Calling Someone Else Toxic: Is It Healthy?

I’ve been taught to bring to my relationships honesty, respect, patience, understanding, compassion, kindness and forgiveness. However, calling someone else toxic has become common, and it seems to conflict with what I’ve learned.

On the internet I have come across memes like this:

And I feel sad.

Calling another human being “toxic” disturbs me to the core.  For so many reasons, this conflicts with everything I have been taught about being in relationships in a harmonious way.

I understand that these sayings are meant to encourage valuing ourselves enough to remove ourselves from situations and relationships in which there are consistent, harmful behaviours. I get that. In theory, it’s about learning to care for our own well-being.

Unfortunately, the “other people are toxic” attitude can backfire. In many cases, it misses a crucial point in self-care and emotional maturity: personal responsibility and accountability.

By definition, the word “toxic” is appropriate to describe the effect of behaviours that are destructive and damaging to our well-being. Physical attacks, verbal abuse, mental manipulation – all toxic behaviours.

But calling the person who commits the behaviours toxic completely ignores responsibility for our part in the problem.

It’s a necessary first step, but if the process stops there it isn’t healthy. It just allows us to blame others for everything without taking responsibility for our own insecurities and low self-worth that put us into the relationship in the first place.

Notice I say that behaviours are toxic, not the person doing it. Why? Because people make choices – even when they don’t realize they are able to choose differently.

There are four main reasons why I can’t buy into calling people toxic:

1. No one else is responsible for my feelings. Ever.

Someone else’s behaviour may trigger feelings in me. But I need to be absolutely clear: they are certainly not making me feel anything.

My triggers are my own. They are the learned stories, my core beliefs that have been formed throughout my lifetime, the filters through which I perceive my experiences in the world. From those stories my thoughts and feelings arise.  It’s an inside job.

These toxic people memes assume that if someone else leaves from my life, I will no longer have the same core beliefs and triggers in me, and therefore will live happily ever after. This is so not true, because no matter where you go, there you are. What I bring to the relationship is exactly what I will leave with.

When triggered or hurt by other people, it is not helpful at all to point the finger at them. It is my responsibility to look only at my own behaviours and correct them, without expectation that they should change for my happiness. To say that there is something wrong with other people but not me is an egotistical illusion. A dangerous one.

I agree that we may sometimes need to reduce or even terminate time spent with people who are acting harmfully to us. I completely support that. But to do so with a blaming, victimized mentality is not healing. When I am blaming someone else, I am not being honest about myself. I am committing the same offense as those whom I claim are toxic: I am acting just as disrespectfully toward them as I think they have been toward me.

I can choose to see the other person from a place of compassion instead: perhaps they have mental or emotional impairments which I don’t even know about. Perhaps their triggers are just as deep seated as mine. Perhaps they have never learned to act differently, or even know that they have the option. Perhaps they are just as hurt as I am. Maybe I am triggering them too! Because, you know, hurt people hurt people.

It’s all about taking personal responsibility. Regardless of my thoughts and feelings, and regardless of others’ actions which instigated them, I always have a choice of attitude and how I will act moving forward. Always. My choice, no one else’s.

Speaking of blame, I need to address this “normal people don’t go around destroying other human beings” thing. First of all, normal doesn’t exist. Secondly, these memes are almost always referring to relationships gone bad, not atrocities such as rape, war casualties, mutilation, or things of that caliber. So playing the “destroying other human beings” card over hurt feelings in a relationship is being overly dramatic, self-righteous and is not helpful. Hurt feelings are just that. They may feel devastating at the time, but seriously. Time for the big kid panties.

Important edit: If you are someone who is being/has been raped or is at the receiving end of abuse, I need you to know that you are not helpless or hopeless. I promise you, there are options. They may seem impossible right now, but I can tell you firsthand that there is a way to get help. It may feel like you’re being destroyed, but you aren’t. Trust me on this. You’ve made it this far, you’re damn resilient. Please call your local shelter or safe house – they are experts in helping people in exactly your situation. You are worth it. Please call. 

While we’re at it, let’s talk about the anchor/drowning metaphor. Funny, when I look at it in perspective, it’s not the other person who is the anchor that’s taking me down. The anchor is actually my own attachment (and sometimes even addiction) to my victimhood and blame. And I’m the one clinging white-knuckles to the chain.

2. Leaving a relationship or situation in which I am being triggered or harmed will not bring me happiness, nor heal me, nor make me a better person.

Leaving will simply alleviate the immediate stress and upheaval of feeling hurt, especially when the stress is chronic. This can be useful if done with a spirit of healing and wellness. However, it does not touch on the personal issues within myself that caused me to be in that situation. Leaving is only the tip of the iceberg, just a beginning.

There’s a saying, “If you’re eating a shit sandwich, chances are you ordered it.”

So, first I need to stop eating the shit sandwich. Then I have to honestly ask myself why I ordered it in the first place. If I don’t look at the deeper reason for it, I’m just going to come back and eat the shit sandwich again.

It’s not the chef’s fault that I have a shit sandwich. He’s just offering me his menu. He’s been making shit sandwiches all along. If I don’t like it, it’s up to me to stop ordering it, not to ask him (beg, plead, demand… whatever) to stop making them.

Once I forget about what the other person is or isn’t doing, take my own responsibility and stop eating the shit sandwich, I give myself the chance to see what’s really happening in perspective. To see where my responsibility lies.  Most importantly, not only do I stop eating the shit sandwich, I stop ordering it.  Eventually, not ordering the shit sandwich becomes easy and natural.

Even better, eventually I stop going to that restaurant.

3. It is not always helpful for me to leave all situations where I am feeling hurt.

I’d like to address this: I’ll never grow into my full potential until I let go of ALL the toxic people in my life.

So not true.

I relax into my full potential because of one simple attitude that is with me every day: show up to whatever comes.

Feeling hurt is an experience. Feeling anything is an experience – and an impermanent one, at that.  Happiness, sadness, frustration, comfort… they all come and go. And they’re all part of living a full, rich life.

It’s up to me to approach everything in my life with openness, not ego. Teachability.  Let go of my self-righteousness, self-absorption, judgementalism.

Then I will begin to learn and live in balance.

When I am committed to learning and growing together with another person with the emotional maturity to offer each other honesty, respect, patience, understanding, compassion, kindness and forgiveness, running away simply because my feelings are hurt is all dramatic and princessy.

And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when I watch myself get all dramatic and princessy. Yuck.

4. No one of us – me or you or anyone else on this planet – is any more or less of a human being in the end.

We all are made of the same flesh, we’ll all be reduced to dust in the end. No one of us is better or worse. We are different in thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions, but different does not mean less.

In relationship with another human being, whether it be a few seconds or a lifetime, it is my responsibility to bring the things I was taught to the table no matter what: honesty, respect, patience, understanding, compassion, kindness and forgiveness.

So, if I am to call you toxic, I must suspend any sense of compassion, patience or forgiveness for you as a human being. Suspend everything I’ve been taught about getting along with others.

Why would I do this?

Because I am able to judge and condemn you, see you as worth less.

And what is my payoff for doing that?

It elevates me, allows me to justify my self-righteous and angry behaviour, gives me the illusion of being off the hook for any wrongdoing. It allows me to pretend that I am a martyr/victim, free of any responsibility.

If I’m doing that, I’m justifying my own toxicity while condemning you for yours.

And that does not sit well with me. At all. Nothing can justify me calling another person toxic.

Nothing.