A topic we have never discussed is : TOXIC PEOPLE , in our work as dentists we usually have a great number of interactions with other people .In our clinic we deal every day with our employees and with our patients…on average in a month I see something like 200-250 patients and i deal everyday with my staff (10 people plus 2-3 more like technicians , financial consultants and so on ) .
Finished the work and , apart personal life like family , relatives , friends and so on , I have other several opportunities on social media to meet/discuss with other people and , in our case , even colleagues.
The reality is that , in every field of your life , you will have to deal with some people we can define TOXIC.
I’ve met several of these in my life (just statistic and big numbers at work !) and I realized that there are some traits in common that are helpful to identify these people . I will also highlight some strategies to deal with them .
TOXIC people are a wide category of people but they all share a feature : their behavior is designed in order to exploit , belittle , harm friends , colleagues , relatives.
They usually have a fragile ego , well hidden below a facade of aggressiveness , extreme certainty of their suppositions.
Their aim is to feed their ego BUT in order to do this , they need to push down other people . The game is easy : he wins , you lose and you or the whole world is blamed for everything .
They are often good doing conversations and doing complex reasonings to bring people to their position . They usually tend to indulge in long monologue and they are always strong and sure of their point of view. They are usually very good at exploiting sentences or actions of other people and use them at their unique advantage , their aim is just to show your ideas and opinions are absurd and stupid .
I read a book on this topic recently and I discovered that most of the toxic people share similar strategies in their life I am going to talk about .
-they look for small defects making them bigger in order to carry on personal attacks , the main point is that they criticize in order to destroy and NEVER to make people grow or improve ( a completely different thing and what we should do if we are NOT toxic people)
-they easily blame others and are prey of anger
-if they can , they try to threaten people, blackmail them or use other similar means ; they are able to use force of fear to make people follow them .
-Love -bombing : toxic people easily follow this pattern..they start developing relation with people with a high level of appreciation . Only after this stage they start their typical behavior attacking them . This is very typical in Love relation where he/she always belittle and denigrate the previous wife/husband .
-he/she often uses a paternalistic tone treating you like a small child or stupid person.
-One of the sentences very typical of these toxic people is : “You must be ashamed” , so when you listen at this ….beware of those!
-They look as much as possible for control and they will try to put other people in the middle in order to make their strategy more effective (look for triangulation for more informations)
-They are very good in circular reasonings, they easily try to move the discussion from the subject to the person with the attempt to destroy the person and not the topic ( this is very common in politics , like in the last US presidential ; the typical politician attacking the other one not for his ideas but the person himself).
During your life you will be often exposed to these people.Of course closer they are , worse is the situation . The worst option is when you have , of course ,a toxic wife/husband . This a very challenging one …but ,apart this hellish scenario , you will find yourself dealing with them often …may be an assistant in your office , maybe a collaborator , a patient , maybe a colleague or friend in your personal life . Nowadays with social network it will be very easy to deal with them even online….the best way to deal with them is to drive them away . Sometimes they will try to bother you and the best solution is just : IGNORE them . Don’t let them bring you back at their game , their diseased game .
If , for any reasons , (let’ s say you have a toxic brother …)you are not able to drive them away you have to minimize your contact with them and to recognize , in your interactions , that they have power on you just if you give credit to what they say .
Nobody has power on you , unless you give them that freedom .
If a very old man with advanced dementia would scream that you’re a horrible person , you would’t take their words as real but just think : Poor old mad man…..
In the same way , when you deal with toxic people and they attack you , you have to think almost the same. They are the problem , they have their problem , you re not the problem .
What is your personal experience and way to deal with them ?
