I recently took a step back on my life and realized I had quite a few toxic relationships usurping my energy.
When I say toxic relationships, I don’t just mean romantic relationships. Friends, family, coworkers can all be sources of toxicity.Take for example that friend that always puts you down. The sibling that always comes to you if they need something, but are never there when you need support. The coworker that makes a habit out of pushing all his work off onto you but still takes full credit, making you look bad. The significant other that makes every difficult situation you go through about themselves.
It’s always easier said than done to remove yourself from a toxic situation. The closer these people are to you, the harder it gets. There’s feelings of obligation, loyalty, or even just a paycheck to be taken into account. However, in the long run, your mental state of being is more important than any of that. It’s a matter of setting boundaries.
These situations always start in a very subtle way, for example by gaslighting. To give you an example out of my personal life: I have always been very close with my family. However, recently some things started to change when they didn’t agree with some choices I felt I had to make for me. Even if it was the wrong choice (it wasn’t), I would need to learn from my own mistakes, right? They felt differently, accusing me of creating a wedge between family members, while in my eyes it was their choice to distance themselves from me because of my personal choices. Anyway, that situation had quite the aftermath, and I am now no longer in touch with some of them. Not because I don’t love them anymore, but because I cannot deal with the toll that situation took on me.
Another example that I’ve witnessed with a friend is how their significant other always had a way of making every bad situation (for example: a death in the family) about themselves, and on top of that trying to make my friend feel guilty for wanting to grieve. The worst thing about it is that the warning signs were always there. They’re just hard to recognize sometimes when you’re in the middle of it.
I’ve talked about my philosophy on the balance of putting energy into something versus the energy you get out of it before. This is pretty much what that comes down to. Some people in your life add nothing but negativity. And you know what, it’s OK to choose you. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them anymore, it just means that you can’t have them around.