Tackling Toxic Relationships 101
Inside this month's issue, you will find a comprehensive guide to toxic relationships including how to spot them, why you seem to attract them, and how to navigate them safely
Toxic relationships! We all have experienced a toxic relationship at some point in our lives because not everyone is ready to face their own darkness and the trauma they endured so it comes out as toxicity.
I use to think if I can face my darkness and the trauma I endured, why the hell can’t they?
That wasn’t the most empowering or helpful approach for me. In fact, it actually caused me to contribute a bit of my own toxic behavior to my relationships.
There is an effect that toxic relationships have upon you that is not often talked about. It is the fact that when you have been subjected to toxic behavior in a relationship where you are supposed to be able to trust that person implicitly—think being a child in a family where a parent is bringing a toxic dynamic—you will adopt those toxic behaviors yourself simply to survive and because they are modeled for you.
This effect makes healing from and safely navigating toxic relationships that much more complex because you have to sort out what is yours and what is theirs. This is why in the YOU Aligned Academy the first module is all about your story and how that shaped who you are now and how you handle intense emotions, boundaries, conflict, and so much more.
My big tip for you when it comes to toxic relationships is to first look within yourself and your own coping mechanisms and default patterns. Where do you go when you feel overwhelmed? Do you fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? What toxic behaviors do you activate when you feel unseen, unheard, and/or attacked?
Building awareness around your own patterns will support you in taking radical self-responsibility for your own healing while giving responsibility back to those using toxic behaviors. One of the biggest signs of toxic relationships in the lives of the women I work with is they are taking responsibility for everyone else’s emotions and thinking it is their job to calm and reassure the people most buried in their trauma.
That is NOT your responsibility! Your responsibility is to do your own inner work so you can become consciously resilient to their toxic behavior…more about that in a moment.
What to do with a toxic relationship
Each situation is definitely unique because it involves two completely unique humans, however, some basic approaches will work in every toxic relationship. Here is my top three tips that work consistently for me and the women in the YOU Aligned memberships:
Distance yourself from and limit your time with people who bring a toxic dynamic into your life. This seems logical and simple, yet it is one of the most difficult boundaries to give yourself because people using toxic behaviors are demanding and don’t understand boundaries. They will press into your time and energy as much as you allow them to. This means it is up to you to keep them on the fringes of your life and give them very little of your time. This is a skill I am helping you build in a 3 day coaching intensive the Navigating Toxic Relationships Bootcamp taking place May 19-21.
Don’t engage as much as possible. Avoid getting wrapped up in emotional arguments. Don’t take the bait when they attempt to get a reaction out of you. Gray Rock the hell out of your interactions with them. This literally means give responses that are as interesting as a gray rock. For more on the Gray Rock method, click here for Dr. Ramani’s excellent video.
Add in the positive. This is something we forget because we are so focused on eliminating the negative. The more positive you can bring in, the less the negative will have an impact. Add more of what you love to do. Add more time with people who bring you joy. Add more people that desire mutual connection with you and that do not use toxic behaviors to feel safe and in control.
Now for a reframe on resilience…
Resilience comes in two forms: reactive and conscious
Reactive resilience is the flex you developed to steer clear of and survive toxic behavior thrown your way. This usually happened in childhood when an adult that was supposed to be safe for you regularly flung their own unaddressed trauma onto you in the form of control and manipulation. Control and manipulation is a way for people to feel a sense of being secure and safe because they are not ready or willing to face what was done to them and the darkness within them that accompanies trauma.
You essentially learned to bob and weave like a boxer to avoid as much of the toxic behavior as you could, however, it created a resilience that simply activates in a reactive way because your brain is wired to protect you. It isn’t very efficient or smart and reactive resilience can’t distinguish between truly toxic relationships and relationships where every once in a while toxic behaviors are activated.
This is where conscious resilience comes in.
Conscious resilience is just that conscious. As you look into your story, your inner dialogue, your default patterns, and the like, you build an ever-expanding awareness around who you are and how you operate or how you are wired. You become conscious of what is authentic to you and what is remnants of surviving toxic relationships.
Building conscious resilience means doing your inner work in such a way that you are no longer taken down by trigger moments and that you learn how to recognize when your default patterns activate so you are not pulled into toxic dynamics simply because they feel familiar to you.
Conscious resilience is seeing the potential or the actual toxic behavior from others and choicefully responding instead of frantically reacting.
Join my brand new coaching experience the Navigating Toxic Relationships Bootcamp for three days of learning what toxic relationships are, why you seem to attract toxic dynamics into your life, and how to become consciously resilient to toxic relationships and dynamics. Click here for all the details and to register.
Narcissism versus Narcissistic Behavior: A Quick Essential Overview
Narcissism is a term that is overused in our culture and that is why it is addressed in the Upleveled area this month.
Why is the narcissism label pulled out so often and in so many situations these days?
One, we are living in the narcissistic archetype as a collective. I know, that sounds very abstract and high level. Let me explain.
Basically narcissism is the blueprint from which our society is functioning right now. Insecurity and scarcity are driving the system to create two groups. One group feeds the ego needs of the other group. One group controls and manipulates the other group to feel powerful and secure.
This dynamic is so prevalent that it is familiar to all of us and it leads us to ask the question often, “Is this narcissism?” More accurately, it leads us to assume it’s narcissism.
Two, each generation tends to have a theme psychologically. This is my personal theory so take it or leave it and let me know what you think.
Let’s take the Greatest Generation for example.
The Greatest Generation went through World War II and were known to be patriotic, loyal, generous with their time and resources, in general, good humans.
In contrast, Generation X was the first generation that spent a lot of time in therapist offices exploring their story. Let me be clear, therapy is essential and when it promotes healing and changing behavior patterns, it is life-changing. The problem is Gen X (and I am a part of this generation) didn’t necessarily do the therapeutic work. Many spent time educating themselves through popular culture resources that brought about a lot of blaming of their parents and not much self-responsibility. This breeds the energy of narcissism.
NO! I am not saying Gen Xer’s are narcissists! Not at all!
What I am saying is with the advent of therapy accessible to the collective it is easy to get swept away into your story and trauma and never really ever move out of that story and what it did to you.
Add to that we are the first generation raised on screens and it makes for the exact right environment for people to lose a sense of who they are while blaming others for their unhappiness so they are always chasing a sense of self outside themselves.
So what exactly is the difference between narcissism and narcissistic behavior? That is the focus of the Upleveled area which you can subscribe to now.
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