Toxic People Can Be as Bad as Cancer and It Has got to Go!

“Smile and the world smiles with you if you frown you frown alone” a simple saying that I was told my whole life. I had no clue what this saying truly meant when I was a freshman writing it on the board for the quote of the day because the teacher had forgotten to write a quote yet I felt the board needed her daily quote and since I wasn’t particularly smart that was the only thing I could come up with. It was a saying my mom would say to me when I would walk around the house saying, “I’m bored” and whine and cry because I wanted something to do. Not so different than I do now, meaning I still have ADHD and bipolar disorder and I still get really bored and whine and cry about it, only I am a grown up now. Today someone told me the same quote as I laughed about the fact that my smile is authentic, and I often keep a smile on my face these days even when facing depression.

It was about two years ago that I realized the need to cut people out of my social circle when they had a negative influence on my positive vibe due to the fact that the effect my moods because of me having bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disorder is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, and the ability to carry out day to day activities. I had made a good friend within a group of friends my husband and I had begun hanging around. She and I had started to go shopping on weekdays and go to lunch, sometimes her boyfriend would join us and it was fun at first.

I then started to notice she would get lost in thoughts about her relationship with him and that she would often time be lost wondering if he loved her or often times if he even liked her. On one occasion her and her boyfriend and my husband and I went to dinner and somehow I was very upset by the end of the dinner about another person within our social circle because of her boyfriend as we say “stirring the shit pot” purposely to cause trouble. On another couple occasions I started to notice how he complained about the service everywhere we went to eat or where he stayed if it was a hotel in order to get something for free or at a discount, nothing was ever done right or good enough for him and I finally separated myself from their friendship due to the negativity that came out of their mouths and the influence they had on my moods.

Everyone has a bad day. Everyone is entitled to a bad day. I am more than willing to give everyone the benefit of a bad day or a bad week. However, this was obviously his personality and she was a part of him and she was wanting to be with him and I knew I couldn’t handle him and his negative personality without it affecting me and my moods. I had a choice to make. My choice was clear.

I had to choose to not have that negative influence in my life. I can only have him in my life in small doses. I was sad to have to cut out my friend but I knew that it was better for my state of mind not to have the negativity in my life. Even having someone who is mostly depressed all the time as she was is difficult for me. If they have more good days then bad I can handle it but otherwise, I will find myself struggling to be their friend because it begins to bring my mood into a downside as well.

Last year I was given the opportunity to become a Certified Recovery Support Specialist which is something I thought I wanted more than anything. I have always wanted to teach others how to find their way into recovery. I still do. However, what I learned is there is a lot of times I would be given a client who was still not ready to be in recovery. They were still in the depression phase of the illness and they weren’t willing to do the work to get better. I struggled every day as I listened to them tell their stories and poured out their hearts and I would many times cry with them. I would leave my position every day feeling drained and overwhelmed. I quickly decided that wasn’t a job I could do. I could not handle that job. I wanted something that left me feeling good every day not leaving me feeling sad. Crisis intervention was not for me.

Again I learned that I needed to be around positivity in order to keep my self in a good mood. I have to keep my environment happy. Otherwise, I have a mess on my hands. What about you do you make sure to cut toxic people out of your life when you meet them? Do you protect your mind from the negative things that threaten it? How do you make sure to keep your mind safe from negative influences in this world?

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