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Default May 11, 2021 at 07:02 PM
  #81
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Originally Posted by eskielover View Post


Ah yes, we definitely have that idiom....."He nailed the final nail in his coffin"....meaning you blew your last chance.....or "that was the final straw that broke the camel's back"....lol.

Lol....one of my favorite Spanish idioms was "En boca cerada no entra mosca"....much nicer way of saying be quiet....lol
Yes, “en boca cerrada no entran moscas” is very funny. It would be in a literal translation into English, something like “ In a close mouth, flies don’t go in” (lol! Sure you would translate it better than me).
I wonder which idiom could correspond in English.

There’s another idiom in English I find a little rude. lol
Scaring the crap/ the $hit out of someone. lol!

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Default May 12, 2021 at 12:35 PM
  #82
Loose lips sink ships.
Such a cool saying!
I would definitely say this idiom to people who dare to talk bad about others.

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Default May 12, 2021 at 02:20 PM
  #83
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Originally Posted by AzulOscuro View Post
Loose lips sink ships.
Such a cool saying!
I would definitely say this idiom to people who dare to talk bad about others.
Yes, think that came from military...."don't give out information about our location or the enemy will torpedo our boat"

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Default May 12, 2021 at 02:28 PM
  #84
Yes along with “anything you say can and will be used against you”.
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Default May 12, 2021 at 07:21 PM
  #85
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Originally Posted by Open Eyes View Post
Yes along with “anything you say can and will be used against you”.
Court of law if not taking the 5th amendment to not testify against yourself.

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Default May 12, 2021 at 09:09 PM
  #86
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Originally Posted by AzulOscuro View Post
Loose lips sink ships.
Such a cool saying!
I would definitely say this idiom to people who dare to talk bad about others.
That phrase makes me think of the song "Loose Lips" by Kimya Dawson. Such a sweet and quirky song.
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Default May 13, 2021 at 09:26 AM
  #87
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Originally Posted by WovenGalaxy View Post
That phrase makes me think of the song "Loose Lips" by Kimya Dawson. Such a sweet and quirky song.
Lol! Yes, pretty quirky. I didn’t even know English could be sung so f@aking fast. 😆

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Default May 13, 2021 at 11:12 AM
  #88
Labeling is something many do as a way to describe an individual that behaves in ways that can cause problems or disruptions in an environment or group or relationships.

There are ways individuals develop behaviors that get them attention and a sense of presence that they feel provides them with getting their needs met. Human beings tend to use drama to gain attention. However without realizing it human beings tend to show reward when a young child stands out in terms of grasping knowledge and presenting charm and what is considered ideal.

This can create problems in that everyone develops differently. And it’s better to educate in a way that compliments a child’s true potential talents and learning how they learn. Many of these labels result from a child thinking they are not good enough when they don’t get everything right. When we expect some kind of perfection ideal we begin to teach children how to feel bad for what they get wrong instead of gaining pleasure from what they get right. Hence what begins to develop are self esteem challenges which starts to create problems in a child that can last a lifetime.

It is better a child learn to discover self because there is always something a person is good at doing. AND if that is discovered it can be used to learn many things that revolve around whatever it is a child shows an interest in.

For example I have a very old grandfathers clock that is late 1700s. Handed down in the family. It needs repairs and I found a man that has repaired clocks all his life. He was drawn to clocks since he about age 11. And he enjoyed tinkering with clocks so much that he became an expert. Truth is he learned a lot of things through this interest including history and math and how clock mechanics evolved over time. So learning to read was important and math became important and problem solving became important. And he learned how to earn a living repairing clocks which is doing something he enjoys.

It doesn’t matter if he got all A’s or learned Spanish or was perfect or fit into some ideal.

IMHO it’s this need to fit into some ideal that causes so many problems and disorders and self esteem challenges.
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Default May 13, 2021 at 01:27 PM
  #89
Been thinking about this....before we got the neat psych buzz words we would say the person is "just a JERK" or "what a FOOL" or "what an IDIOT" or "that was STUPID".

Then we were told those words weren't "nice" & "TOXIC" became a "politically correct" kinda neutral label....still a label & people still fill in their own interpretation of what that toxic person is to them.

Do all those labels apply to my EX?....You bettcha.....they are exactly how I observed him in & out of our marriage & I still do. ...but that is my personal view of him & others don't see the things I see or experience what I have experienced with him. ALL those labels are fitting for how he has affected my life. If others don't see him that way, it is their choice but sometimes ya gotta call things how you see them.

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Default May 13, 2021 at 02:08 PM
  #90
I can think of negative labels that go all the way back to the old country, lol!
“ farbissiner”, a great word that has no match in English— def:
adj. embittered, sullen, mean
n. sourpuss, mean person

I suppose that kind of person could now be called toxic.

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Default May 14, 2021 at 11:05 AM
  #91
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Originally Posted by Open Eyes View Post
Labeling is something many do as a way to describe an individual that behaves in ways that can cause problems or disruptions in an environment or group or relationships.

There are ways individuals develop behaviors that get them attention and a sense of presence that they feel provides them with getting their needs met. Human beings tend to use drama to gain attention. However without realizing it human beings tend to show reward when a young child stands out in terms of grasping knowledge and presenting charm and what is considered ideal.

This can create problems in that everyone develops differently. And it’s better to educate in a way that compliments a child’s true potential talents and learning how they learn. Many of these labels result from a child thinking they are not good enough when they don’t get everything right. When we expect some kind of perfection ideal we begin to teach children how to feel bad for what they get wrong instead of gaining pleasure from what they get right. Hence what begins to develop are self esteem challenges which starts to create problems in a child that can last a lifetime.

It is better a child learn to discover self because there is always something a person is good at doing. AND if that is discovered it can be used to learn many things that revolve around whatever it is a child shows an interest in.

For example I have a very old grandfathers clock that is late 1700s. Handed down in the family. It needs repairs and I found a man that has repaired clocks all his life. He was drawn to clocks since he about age 11. And he enjoyed tinkering with clocks so much that he became an expert. Truth is he learned a lot of things through this interest including history and math and how clock mechanics evolved over time. So learning to read was important and math became important and problem solving became important. And he learned how to earn a living repairing clocks which is doing something he enjoys.

It doesn’t matter if he got all A’s or learned Spanish or was perfect or fit into some ideal.

IMHO it’s this need to fit into some ideal that causes so many problems and disorders and self esteem challenges.
Yes, yes and yes.
You hit all the nails in the head as to what’s the best for a kid to help him develop self-confidence and a good self-esteem. It’s very important to accept the uniqueness of this kid. His nature. Leaving aside what is more convenient for us or what society expects and demand from us and our kids.

It’s so important, it has so much too do with the development of so many disorders and coping mechanisms good for nothing, neither for the individual nor for people around.

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Default May 17, 2021 at 05:36 AM
  #92
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Do all those labels apply to my EX?....You bettcha.....they are exactly how I observed him in & out of our marriage & I still do. ...but that is my personal view of him & others don't see the things I see or experience what I have experienced with him. ALL those labels are fitting for how he has affected my life. If others don't see him that way, it is their choice but sometimes ya gotta call things how you see them.
Same here - those labels, including "toxic", apply to my husband, in my experience of him. What the reality is for me in my own marriage, is his harmful behaviors began to erode my mental health, my self esteem and my sense of self. He also negatively impacted my physical health. I've come to know that he is not good for my health or my mental health. I was starting to unravel in many ways and I stopped taking good care of myself because of his toxic or unhealthy behaviors.

Perhaps another word for toxic is simply unhealthy. There have been people I've had to walk away from who have impacted my health negatively, so I've had to sever ties, either romantically or friendship-wise. To me, that's the definition of toxic, but I think this term can really be used interchangeably with unhealthy. At least in my experience, this is what it feels like. My husband is/was unhealthy for me - and that's why I've had to walk away and am now divorcing him.

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Default May 17, 2021 at 02:22 PM
  #93
Maybe it's a buzz word. I would call the people that traumatised me toxic for me personally, though. One of them is definitely who would get called toxic by others too, but supposedly it can also be subjective if based in incompatibility and being too close to each other despite the incompatibility, maybe. I don't know if I entirely believe that interpretation because I think normal, non-toxic people would still have the ability to take responsibility and change behaviours that truly affect the other person so strongly. Or if not able to change these behaviours, normal people will try to distance rather than keep contributing to a toxic close relationship. Normal people will try and figure it out objectively and in a constructive way too, not just wanting all the drama and stuff. They have boundaries and actual concern for how they affect others and so will try to get out of these things as soon as they can. I think truly toxic people have the toxic behaviours as a pattern throughout all relationships and interactions and it's not just sporadic mistakes that everyone can make. What can be individual about it is maybe that we all have different strengths and weaknesses so you can probably withstand some forms of toxic stuff longer than other forms.


I don't really like the word personally, for some reason, it's just so negative yes, but then I also don't like the word "abuse" and yet it exists....


PS: Someone mentioned toxic = mean. I don't think so, because some people can be very good at appearing like a good person but are actually subtly manipulative to exploit others. To me that's still toxic, and yeah mentally abusive too. The one person I mention above, she did have a cold mean streak she could easily use when tact no longer worked to get what she wanted, yeah. Less subtle. More stereotypically toxic.

Tbh not going to read the rest of the thread though, because I think it's too negative a topic for me.
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Default May 17, 2021 at 03:04 PM
  #94
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.

Last edited by Alive99; May 17, 2021 at 03:22 PM..
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Default May 18, 2021 at 10:55 AM
  #95
There are lots of things that can contribute to having challenges when it comes to relating to another person. It’s not as black and white as many prefer to use labels to make it easier to decide that a relationship challenge is the other person’s fault.

Getting into a competition with another person is something that typically spells doom for the relationship be it a coworker or boss or friend or family member or marriage partner. Once there is a battle involving personal self esteem it tends to result in both individuals not getting heard or actually experiencing a positive.

I know for myself that I have faced some individuals in my own life that have presented me with challenges that deeply affected me. I even have a thread that I started in this forum called “The Elephant in the relationship”. I have definitely been affected by individuals that developed alcoholism and I had to learn about that challenge to understand what I was dealing with. I also had to learn how that challenge tended to prevent that individual from maturing properly and how they used alcohol as an escape and coping aide so the communication was constantly challenged.

Yet I have also learned to respect the challenge an individual experiences when they realize how their addiction is ruining their life and make an effort to get sober and learn how to face challenges instead of using to cope or escape. Also having lots of friends that drink and party and often have problems is not really having lots of friends. Instead it’s basically being in a group of enablers. They are the ones that will keep your bar stool warm but it’s often more about enabling each other than being a true friend. Same thing when in a relationship where both have a problem. “He/she made me do it” is a cop out because IT IS A CHOICE. I have seen too many now that use the term toxic and abuser and yet do not admit that they themselves have a problem. And often they use this problem and the “oh poor me” as an excuse to ENABLE them to continue to abuse alcohol themselves.

I have seen people hit bottom and decide to get help. I have seen them stand up and state their name and announce they are an alcoholic. I have seen them be brave and reach out to others who will ENABLE them to get SOBER and learn how to finally grow up and face life without running to the alcohol. And they all know IT IS HARD. They learn to have different kinds of friends and have SOBER gatherings and they learn to walk away from the enablers that tend to have their regular hangouts.

I know that it is easier to just have a label. Yet often there is more involved than just a label. We cannot expect others to know our needs and tip toe around us. I know that can be hard as I often have wished others would understand my challenge. I am learning though that the person who needs to understand it the most is “me”. And I also know that is NOT easy.

I have learned how there are certain individuals that are not healthy for me to be around. I have been slowly learning why. There are certain types of individuals that are not healthy for me and I can’t expect THEM to admit their bad behaviors. Instead the best thing to do is distance as much as possible.

I myself struggle and there is a label for what I have PTSD. It’s taken me a lot of time to understand it. It’s been a lot of work to manage. I can be sensitive and it’s the nature of the challenge. Also lots of people have no idea what it means and may not be respectful. It doesn’t mean an automatic toxic or abuser. Truth is people simply do not know and it may be too complicated for them to tip toe around me because I can be sensitive.

Last edited by Open Eyes; May 18, 2021 at 11:35 AM..
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Default May 18, 2021 at 07:14 PM
  #96
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There are lots of things that can contribute to having challenges when it comes to relating to another person. It’s not as black and white as many prefer to use labels to make it easier to decide that a relationship challenge is the other person’s fault.

I've still not read the entire thread - I might never do so, because I feel like I got enough out of it yesterday - but I found some things in your post interesting. I think the situations you describe are real and existing ones in life.

There are other situations too though. So, I will present more of my side too to add more on some of those. It definitely helped me process more of my trauma (cPTSD), when I looked up this label this thread is about. Even though I've looked up other "labels" like "emotional abuse" and stuff like that before. It still gave me new things I didn't recognise before about behaviour patterns of people who drained me and caused me much harm.

You mention alcoholism and describe the challenges about dealing with such a person. And then you describe alcoholic people finally standing up and admitting openly to having a problem and taking responsibility for it. I liked the way you described that.


I've then translated that to other situations. For example the particular person that drained me (who was good at tact and diplomacy by default but had the cold, mean streak whenever she needed something). She had some undiagnosed mental illness. That would be one way to translate the situation of the alcoholism to her situation. Another way would be translating it to her toxicity that she had next to it/on top of it.


I took a very long time fighting with myself on whether it was a character problem she had or just her undiagnosed mental illness. E.g. her unwillingness to take responsibility and doing something about her negative outlook of things leading to her toxic attitudes and behaviours, including manipulative behaviours to exploit others. While I was fighting with myself about this, on the one hand trying to assume good about her ("it's just her mental illness", depression, bipolar depression, her isolation or god knows what else), and on the other hand trying to see if she did actually bad, immoral, harmful things, I was unable to move forward and accept the harsh, cold reality of what actually happened, including the worsening of the cPTSD itself (denying the emotional side of my cPTSD symptoms, being very numb and detached from them).


When I finally did accept the latter, it helped me, helped with dealing with some triggers, helped containing them, and not expose myself to further retraumatisation.


Reading your post on the alcoholic people, I really wished she and some other people I know (who I'd still like to pull up with me from where they currently are - they are not toxic people btw, that's the difference), would stand up like that and face their problems. I think I do not want to enable them in any way even accidentally. And I do respect how big the challenge is as I've also had to deal with facing how I developed mental illness, depression and trauma/cPTSD and how it affected me and everything. Because if you don't admit to it and don't go get outside help, it's just like alcoholism. To me it's just the same. This is not true of all mental illnesses of course, but there are some that I just see that way. Just because of my own experiences really. And while having toxic stuff is not the same as having a mental illness, this applies to that too.

This is all a really complex topic but my real point is just that the labels can be really helpful if they help face negatives in circumstances or in people, their attitudes and their behaviour patterns that we (at least I) try to deny the existence of. I used to try and deny it really hard.



Quote:
I know that it is easier to just have a label. Yet often there is more involved than just a label. We cannot expect others to know our needs and tip toe around us. I know that can be hard as I often have wished others would understand my challenge. I am learning though that the person who needs to understand it the most is “me”. And I also know that is NOT easy.

I have learned how there are certain individuals that are not healthy for me to be around. I have been slowly learning why. There are certain types of individuals that are not healthy for me and I can’t expect THEM to admit their bad behaviors. Instead the best thing to do is distance as much as possible.

I myself struggle and there is a label for what I have PTSD. It’s taken me a lot of time to understand it. It’s been a lot of work to manage. I can be sensitive and it’s the nature of the challenge. Also lots of people have no idea what it means and may not be respectful. It doesn’t mean an automatic toxic or abuser. Truth is people simply do not know and it may be too complicated for them to tip toe around me because I can be sensitive.
I don't understand how this links to the topic of toxic people. Do you mean with your PTSD you had a phase where you tried to label people too fast as toxic or abusive when you were simply very sensitive to common behaviours and attitudes of people, due to the trauma? I know what that is like, to be that sensitive, though I've got past a lot of it by now (thank god).

I think it's nothing to be ashamed of, if you had a phase like that, because with PTSD/cPTSD it's actually very normal to be thrown into this big chaos where the world/people are no longer safe and then your brain is on high alert to try and avoid danger and your mind and emotional brain develops these hypersensitive antennaes to detect every little thing that could be or is actually negative. Takes time to recalibrate.

But in my own case, this phase did teach me to recognise certain negative attitudes and behaviour patterns that I denied the existence of before. That was really helpful, learning about all that, all those negative things.

And yes, so it takes time to recalibrate and learn. I remember when I was in that chaos before, I felt like "what the hell is happening, I know this isn't how it used to be, people couldn't have suddenly all changed, what's going on, what's all this horrible negative stuff going on?" Things like this. I didn't label people, because I was overly careful with identifying the toxic stuff from the people that actually harmed and drained me very bad. But I understand the mindset otherwise.


And to get out of that chaos, yes I do agree you have to understand yourself the most. But I still think society could do with more education on human psychology, including what to think or say or do when around people who have active ongoing trauma/PTSD/cPTSD. I think it would contribute to making the management easier and would contribute to a healthier society on the whole. So I think it's perfectly normal to wish that others would understand our challenges with trauma. Even if not in some deep, detailed way, they could at least have a concept of what it really is, and an idea about how to approach it. (Same for other psychological issues, as far as it's reasonable and constructive, I don't mean getting overly involved in any of it.) It is a reasonable desire and it would definitely be helpful if they understood more. (Just like you did learn about and understood alcoholism more.) It's a long process of education though, I think. Won't happen right now, but it gets better and better every year/every decade. Look back at how psychiatry treated people with issues just a few decades ago. We've come a long way.

Last edited by Alive99; May 18, 2021 at 07:30 PM..
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Default May 18, 2021 at 08:41 PM
  #97
Actually when I had a post traumatic breakdown I got the wrong help so the challenge progressed and got worse. I honestly did not know what a post traumatic stress breakdown even was. I do now since finally finding a trauma specialist and spending a great deal of time reading about it.

As far as labeling is concerned? That was something therapists brought up and labels that were used in different articles and talks I listened to.

There will always be labels. Yet even with a label it’s still not black and white.
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Default May 20, 2021 at 06:39 AM
  #98
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Originally Posted by Alive99 View Post
I've still not read the entire thread - I might never do so, because I feel like I got enough out of it yesterday - but I found some things in your post interesting. I think the situations you describe are real and existing ones in life.

There are other situations too though. So, I will present more of my side too to add more on some of those. It definitely helped me process more of my trauma (cPTSD), when I looked up this label this thread is about. Even though I've looked up other "labels" like "emotional abuse" and stuff like that before. It still gave me new things I didn't recognise before about behaviour patterns of people who drained me and caused me much harm.

You mention alcoholism and describe the challenges about dealing with such a person. And then you describe alcoholic people finally standing up and admitting openly to having a problem and taking responsibility for it. I liked the way you described that.


I've then translated that to other situations. For example the particular person that drained me (who was good at tact and diplomacy by default but had the cold, mean streak whenever she needed something). She had some undiagnosed mental illness. That would be one way to translate the situation of the alcoholism to her situation. Another way would be translating it to her toxicity that she had next to it/on top of it.


I took a very long time fighting with myself on whether it was a character problem she had or just her undiagnosed mental illness. E.g. her unwillingness to take responsibility and doing something about her negative outlook of things leading to her toxic attitudes and behaviours, including manipulative behaviours to exploit others. While I was fighting with myself about this, on the one hand trying to assume good about her ("it's just her mental illness", depression, bipolar depression, her isolation or god knows what else), and on the other hand trying to see if she did actually bad, immoral, harmful things, I was unable to move forward and accept the harsh, cold reality of what actually happened, including the worsening of the cPTSD itself (denying the emotional side of my cPTSD symptoms, being very numb and detached from them).


When I finally did accept the latter, it helped me, helped with dealing with some triggers, helped containing them, and not expose myself to further retraumatisation.


Reading your post on the alcoholic people, I really wished she and some other people I know (who I'd still like to pull up with me from where they currently are - they are not toxic people btw, that's the difference), would stand up like that and face their problems. I think I do not want to enable them in any way even accidentally. And I do respect how big the challenge is as I've also had to deal with facing how I developed mental illness, depression and trauma/cPTSD and how it affected me and everything. Because if you don't admit to it and don't go get outside help, it's just like alcoholism. To me it's just the same. This is not true of all mental illnesses of course, but there are some that I just see that way. Just because of my own experiences really. And while having toxic stuff is not the same as having a mental illness, this applies to that too.

This is all a really complex topic but my real point is just that the labels can be really helpful if they help face negatives in circumstances or in people, their attitudes and their behaviour patterns that we (at least I) try to deny the existence of. I used to try and deny it really hard.



I don't understand how this links to the topic of toxic people. Do you mean with your PTSD you had a phase where you tried to label people too fast as toxic or abusive when you were simply very sensitive to common behaviours and attitudes of people, due to the trauma? I know what that is like, to be that sensitive, though I've got past a lot of it by now (thank god).

I think it's nothing to be ashamed of, if you had a phase like that, because with PTSD/cPTSD it's actually very normal to be thrown into this big chaos where the world/people are no longer safe and then your brain is on high alert to try and avoid danger and your mind and emotional brain develops these hypersensitive antennaes to detect every little thing that could be or is actually negative. Takes time to recalibrate.

But in my own case, this phase did teach me to recognise certain negative attitudes and behaviour patterns that I denied the existence of before. That was really helpful, learning about all that, all those negative things.

And yes, so it takes time to recalibrate and learn. I remember when I was in that chaos before, I felt like "what the hell is happening, I know this isn't how it used to be, people couldn't have suddenly all changed, what's going on, what's all this horrible negative stuff going on?" Things like this. I didn't label people, because I was overly careful with identifying the toxic stuff from the people that actually harmed and drained me very bad. But I understand the mindset otherwise.


And to get out of that chaos, yes I do agree you have to understand yourself the most. But I still think society could do with more education on human psychology, including what to think or say or do when around people who have active ongoing trauma/PTSD/cPTSD. I think it would contribute to making the management easier and would contribute to a healthier society on the whole. So I think it's perfectly normal to wish that others would understand our challenges with trauma. Even if not in some deep, detailed way, they could at least have a concept of what it really is, and an idea about how to approach it. (Same for other psychological issues, as far as it's reasonable and constructive, I don't mean getting overly involved in any of it.) It is a reasonable desire and it would definitely be helpful if they understood more. (Just like you did learn about and understood alcoholism more.) It's a long process of education though, I think. Won't happen right now, but it gets better and better every year/every decade. Look back at how psychiatry treated people with issues just a few decades ago. We've come a long way.
I think what @openeyes exposed has to do a lot with the topic. The more traumatised you are, the more broken you feel, there will be more possibilities that you tend to make a simplification of the world around you , in an attempt to feel yourself safer. So, we put labels to situations and people and we are gonna tend to focus on the negative ones part more than anything (bad, dangerous, unhealthy, con, fake...)
It’s a defence mechanism that it’s helpful when we are very little but that it’s supposed to be overcome when we mature. For a reason, this mechanism is waken again when an adult faces to a traumatic situation. Others never got rid of it because there were traumatised or something wasn’t wrong since they were kids.
For example, kids who were neglected, abused, etc.

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Default May 20, 2021 at 07:13 AM
  #99
Still I can’t see in which using labels can be of any help other than venting our pain, our disappointment, our frustration, our inability to accept when others’ behaviour or reactions don’t fit our needs.
IMO, labels says more about the one who uses them than about the person who is applied. In the end, everything we say and do, says a lot about ourselves. About the way we handle our reality at a point in time.

I don’t feel comfortable with labels. And the most part of the times, I don’t like them at all. And the used of a term as “toxic” as much as it can be considered a more politically correct term is even worse for me and I’m gonna explain why. Always speaking from my own point of view.

If I say that someone is “toxic”. I’m doing on one side, a futile act since it’s a multi-meaning term. So, I’m not saying anything.
This is in what a nominative way has to do.

However, there are more implications. Moral implications and psychological ones. Again if I used the term to describe another person I would feel bad because I’m covering the other person with a very shady label. Now it’s up to the free interpretation on the others’ behalf.
Much more, I would feel as doing something unfair when calling another like that without addressing the same term to myself in the first place since I interpret that we can all behave in a way that others might dislike or feel triggered by.
But, there’s more. And this is what I see as the nail in the coffin, describing most of people in your life with labels as toxic. This is not possible. There’s a pattern there. Maybe, we have to look at ourselves and see what’s happening. Are we being the owner of our lives? Are we putting too much responsibility on the other person or people? Why we are doing it? What I’m getting out of it?

I have put labels as anybody. You don’t want to know what I think of politicians in my country. lol!
Maybe I tend to vent less about others, because my worse labels are often addressed to myself. I think this is also unfair.

I think it’s factible to reach an agreement among people who are in this thread. When we feel as putting a label to somebody or to ourselves, we could ask ourselves why we are doing it. Everything has a reason. And maybe, if we find this reason, who knows...perhaps there’s a possibility to learn ourselves a little more.
I don’t know. What do you think?

P.S. I’m not denying that there might be people in our lives who we need to put a distance with. If I see that my partner is dangerous for me, I have to distance from him/her and I should be able to count with the entire society to support me.

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Default May 20, 2021 at 01:54 PM
  #100
I do think it’s important to understand one’s own emotions. I think what too many parents say to their child as normal childhood emotions emerge is “don’t feel”.

I remember a session I had when I was talking to my therapist and trying to cover a lot of ground in that session. I needed a sense of relief and I did not want the session to leave me feeling worse then I already felt.

At one point as I was talking about a challenging event my therapist gently asked me to stop and he said. “what you just shared is traumatic” and let’s just sit with that emotion. It made me realize how I was racing through bad events and not actually giving myself permission to just sit with the emotions. I realized how much I had unknowingly been encouraged to think my emotions were an inconvenience.

I had a discussion recently with a person that had a problem with hate. The desire to want someone dead is bad. What the true hate is about is how a person hates whatever another individual might be doing that is causing them to struggle in themselves.

IMHO the individual that engages hate is a very damaged person. It’s beyond useful anger, yes anger is useful and can provide extra energy to problem solving. But hate is not helpful in terms of problem solving and health resolution.

Hating makes a home in dark triad disorders. (Yeah I know I am using labels). However if someone goes along not understanding emotions and learning to identify them and sit with them and learn to find personal resolve that person may struggle with hate that can lead to many unhealthy problems.

The thing about growing up and maturing is that as we experience life and other people we also learn to develop more life skills. One thing I have learned is that not all adults have healthy life skills. I can look back and recognize the lack of healthy life skills in my own parents. And I can also see the impact that had on me. However, I also got to know my parents and I realized how their generational messages affected them. I also could see them come to realize things they regretted about themselves. They both made me realize that we all learn all our lives.

When someone says “I am an adult and I know better”? Well not necessarily knowing “better” in terms of “healthy”.

I have gone through so many challenges the last years of my parents lives that genuinely traumatized me repeatedly. I have relived things from my past that I had no idea I could relive. What I have been very slowly come to realize is how I unknowingly held onto emotions from my childhood caused by the dysfunction I witnessed in my own family.

That saying I see once in a while “we may not remember exactly what another person says but we never forget how that person makes us feel”. This is a very true statement. I think it’s important to learn about one’s self and how your family environment impacted you.

I had so many challenges with my older sister that I reached out for help for. The one thing my sister would say is she had no interest in looking at her childhood and that there was nothing back there that would help her. She kept saying how she needed to focus on the now. However, how she was handling the now was so horrible that what she failed to realize was she was drawing from her past in very unhealthy ways. So much so that she even frightened her own parents who were much too old and frail to deal with her.

Her behavior got so increasingly disturbing that it triggered me to start experiencing flashbacks. I definitely needed help to understand that. I shared everything I was experiencing. As a result in therapy I began to hear different labels and that I was dealing with a very disordered person. There is such a thing as toxic behaviors or dysfunctional behaviors. I heard NPD and BPD and just very disordered to an EVIL person that everyone was trying to avoid.

What I began remembering was one very angry child. And one thing that angered her was she hated having younger siblings. And while I was too young to know that, I did feel it.

This is something I cannot fix or change. And it’s been just one ugly life experience that had been going on for way too long. Sometimes the only thing one can do is distance as much as possible. It’s hard and yet even though it’s been so horrible I don’t hate her, nor do I care to punish or even wish dead. That would not bring me any personal pleasure. I only feel disappointment and sadness. There is no win either but instead doing my best to reach an end and walk away.

Not quite sure how to grieve it all either. I feel sad for her in that everyone wants to distance from her, everyone.

I may have used the term toxic myself. I don’t think the labeling will just stop. We are always trying to find words to describe behaviors that can affect us badly.

What is important is to pay attention to how we may contribute to problem relationships. To pay attention to what we ourselves do that may put us in a relationship scenario that will be unhealthy.

For myself in what I had to deal with in my sister was I had to distance as much as possible. It was very hard but anytime I tried to engage and be with my parents my sister would create some kind of unhealthy drama. And my parents got too old and frail to handle her drama.

It was very hard but she showed she did not even care if her drama upset everyone present including other patients and staff at different health care facilities.

Last edited by Open Eyes; May 20, 2021 at 04:35 PM..
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