What is toxicity and how to deal with toxic people. Blog #7
We are cells
A cell can either protect or grow. If we look at a cell through a microscope and we put a toxic agent next to it it will move away from it. It will protect itself. If we put some food next to it on the other hand it will eat it. It will grow. A cell can only either protect or grow at one time.
When it comes to people or situation it is the same. We all understand intuitively that we must protect ourselves from toxicity and we all want to grow, to be and feel better. So how come so many of us still allow toxicity in their life ?
What is toxicity ?
Anything that impacts us positively and empowers us is beneficial and help us grow. Anything that impacts us negatively and disempowers us is toxic and we must not allow it to attack us.
A problem is always the consequence of a discrepancy
Most cultures promote the sanctity of family and society. Unfortunately, although the concept of it and its original motive are noble, the human nature mixed with the intricacy of the Universe make those dangerous laws double edged and create many problems for so many of us.
The dogmas teach us to believe for instance that :
-If I leave him/her I am a failed husband/wife
-If I don’t stand by my family I am a bad son/daughter/brother/sister
-If I am disloyal to my people I am a bad person
Our natural instinct of moving away from toxicity is then shortcut by a deeper and much more powerful survival instinct, the inherent need for us to belong to our own kind. We must have a place in the tribe and feel safe within it. We can never suffer rejection from the tribe.
Our beliefs make us and rule our life
And we end up prisoner and victim of the toxic beliefs invented by archaic and dysfunctional societies as we stay with the wrong people for the wrong reason. We suffer from the dilemma of having to choose between feeling safe (in the tribe) or feeling happy (breaking the rules and risking rejection). Doing the right thing for others or doing the right thing for us.
The ugliest representation of that discrepancy is parents who turn their back on their own children because there is something about them shunned by their society. Gay people and disabled children in many cultures are the perfect example of this. There are even parents who have no qualm hiring people to execute or throw acid on the face on their very own children because they are not conforming to the laws of God/society.
On another level of intensity many of us feel conflicted suffering a loveless relationship, hanging around with a disempowering crowd out of blind loyalty or staying at a soulless workplace because someone they looked up to told them one day it was a good thing to do.
Choose love
When it comes to people I always tell my clients there are billions of us on the planet and only two types of people in the world as far as our well being is concerned : people that lift us up, believe in us, give us support, love and time, and the others. People who are either toxic to us versus people who empower and help us grow.
And because none of us is the centre of the world we want to remind ourselves that it goes both way. We can be just as toxic to some than some are to us. Is it paramount to highlight how toxicity only creates more toxicity either way, so we must stop nurturing it from the inside out as much as we must stop allowing it from the outside in.
The power of mindfulness
Between us and toxic people/environment we must create a space. Between us and what others say or think we must create a space. Between us and our reactions we must create a space. Between us and the self negative talk we must create a space. We must use that space to either keep away from or disarm all toxicity before those things reach us. It is that simple and very effective.
There is one type of toxicity however we can’t create a space to foresee it coming or keep it a bay, they are the toxic beliefs. Because our beliefs are the very filters from which we experience the world through they account for producing the most toxicity in our life.
It takes 2 to tango
Many of my clients come to me because they seem to constantly attract bad people into their life and never be able to be in a loving lasting happy relationship. In hypnotic regression we always find out that their parents created hurt one way or another. As adults they go on to seek partners who are abusive like their Mum or Dad were to them or each other, in a subconscious bid to change them. And if the partner is not full on abusive at first, their energy will feed that dynamic so it proliferates gradually like an infection.
Even though they well understand they can never go back into the past, their inner child seeks closure thinking“if I can change him/her that would mean that it was never my fault…”
The power of Rapid Transformational Therapy
As an RTT coach self sabotage is one of my 5 specialisations. Allowing and nurturing toxicity is a manifestation of self sabotage.
The sooner we realise it is our beliefs that allow toxicity in our life, the sooner we can take action and address them. RTT removes negative toxic beliefs and replace them with empowering better ones instead in as little as one session.
If we believe there is nothing we can do to make our life better we will not take action and our life will suffer from it. We want to confront our beliefs, challenge them and construct a belief system that works for us as opposed to a belief system that works against us, one that stops allowing toxicity and allows growth, potential, love and purpose instead.