Have you ever experienced toxic people or toxic behaviour? I think most of us have, at varying degrees.
I heard Matthew Hussey say in a video that he tries not to label people as toxic because we can all be toxic at times. We might all have been toxic to some people in the past. Because of this, he said that he talks about toxic behaviour instead of toxic people.
I think it is true that some of us are not always aware that we behave in a “toxic” way at times and that we are hurting the people around us, but I also think that some people do in fact operate on a consciously manipulative level. It is their way of being. It is how they have chosen to live life. They are consistently and constantly manipulative, and they do it intentionally to have things their way.
These toxic individuals seem charming and charismatic to those who do not know them well. They are chameleons. They put on an act, and they have many masks. Because they behave differently around different people, I realised that there is no point talking to others about them because different people would have experienced the toxic individuals in different ways and might think that you are the problem instead. They would think that perhaps you are driven by envy to spread rumours about them. This is usually because of how likable toxic people appear to be. They seem to have refined social skills and tend to make very good first impressions. (They are also dishonest and very good at turning others against you if you refuse to partake in their twisted mind games.)
If you were to get to know these toxic people at any level of depth, the craziness would start bubbling to the surface. You would find that they are actually extremely manipulative underneath their façades. They are really abusive people at their core, who do very hurtful things. You would never feel a sense of peace around them. Some people call them adult bullies. In essence, they are spoilt children who became worse and worse as time went on. They have never learnt to regulate their emotions, and they do not see a problem in taking their anger out on other people, even as adults. They have never learnt to develop a healthy amount of empathy for others either. They do not really seem to feel bad for hurting others, as long as they get their way.
It is extremely difficult when they are your family members, because they create a terribly unhealthy family dynamic around them. If you look into the work by leading experts on narcissism and personality disorders (such as Dr Ramani Durvasula), you would find that there are usually enablers in such a family. There is also a truth teller who refuses to play the game, to turn a blind eye on the toxic people’s behaviour, and to act as though the strange situation is normal. Like any healthy-minded person, the truth teller would want to call them out or to get away from them. This person often becomes a scapegoat who is targeted and ends up getting hurt or isolated because of a refusal to cooperate and support the toxic dynamic. Toxic people are extremely vindictive. They would do anything to punish the ones who refuse to play the roles assigned to them.
I was, and still am, a truth teller and scapegoat. I am a survivor of extremely manipulative and abusive behaviour.
There are two people in my life I have in mind that probably have personality disorders. I am unfortunate enough to be related to one of them, and the other was a friend. One of them is no longer in my life, and the other cannot be completely cut out from it but I am actively trying to avoid them as much as possible. One of them probably has narcissistic personality disorder, and the other probably has borderline personality disorder.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
I got pushed around and emotionally abused by the narcissist. I am younger than this person I am related to by blood. We had some good times growing up, but even as a child, I could sometimes see a darkness in her eyes that is difficult to describe. I had always felt a gnawing sense of discomfort and slight fear around her even though I loved her, not knowing any better. I had no idea that I was living with a bully.
She was very controlling and volatile. She was a sulky little child. I never knew when she would be angry at me again and for what. I was always watching her countenance. She was often angry or sad, and she cried a lot. She would get jealous when she felt like I was showing somebody else more attention and would give me the silent treatment and then lash out at me later on (I did not know this was what it was when I was a child, of course, but I saw this cycle play out in home videos). She often used micro-expressions and sighs to show me her anger, displeasure, disapproval or disappointment in me, and she used snickers and whispers under her breath to show me how ridiculous she often found me. She blamed me for things that had nothing to do with me, and often stonewalled me and made it so that I had to apologise to her even when she was at fault. She never once apologised to me for any of her bad behaviour towards me. She rarely did anything to hurt me physically when we were both children, but I remember her using a fork to scratch my face once. She always said invalidating things to make me feel inadequate and bad about myself.
I think you could imagine what it did to my self image and self esteem, growing up with this person as a huge part of my life. I did not realise how uneasy and unsafe she made me feel until I became an adult. I did not realise what a relief it would be not to have her anywhere near me. She needed to feel superior and always had to win, and she felt a need to have power and dominance over me. She has probably always had emotional problems and an inability to receive, because she always seemed so disgusted whenever she was shown any affection by us. I found her behaviour difficult to understand when I was little. I was a lot more carefree as a child, but she always seemed so angry with the world. As I am writing this, I realise that she sounds like a demon child with the way she behaved, but nobody seemed to think so at the time. She just never seemed to have had the innocence that children generally have. I found out quite early on in life that this person could be quite cruel, but little did I know the kind of person she would become when we were grown up, after some time apart.
I experienced the rage, the contempt, the belittling and diminishing, the constant criticisms and invalidation, the dismissiveness, the selfishness, the self-aggrandising behaviour, the controlling behaviour, the manipulation, the lying, the convenient forgetting, the gaslighting, the wrath, the blaming and guilt tripping, the smear campaigns, and the vindictiveness and sadistic punishments of a grown adult who seemed, and still seems, to have a distorted sense of right and wrong. The worst part of it all is that she has developed a charming exterior as an adult so that strangers (who are not privy to her dark side) are tricked into liking her.
To her, life is all about her. She should be in the spotlight. Other people are just characters or chess pieces to manipulate. We are probably not actual people in her eyes. She needs to feel in control and she wants to be seen as a good person.
She would talk about charity and stick a picture on the wall that was there to “remind her of the sufferings in the world” but then mistreat the people closest to her when no one is watching. She would go around telling other people how much she loved me and how good she was to me, but then she would push me around and verbally and emotionally abuse me behind closed doors.
After bullying and hurting me to the extreme, she would take on the victim role. She would cause drama and have huge emotional outbursts whenever I responded to her behaviour with any kind of resistance. She would scream and cry like a child in fits and tantrums. She would do petty things like trying to kick me in the shin or trip me when no one could see what she was doing. Yes, she did hurt me physically during this time. After pushing me over the edge (this is called baiting – her aim was to get me angry in front of others), she would burst into tears in front of an audience to turn the tables on me and make everyone think that I was the aggressor all along. I have had this done to me and later seen it done to someone else. She enjoys making others the villain. She even ran out to the balcony in fits and tears one evening to cause panic, making people fear that she might end her life.
This person would tell lies about me to the people close to me, in attempts to ruin my relationship with my support system. She would accuse me of things, and deny having said and done certain things to make me question myself and my memory. She would come into my room to tell me about the time when her life started going wrong and then imply that I was responsible for it. She would also mess with my head by telling me how I was feeling in the moment in the middle of a conversation, as though she knew my emotions better than I did myself. She often accused me of being angry when I was not.
She would also dish out insult after insult, weaponising all of my insecurities against me. She would say things to bring me down, then she would tell me that it was just a joke and that something was wrong with me because I responded to her words with hurt or resistance. Apparently, I was wrong for not liking what she said, and for not just sitting there and taking it while she attacked me verbally for no reason at all. I was attacked for my health issues and whatever she thought was wrong with me and my appearance. She also undermined all my achievements, criticising the subject I studied and where I was educated, to make herself feel more comfortable. Narcissists want to make others feel small in order to lift themselves up.
Whenever I reacted in any way at all to the things she said, I would be told that I was too sensitive, that I could not take a joke, and that I had no social skills (because that was apparently not how other people reacted to her because “normal people” had a sense of humour and could make fun of themselves). I understand now that what she did was gaslighting. This person’s intention was clearly to laugh at me and not with me. She was the only person who was amused, and the satisfied smirk that was often on her face made it clear that she even felt good about coming up with the cruel words (that she thought were very clever). I was young at the time and did not have a strong enough personality, so this affected me deeply. To an extent, I believed what she said about me and started to think that there was indeed something wrong with me. I remember that when I was riddled with self-doubt, my father said to me that even if it was true that everyone was the way she described, that she and the people around her were always saying hurtful things to each other and were fine with it, it still did not make it right and that her behaviour was not justified simply because that was apparently what the majority of people did.
She often talked to me and the rest of the family as if we were all stupid. She made us all go on a trip to visit her boyfriend’s family once, and she kept reminding us that she was the one paying for everything even though none of us actually wanted to be there in the first place. On the way there, she got angry at us for almost missing a train because we were exhausted from all the delays and we went to the bathroom, not knowing the exact time of departure. That only happened because she never treated us like human beings and adults, and never gave us the itinerary. When we arrived after a cold and long journey, she did nothing when her boyfriend and his parents acted really disrespectfully to our family. She allowed her boyfriend to laugh at my father in his face when he dozed off because of his jet lag (he travelled a long way to spend time with the family) and later when he marvelled at the view of the stars in the night sky of the countryside. This boyfriend of hers was disrespectful in many other ways too. Although we were all spending our Christmas holidays with these awful human beings for her sake, she acted as though she was ashamed of her own family. I was boiling on the inside throughout the whole trip, because I did not understand why we had to be there at all if that was how she was going to treat us. It was so disrespectful of other people and their time. We could have been spending our time doing what we actually enjoyed, but we were stuck with company like that. It was obvious that those people did not want us there either, so the entire group of us were there for her and her boyfriend, and they were not even doing the bare minimum of being respectful. She acted like she was a part of their family, which she somehow thought was superior to ours.
She was a very superficial individual. She judged people based on their race and the language they spoke, where they lived, which schools and universities they went to, how they looked and dressed, and what they had. Looking back, I now recognise that she bullied at least one of her classmates at school for her skin condition. She spoke unkindly about our relatives when they were not around, but put on her charming, charismatic face in front of them. She was extremely judgemental of other people, but she was so thin-skinned that she could not take one joke or any criticism from other people. Narcissists are hypocrits. She did not like seeing people around her succeed and she could never be happy for them. Her envy of other people was apparent.
It is not an easy task to summarise or list out all the hurtful things that she did to me and all the disgusting behaviour I have witnessed (over a lifetime of knowing her ever since the moment I was born), but after an extensive period of intense abuse and mind games, on top of attempts to isolate me in the home by turning everyone against me, I felt miserable. It was the worst kind of betrayal. I knew that I would never trust this person ever again in my life.
To me, this is someone with a questionable character and malicious intentions. It goes far beyond character flaws. She has the ugliest of personality traits. The things she did were often underhanded and calculated. Her words were meant to cause pain and self-doubt. None of this is normal behaviour done by a healthy individual. She actually seemed Machiavellian at that point. That is not what you would expect at all from a family member who should have some love for you. This is someone who is rotten to the core of her being, and who does not seem to be guided by a moral compass. This person does not seem to have empathy for other people or any love in her heart. She is probably not really capable of feeling either emotion. I recognised that this person was capable of great cruelty – to people very close to her, no less. I was not even sure if I had even seen the very worst she was capable of.
I eventually found a way out.
Even during the time that we were apart, she would still try to find creative ways to hurt me. For instance, when I was celebrating one of the biggest achievements of my life when I graduated from an academic programme, she sent me a card. It was not a graduation card. It was a bizarre newborn baby card with a pink pram.
This was when this person had just got married. It was probably her messed up way of trying to upset me and make me feel inadequate for not being happily married, and it was her way of “joking” that all I had was my dissertation for my baby or something strange like that. I also found out that she went and told a family member that the university I went to was not good. Apparently, that was what she had been told by friends.
People like her cannot stand seeing anyone happy or succeed in any way. They would find ways to hoover them back into their deep dark world or to dampen their spirit in some ways. These people cannot seem to stand knowing that others are living life, happy (or happier) without them, or that they are feeling good about themselves.
I felt a bit nauseous when I received the card, even though I should not have expected anything better from her (but at the time, I thought that since I became a better person over the years, I still believed that she could have changed a bit as well).
If you would like to know how I felt about this person throughout my childhood, listen to Taylor Swift’s “Tell Me Why” (Fearless, 2008 / Fearless (Taylor’s Version), 2021). It captures perfectly the experience, confusion and anguish of being manipulated and gaslighted by a loved one as a young person:
Borderline Personality Disorder
Turning to the person who probably has borderline personality disorder, I experienced a lot of fear with her. She appeared perfectly normal to begin with. I only started noticing her abnormalities little by little after a while. I found her very spontaneous, but did not think much of it at first.
Then I became utterly baffled by her behaviour, her sense of entitlement, her constant need for attention and validation, and the way she treated our mutual friends in group chats and the way she talked about them behind their backs. This person is an only child and it was obvious that she was spoilt rotten as a child. At one point, I no longer felt like I was friends with a grown adult. She acted like a child and seemed very superficial.
She felt a need to be the centre of attention, and she clearly thought very highly of herself. I remember seeing one of her posts on Facebook. It was about her ex-boyfriend. She was stalking him virtually. She commented that his new girlfriend looked like a child (Her ex-boyfriend is a few years younger than her, and he was probably dating someone his own age again at that time). She then said that she could not understand how anyone could go for that after having tasted caviar. She seemed utterly unconcerned about how bad that post made her look, but the weird thing was that there were people jumping to support her in the comments even though she seemed so childish, petty and full of herself. She seemed to have no self-awareness at all. I was finding her really quite unlikable at that point, and was trying to distance myself from her. We had a lot of mutual acquaintances and were in the same circle. I stuck around because I did not want her anger directed at me.
Later on, it only got worse. I was shocked by her mention of self harm and suicidal thoughts, her extreme fear of abandonment, some other alarming things that gradually revealed themselves, her stormy emotions, her inexplicable reactiveness and anger at people and things for the strangest of reasons (often the people she was angry with would have had no idea that she was upset with them because she often felt offended because of her sense of entitlement), and her overall violent and chaotic way of being.
She created a lot of drama around her. She was a crazy, vindictive headcase. I remember thinking that she was the personification of the seven deadly sins combined, and that she was mad, bad and dangerous to know. The more I knew about her, the more disgusted with her I felt. Just being friends with her made me feel as though I was in a very dark world that was completely foreign to me. It seemed to me like she had a very distorted, negative view of the world and the people around her. I could tell that she would turn on me one day and she would start talking to other people about me the way she was talking to me about other people, because it was clear that she never felt that what other people did for her was ever enough. She often felt wronged for no reason. I realised that she had heaps of unreasonable expectations for other people, but she gave no thought to what she herself was doing for these same people.
I felt emotionally drained by this person and eventually had to get away from her because I no longer wanted to interact with her and became genuinely afraid of her and her temper. Because of this, I experienced her wrath (which was driven by her fear of abandonment and shame), and her attempts to make me the bad person in the eyes of mutual acquaintances – after all the times that I had helped her through difficult situations.
Healing from Abuse
When I broke free from these people at different points in my life, I was left feeling really hurt and confused. They were incredibly painful experiences. I felt really broken when I became estranged from people I was once close with. I felt shame about this. I thought that something was wrong with me and that I was at fault. I kept ruminating on all the things I remembered and thinking about what I did wrong. Both experiences were disorienting. It seemed to me that nobody believed what I said about the narcissistic individual. Both experiences made me question reality, my judgment and my memory, and they did terrible things to my emotions and my self-esteem. They also made me feel very stupid. I was mad at myself for being deceived and manipulated by them.
It took me a long time to recover from the damage and to feel like myself again. It took time for me to rebuild my trust for other people. I could not understand how some people could be so cruel to another person – someone who was part of their family or who was a friend.
I later found some solace when I learnt about toxic people and personality disorders, and found out that I was not going crazy and that I was not the problematic person in these situations. It helped me make sense of what happened. It became clear to me that there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. These people have antagonistic personalities. They are incredibly difficult to live with. I realised that it was not wrong of me to want to get away from them. I also found that I was not alone. There are actually countless others out there who have encountered terrible people like them and who are or were in awful situations because of them.
I later also found out that there were other people in my life who actually saw the toxic individuals for who they really were. Other people could see what these toxic people were doing and also suffered at their hands. One individual told me that he felt like he was “walking on eggshells” around the narcissistic person, and it was clear that the person brought a lot of confusion into his life. He needed counselling because of her, and he was actually starting to figure out that the person had a personality disorder of some kind. On another occasion, another person told me that he understood exactly how I felt because he lived through the things I said, but then he also said that we had to tolerate it for the sake of another family member. As messed up as this way of thinking was, and as strange as it might sound, the admissions from these people gave me some comfort and validation. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t all in my head. I wasn’t a problematic person who deserved the blame thrown at me.
These toxic people cause a lot of damage and pain to a lot of people. It would be no exaggeration to say that they leave a path of destruction in their wake. Even so, they would claim to be the victim of the situation afterwards and paint you as the villain in their version of events. They like to control the narrative, because they care more about how they appear to the outside world than maintaining a peaceful inner world and a clean conscience. They care more about appearing to be good than actually being good. They do not know how to be genuine. Everything they do in public is for show.
If you have people like this in your life, please do not waste your precious time, effort, energy and love trying to change them. It is impossible to stop them from hurting and manipulating others. It was never your responsibility to begin with. (Some people – enablers – might try to guilt you into staying in the messed up system, and others might even try to make you feel bad for not sticking around for the rest of your life to warn other people about this person.) The only thing you have to do is to keep yourself safe. You are in no way responsible for the actions of another human being.
I might be wrong, but I do not believe that these people are capable of much positive change. I came face-to-face with one of these manipulative people a decade after escaping from them. They did not change for the better. They became wealthier and felt even more powerful and entitled, and were even worse and more abusive than they used to be. They even started using children and elderly family members to manipulate and control others.
I know how much it hurts to find that someone you cared about – or even grew up with – became the awful human being that they are today, but you can never change someone who does not want to change. Their way of thinking and their core values and morals are not the same as yours. You are not compatible together. They are sick in the head and are definitely not happy within themselves. I don’t think you would even want to know what is actually going on in their disturbed, enraged minds. Normal people wouldn’t even be able to begin to comprehend their ways of thinking and their need to antagonise, dominate and cause pain. To them, we are stupid for treating others with love, kindness, respect and empathy. We are the ones who are not doing it right. We are living life the wrong way. They take advantage of people like us because we have the innate good nature and conscience that they lack.
The best solution, in my opinion, is to cut these soul-destroying people out completely and to move on with your life. I think that is the only way to be happy and to protect your own sanity and safety. Nobody should have to live with the abuse they deal out on a daily (or even hourly) basis.
Please do this for your own health and peace of mind. Being around people like this feels awful. Not only is it emotionally draining, but you also start to question yourself because their aim is to confuse you with their mind games. These people are not safe to be around. If you ever find it in your heart to forgive them, do it for yourself and not for them. Leave them alone and never let them back into your life. They would never apologise to you or feel bad for what they had done anyway. In my experience, they just pretend that it never happened and claim not to understand why you treat them the way you do (when you are simply avoiding them). It is best to get away from their toxicity and let them prosper away from you. If the people around them try to make you feel guilty by saying things such as “You can’t choose your family” and “You should learn to forgive and forget and to let things go”, please remember that you have the right not to engage with someone, even if it is your family member. Also, you don’t owe anyone your forgiveness. You don’t have to keep letting people who are bad for you back into your life just to prove how good and forgiving a person you are. You shouldn’t let the same people keep hurting you over and over again. These people will find a new set of victims to abuse. You won’t be able to stop them.
Also, build a stronger character and stand firm in what you know to be true and keep in mind what you have experienced at their hands. You don’t have to get into arguments with them about it. In fact, it is best not to. Just hold onto this reality and truth deep within yourself, whenever they try to make you question yourself or act as if the abuse never happened. You know what you have seen and heard and felt and experienced and lived through. Once they have shown you the kind of person they really are, don’t ever forget it. Let it be a lesson for you.
When you meet new people, don’t be overly trusting. Don’t let them know everything about you right from the beginning. Take your time getting to know them. Observe them for a bit. Let time and their actions show you the kinds of people they are before really opening up to them. If a situation calls for it, learn to stand up for yourself.
At the same time, don’t let these people dim the light inside of you and the wonderful parts of you that make you who you are. Remain kind and compassionate. Surround yourself with people who deserve your time, energy and the best version of you. There are plenty of healthy-minded people out there who have empathy for others and something positive to share. The people you allow in your life should add to your life. They definitely should not feel like liabilities, a negative force or toxicity. You deserve peace, respect and better people in your life.
However, if it is not possible for you to cut contact with the toxic people in your life at the moment, I understand and I have compassion for you.
You might have to look into the grey rock method and other coping techniques that some people recommend, if that is not something you are already familiar with.
I have a lot to say about toxic people. There will probably be more posts on this.
There are resources out there that can help.
Some videos I find helpful:
https://youtu.be/im3dOkUSYC8?si=SxJ3HHI2os543zph
https://youtube.com/shorts/gPObIhdnxB8?si=_xud4pZU2QHd9NJw
Books on narcissism: