Are You Toxic?

Let's get something right straight off the bat: Just because you may exhibit toxic traits does NOT make you a bad person or a bad partner. Toxic traits can be subtle and passive or they can be blunt and loud. Finding success and happiness in your life depends on ridding it of toxicity in as many forms as you can, and the first step has to begin with yourself.

We're all human. Nobody is the perfect embodiment of virtue and ALL people have toxic traits. Sorry, but that means you too. But when does it become too much? When does the toxic behavior outweigh all the good and drown your relationships? Being human means dealing with emotion and dealing with emotions can be a messy and chaotic thing. So let's talk about some toxic emotional traits that you can identify and start to negate so you can finally take steps towards the happiness you and the people in your life deserve.

Keeping score. This is something that I honestly believe everyone does on some level but can be extremely corrosive to any friendship or relationship. What do I mean by keeping score? It means building a mental log of all the times your friends or partners have failed to meet your standards or hurt you and using it as a base of comparison for your own actions. For example: In Junior High School, my best friend asked out the girl that I had a crush on the day after I told him I liked her. I held on to that for years and projected it into my opinion and trust of his character. I ended up sabotaging a potential romantic interest he had years later because it made us "even". This was toxic behavior. Years down the road and I still never truly let it go. In the end, the friendship didn't last because of the toxic behavior between both of us, but maybe if I hadn't kept that mark in my little black book and continued to add to it, things may have been different. This brings me to the next topic: Self-blame.

Self-blame is the bane of human existence. It's the root of so much anguish in our lives and can lead to depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts. It is the ultimate form of toxicity and while I likely should have saved it for last in this article, it's so important to discuss with you that I wanted to get it in early before I've put you to sleep with my ramblings. Life is chaos. The butterfly effect theory is one hundred percent real. The smallest choices can have the biggest consequences, and being the emotional yet intelligent creatures that we are, we have a need to find the source to credit or blame for these new changes. What happens when we can't find a source? Or maybe we love the source and don't want to damage them or their credibility? Or maybe we're afraid of the source and don't want to risk the confrontation? What do we do? We blame ourselves. We shoulder the weight of consequences that were likely out of our control and we bury it in the bottom of our souls. There it sits and festers like a disease that slowly bleeds into your thoughts and eventually your words and actions, whether or not you notice. This disease only mutates and grows as you are pulled into a relentless cycle of depression and contempt for yourself. You become angry at the smallest things. You withdraw from your circles of friends and your relationship. You'd rather sit alone than in the company of someone who cares for you. You lash out and blame others ironically for the pain you've chosen to carry. At this point, you begin to realize that you suffer from true depression. All because the toxic disease has taken control of your head. The only cure for this disease?

Forgiveness. But that can be hard can't it? After all, why do you deserve forgiveness when XY and Z are all your fault?

Because you are worthy of forgiveness and toxic thinking will do anything it can to convince you otherwise. Not only do you need to forgive yourself, but forgive those that have put you in this position in the first place. Forgiveness does not mean you ever need to trust a person again, only that you are no longer going to carry their burden of the mistakes they made in your life.

Find the strength to forgive yourself and you'll find yourself able to let go of these toxic traits and reactions. It's a slow and sometimes painful process but you deserve the chance to be free. Toxicity has the potential to exist in all of our lives at every moment with our decisions. Recognizing this and holding it in your mind will give you the control that you need to fight against it. You can still save your friendships. You CAN be that person you wish you were. You have the key to the cage. Just unlock it.