deal with it instead. Preferably, deal with it by recognising these things ASAP and avoid engagement, and/or keep up very hard boundaries if engagement is required to some extent. Both internal and external boundaries. Which may take time to learn but that's perfectly normal too if things take time to learn.

To me, this is what taking responsibility is about. Accepting that these things happen, that it is normal in the sense that it does exist, it did happen and it says nothing about you personally; that it's true even if you were healthy before, even if you were never abused before, that it doesn't mean something is wrong with you, that it doesn't mean something was defective about you, NO, it's perfectly normal to have some vulnerabilities, even hidden ones, hidden to yourself even, blind spots, and the like. Recognising them, accepting these facts, that is what taking responsibility means to me.

And the other side of this is what I already mentioned, is that life is full of hard sh**, and that enough (too many) manipulative, toxic or even abusive people do exist and that you do have to recognise them, not be a pollyanna or believe in niceness so much to the point of becoming naively idealistic. It would be nice. But we can't afford to just be naively idealistic. Unless you (general you) are really lucky and you live a sheltered enough life or otherwise have ideal living circumstances.

This is much like going to the doctor when you know it's advisable to get checked out even if you feel like there is nothing "wrong" with you. It doesn't make you a victim if you are willing to go to the doctor and get the label for the problem and then get a treatment after the label identified the problem.


I could go on and on but... I think I've said all I had on my mind after reading your post.

Anyhow. All this is not just based on my own experiences. There are many articles, resources on this topic, including how manipulative people can find even the healthy well-adjusted people, and how some of them specifically like to target such people, to try and tear them down to exploit them that much more effectively, and so on and so on. I suggest you read up on it, if you want to understand it more deeply.

I think if someone has issues with people they know in real life who claim others are toxic for no reason, they need to address it with those specific people they know.

Otherwise it becomes very generalized and is clearly upsetting for some people who had unfortunate encounters with dangerous, violent or plain mean people.

Yes some people project and don’t look at themselves first. But we cannot claim that everyone does that or that everyone is targeting others if they say someone is toxic.

I like what one poster said that lots of people with mental health issues are targeted and ridiculed. So if they want to protect themselves from mean people, it doesn’t mean they are projecting or not looking at themselves. It means they are looking out for themselves. They are within their rights to do so

There is SO much wrong with this . . .