If you’ve ever been in repeated conflict or unhealthy patterns, you might have asked yourself, “Am I toxic?” Toxic behaviors are developed as a survival technique and aren’t always on purpose. So how do you stop?
As a mental health therapist, I am always helping people both identify their toxic patterns and have empathy for themselves in the process. Having toxic patterns doesn’t always make you a bad person, and it IS possible to live in a healthier way. This post is ALL ABOUT answering the question, “Am I toxic?”
Understanding Survival Skills
As children, people begin to develop coping mechanisms, or survival skills, to exist in their current reality. Unfortunately for many, their childhood reality is unhealthy or unsafe. Children are typically powerless to escape a painful reality, so they subconsciously create survival skills to manage. These survival skills often stay with people until adulthood, even though they are probably no longer necessary. Understanding your subconscious survival skills can help you recognize where they came from, how they might be harmful to others, and how to get your needs met in a healthier way.
These survival skills don’t always develop from childhood but can develop later on due to adult experiences that make you feel unsafe, such as an abusive relationship or bad work environment.
Below, I will go over some of the most common unhealthy survival skills and strategies to change them.
Stonewalling
Stonewalling is the act of emotionally withdrawing or shutting down from a person you are in relationship with, typically during a conflict or an argument. To the other person, it may appear as if you are punishing them by refusing to maintain an emotional connection. However, you are likely just feeling overstimulated or overwhelmed.
Stonewalling is a survival skill that helps you shut down when you are emotionally overloaded, allowing you to check out from what is happening and essentially protect you from these unwanted emotions or thoughts. This may help temporarily, but in the long run, it can damage both you and the person you are in relationship with.
It’s important to process emotions and repair damage in relationships. Practice taking breaks when you are feeling overstimulated, and calm down with a walk or with deep breathing. When you feel regulated, return to the conversation to process feelings. It can also be helpful to journal about your feelings during the break.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is one of the main things people are accused of before they start wondering, “Am I Toxic?” Gaslighting is a term that was originally used to describe a behavior in abusive relationships, where the abuser would make the victim feel crazy by twisting reality around and invalidating the victim’s experiences.
If you’ve been accused of gaslighting, and you’re not doing it on purpose, it’s likely that the person accusing you is feeling invalidated. When you accidentally gaslight, it means that you are refusing to acknowledge another person’s reality, likely due to internal shame and defensiveness around what you believe to be true. (I.E. “I believe I am not bad, so I can’t have hurt someone.”)
For example, if you accidentally hurt your friend’s feelings, and they confront you about it, gaslighting would be denying that what you did should cause them to feel anything, tell them that what they’re feeling is an overreaction or all in their head, or denying that you did the thing that they are confronting you about.
Instead, try taking a step back and being curious about what the person is saying. Reality is subjective, and even if you didn’t mean to hurt someone’s feelings, you still may have. You don’t have to take accountability for something you didn’t do, but you can take accountability for causing pain, even unintentionally.
Frequent Requests for Reassurance/Validation
If you have found yourself frequently asking for reassurance or validation, even when there is no proof that anything is wrong in the relationship, you are likely struggling with anxious attachment. Anxious attachment means that, deep down, you are worried that you are not good enough to keep relationships, or that people will leave you. This usually stems from childhood but can also be developed in adulthood after relational trauma.
When you constantly ask for reassurance or validation, you can unintentionally send the message to the other person that what they are doing isn’t good enough to make you feel secure. This may have the unfortunate consequence of driving the person away, which is the exact thing that the behavior is trying to avoid.
Instead, try and work on checking for proof that the relationship is going well or that you are worthy. Being able to identify this proof will help you soothe yourself and reduce the need for reassurance.
Anger Outbursts
Anger is an emotion that serves the purpose of protecting you. Protecting you from people, from other emotions, from traumatic memories. Whenever you feel angry, your likely not feeling all of the other feelings, like sadness or hurt, that are hiding underneath. Click here for a meditation on calming anger.
If you are having anger outbursts, and it causes you to act out of character, it means that there are other things being triggered that your body is trying to protect you from. It would be good to explore, when you are calm, what those things could be. Are there legitimate problems in your relationship that need to be addressed? Is there past trauma that is being triggered? Whatever the issue is, the anger likely won’t go away until you reflect and repair what is underneath.
Click here for the Best Strategies to Reduce Anger.
Drinking/Drugging
Drinking and drugging, when they are not used for recreation, are typically used as avoidance techniques to reduce unpleasant feelings, memories, or thoughts. When drinking and drugging becomes an addiction is when you are experiencing negative consequences from the behavior but continue to do it anyways. Click here for a video on Treating Addiction through Attachment Theory.
If you notice that you are using drinking and drugging as an avoidance technique, there are two things to start practicing. First, you will want to explore what it is you are avoiding. You can do this through meditation, journaling, or talking through it with others. Second, you will want to build up you distress tolerance, meaning, start learning skills to manage and experience discomfort, rather than avoid it.
Chasing
When you engage in chasing behaviors, it means that you lean in harder when people pull away. This is a normal response to a perceived threat in a relationship, to attempt to re-engage when someone appears to disconnect from you.
However, you’ll probably start asking yourself, “Am I Toxic?” when you are doing this in an extremely anxious state and not feeling a resolve. Chasing starts to become unhealthy when you begin to feel panicked at natural breaks in relationships and don’t allow the other person, or yourself, space to regulate.
This typically comes from having an anxious attachment style, meaning that at the core, you believe that people will leave and not return. This anxiety could stem from childhood experiences, or it could stem from problems in the current relationship. Either way, it is good to explore that anxiety. In the meantime, practice self-soothing when there are breaks or some distance in relationships, allowing space before re-engaging with the person.
People Pleasing
People pleasing can be hard to detect on the outside, because other people will probably give you positive feedback. When you people please, you are changing your own desires or decisions based on what you believe other people want. Temporarily, this can help you get connected to people and reduce conflict in relationships. Long-term, this is not sustainable, because you will begin to feel internal conflict or resentments in relationships.
People pleasing also comes from an anxious attachment, where deep down you are worried that people will not like you or leave you. In order to keep connection with people, you let go of your own values and boundaries to maintain the relationship.
In order to recover from people pleasing, you will need to create experiences where you set boundaries, speak your truth, or just be yourself, and see what happens. You will either prove to yourself that people will stay anyway, or you will learn that some people might leave, and you can survive that happening.
Narcissism
Having narcissistic traits is not the same as being someone who is diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, but some behaviors may look similar. Though the term “narcissist” gets thrown around quite a bit, definitionally, what it means is someone who is focused mainly on admiring themselves. Externally, this may look like someone who is self-boasting, expecting praise from others, and may even see and treat others as inferior.
Internally, it can be hard to recognize that you have these traits, because part of the problem is the inability to see from other people’s perspective. Some indicators that you may notice are frequently feeling frustrated when you are not getting the praise you feel you deserve, feeling like other people are less than or not intelligent, or receiving negative feedback from others that causes you to get defensive.
This trait is a strong defensive mechanism that results from internal shame. Narcissistic beliefs and behavior prevent you from recognizing your flaws and therefore avoid the shame associated with these flaws. Most people with these tendencies didn’t receive praise in childhood, or only received praise based on achievements.
The first step in changing out of narcissistic patterns is to recognize that reality is subjective and other people may be experiencing things differently from you. Begin practicing viewing reality from other people’s viewpoints. Ultimately, the goal would be to accept and acknowledge your flaws, so that you can reduce shame around them.
Attention-Seeking
I prefer the term, “connection-seeking,” because really, that’s what is at the root of this behavior. When you are engaging in behaviors that would be considered attention seeking, you are likely trying to receive connection, validation, and to feel good about yourself. All of these desires are normal and natural but become a problem when they are requested in a way that is unhealthy.
Yes, it is normal to want connection and validation from others. However, there should be a healthy balance of self-validation as well. If you find yourself engaging in attention-seeking behaviors, it likely means that you have difficult with feeling secure in yourself or believing that you can get connection in a healthy way.
To work on this, start by focusing on building your self-worth. Practice journaling for mental health or start your day writing down a list of things you like about yourself. Additionally, practice acknowledging when you receive connection in a healthy way, like spending quality time with friends.
Manipulation
Manipulation is a behavior that happens when you intentionally or unintentionally mislead someone to behave in a way that benefits you. It IS possible to do this subconsciously, so you may need to explore if this is something you engage in.
Oftentimes, manipulation is caused by anxiety, and the things you manipulate people to do are a way to soothe or avoid that anxiety.
For example, if you are anxious about going somewhere alone, and you use techniques such as guilt-tripping or coercion to get someone to come with you, it would be considered manipulation.
Other times, manipulation is a way to make you feel in control. This typically is caused by a history of feeling powerless or out of control, and being able to get someone to do what you want, helps you feel more powerful.
Ways to shift out of this behavior are to find replacement strategies that are less harmful to others. (Even if the manipulation doesn’t cause direct harm to the person, it can still harm the relationship or the person’s sense of self). An example of replacement strategies for anxiety is these CBT techniques (click here). Replacement strategies for feeling powerless would be to increase areas of power in a healthy way, like learning to make requests from people or setting boundaries.
Dishonesty
“Am I toxic if it’s not hurting anyone?” This is a question I hear a lot when it comes to dishonesty or chronic lying. Sometimes, unhealthy behavior feels justified if it seems like it’s being done for the right reasons, such as avoiding harm or conflict.
However, if you’ve gotten into the habit of lying to avoid conflict or discomfort, then you have likely noticed that it is a hard habit to break, even if telling truth wouldn’t cause that much of a problem. Lying is harmful to others for the obvious reason of trust, but can be harmful to yourself because you can start to lose your sense of self and start to feel disconnected in relationships.
At the core, lying comes from fear of what would happen if you told the truth. Maybe the truth would make you feel shame, maybe it would make others feel mad at you, or maybe it would result in loss. The trick to reducing lying is to start calling yourself out when you do it, and start practicing telling the truth, even if there are consequences. Eventually, your brain will recognize that you have the skills to manage discomfort and conflict, and telling the truth tends to have more reward in the long run.
Projecting Blame
Projecting blame serves a very similar purpose to some of the other survival skills that were mentioned. It helps you avoid feelings of shame. Projecting blame looks like refusal to acknowledge that you did something wrong, caused someone to feel bad, or made a mistake. Instead of looking at your role in the situation, you look for someone else to put the blame on.
Realistically, everyone causes harm at some point, even on accident. Being able to acknowledge and repair with others is an important skill for self-growth and in relationships. This could look like, “I’m sorry that what I did hurt you, that wasn’t my intention.” Recognize that acknowledging your role isn’t the same as saying you are a bad person.
Additionally, sometimes no one is to blame in a situation, things just are. For example, if circumstances caused you and your partner to be late to an event, projecting blame would look like taking you frustration at happenstance and blaming it on the person. Being able to accept that some things are out of your control is another important step to change this pattern.
Playing the Victim
Playing the victim is a behavior that, again, allows you to avoid shame. For example, shame of not being good enough or not being capable. It looks like manipulating the truth, on purpose or subconsciously, to take accountability off of yourself and possibly receive sympathy, instead of feeling bad. Maybe you adopted this survival skill in childhood as a way to avoid punishment, or maybe you started doing it later after experiencing deep shame.
It’s important to note that sometimes you ARE a victim of circumstance, and it’s okay to acknowledge when this is your truth. However, it becomes unhealthy if you are taking away your own power in situations in order to avoid natural consequence or personal accountability.
An example of this would be if you didn’t study for an exam, fail the exam, and then report that the reason was because the teacher doesn’t like you, so you had trouble concentrating. It may or may not be true that the teacher doesn’t like you, but your power lies within studying and managing your responsibilities anyways.
Shifting out of this behavior looks like learning to tolerate the distress of consequences, knowing that you can still be a good person, even if you make mistakes, and identifying personal power.
Toxic Positivity
Yes, there can be too much of a good thing! You might laugh at the question, “Am I toxic?” if you are always looking for the silver lining and saying positive statements. However, this behavior can be harmful when it’s used as an avoidance technique.
Toxic positivity serves the purpose of avoiding less comfortable emotions, like grief, anger, or even sympathy. All emotions are important communicators (Click here to read about different emotions), and avoiding them doesn’t allow you opportunity to process or respond properly.
Toxic positivity can look like saying statements such as, “It’s okay he lied to me, at least he doesn’t cheat!” Another example is, “I’m okay, I didn’t really want the promotion anyways, too much work!” It can also be geared toward others, such as, “I’m sorry you had a miscarriage, but at least you can always try for another one!”
To shift out of this behavior, practice sharing space with uncomfortable emotions (yours or other people’s). Letting the emotions exist naturally will create space and increase your ability to tolerate the discomfort.
Judgmental
Judgment is not always bad. In fact, it’s a natural way that our brain categorizes information in the world. If we walked into every situation without any preconceptions or judgment, the world would be overwhelming!
Judgment can become unhealthy if it’s consistently focusing on the negative or being used as a way to avoid connection. Judging others serves the purpose of protecting you from harm in relationships. If you scan for and highlight the negatives, then you have a reason to keep those people away, and therefore can avoid getting hurt.
When this is in overdrive, it can ultimately limit you from necessary connection, as well as drive you away from people that are healthy in your life.
Realistically, everyone has negative qualities. If you look for them, you will find them. In order to recognize when this behavior is being overprotective, practice scanning for people’s positives as well. When you’re able to highlight negatives AND positives, you can make a logical assessment of what to do with the relationship.
Self-Sabotage
Self-sabotage is an interesting survival skill because it seems to do the exact opposite! Self-sabotage is when things are going really well in your life, and you consciously or subconsciously make them go bad. This could look like causing conflict in healthy relationships or creating mistakes at work to where you will get in trouble.
Self-sabotage helps you survive if your brain believes that things going well in your life is a threat. Why would this be a threat you ask? It can be different for everyone. Maybe you believe that if things are going well, then someone can take it away, so you sabotage to prevent the element of surprise. Maybe you don’t believe that you are worthy of a good life and a part of you is worried that someone will notice. Perhaps you grew up in a chaotic environment, and things being calm is unfamiliar.
Whatever the reasoning is, the behavior is driven by anxiety. The trick to changing this behavior is to learn to feel safe in the calm. When things are going well and you start to feel anxious, practice acknowledging that feeling and use self-soothing techniques, like self-talk and breathing.
Control Tactics
Using control tactics on other people is the act of trying to get someone to behave as you want them to through methods like coercion or threats. This is not always so obvious as physical threats, but can be things like threatening to end the relationship, withholding intimacy, or making someone feel bad on purpose when they don’t do what you want.
These tactics seem harsh, and it can be hard to admit to yourself when you are doing them. However, if you are at a space where you recognize you resort to these behaviors and no longer want to, it is good to explore the why behind the behaviors.
Typically, using control tactics means that without control, you feel unsafe or like you can’t get your needs met. Explore what experiences in your past led you to believe this, as this is often caused by traumatic childhood experiences. In the meantime, work on practicing accepting that other people are outside of your control, as well as asking for your needs from people, instead of trying to force them.
These are just some of the behaviors that people view as toxic. I hope it was helpful in answering your question, “Am I toxic?” What toxic behaviors did I miss? Leave a comment below!
Other posts you may like:
19 Therapy Journaling Prompts
3 Steps to Heal from a Toxic Family
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