Tag: toxicity

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Respect yourself enough to walk away from anyone or anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy.

“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anyone or anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy”

🤔The last year I have spent a lot of time meditating on relationships, and observing both others and myself in relationships–whether it be with family, friends, or partners.

I should start first by saying that tension is a natural element of any relationship, as is conflict. But I am going to speak to when tension tips over into toxicity, when it goes from healthy to harmful.

And some of the most common markers I’ve noticed in unhealthy relationships, and the unhappiness that accompanies them, are 
1️⃣️️ an unwillingness to set, maintain, and respect boundaries, 
2️⃣️ a consistent and habitual willingness to forego and compromise on personal needs, and 
3️⃣ a slow growing complacency with mistreatment. 
(Not to mention a breakdown in communication)

I’ve been there, and understand some of the psychology behind it. And often times, we wish to give those we love the benefit of the doubt, another chance, patience in their growth despite the harm they cause, and more. We see their potential, and perhaps who they could be as their best self. We believe they can grow and change. And, in most cases, many of the good things we love about them are still there right alongside all the bad.

So, really, I *can* appreciate where the excuse-making, chance-giving, exception-granting, and tireless patience comes from (out of love)–but what I have learned to see and wish others to see is that doing these things are a form of self-harm.❌Every time we grant a toxic person another exception, excuse, chance, etc, we forego our own needs, weaken our own boundaries, and open the door to compromising ourselves and our happiness

📖When I read back on my annual reflection/post from earlier this year, I was struck again by this call to action I wrote:

➡️Stop putting up with people in your life who drain you.
➡️Stop making excuses and granting chances
➡️Stop waiting for people to come back, to change, to give a damn. 
➡️Stop standing for people who don’t stand for you.”

I still believe this is a worthwhile meditation and reminder. However, I want to add: â•That it is OKAY to stop❕

It is OKAY to remove someone from your life — even those that you still love and care about– if they are causing harm or affecting you negatively. Not only is it OKAY, it is the right thing to do.

▫️Is it hard? Likely. 
▫️But is it healthy? Yes.

Because each person has a limited amount of time, energy, and love to give. And, every time we invest in people who harm our happiness, who overstep boundaries, who refuse to communicate, who aren’t helping us grow, we are actively working against ourselves.

As this post started:
“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anyone or anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy”

Because… when you do this… when you REALLY do this, you will discover that instead of losing something, in fact you will have opened yourself up to new connections, new growth, new friendship, and new love, including self-love.❤️

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Always Ill, Never Dies

So many of us daily subject ourselves to numerous emotional, physical, and mental toxins: A job we feel secure in but provides us no challenge, a relationship we’ve cultivated over years that no longer provides sustenance in return, a substance used recreationally that we’ve allowed ourselves to become dependent upon.  We avoid physical activity because we are lazy, we eat junk because it is convenient, we watch tv because we don’t want to think. We find new and creative ways to distract ourselves and ignore our true needs.

Even when we can see and feel the harm being done, we continue to indulge ourselves in these things that make our souls sick.  Why?

For many, it is hopeless human optimism mixed with fear of change and laziness that keeps one firmly in place.  

First, often, the things making us sick do not start at out as toxins. In fact, they may have been critical to our journeys of self. But just as a child outgrows his clothes, we too often outgrow parts of our life (or they outgrow us). This is completely natural. It is only when we insist upon keeping those clothes that we find ourselves increasingly uncomfortable–optimistic we could squeeze another year or two out of them when in fact all we are doing is suffocating ourselves. We keep thinking it can’t be ‘that, bad.

Second, these things that make our souls sick are usually deeply embedded in our conditioned understanding of how life should be–and present for a long time. We’ve grown dependent, reliant, afraid.  We fear attempting to change developed patterns and lifestyles because there is no certainty in what comes next. We hate uncertainty.

And finally, its easier to not. It is easier to ignore than to confront, excuse than address, sleep than to wake. We seek out the path of least resistance.

And by ignoring these things that make us sick, we are bombarded with their symptoms: emotional distress or numbness, depression, anxiety, unease. We complain, we seek out temporary escape, we make excuses.  But the longer we indulge in these poisons, the hard it is to break free.  We become addicted to our chosen illness, for it is all we know.

It doesn’t help either that, in trying to change, we often face the potential for great hurt–either ourselves or others in our lives.  At some point, all illnesses can advance far enough to affect those around us.  They join us in our sickness, find themselves sick too. If not for our sake, for theirs, we must face and break free from the things that make our soul sick.

Daily Reminder

Line 5 from Hex 16 of the I-Ching, when paired in change, can be interpreted as “Always Ill, But Never Dies”. I read this and am reminded today to examine where in my life am I allowing poison to seep in? What in my life have I outgrown?

Do not be afraid to let go the things you’ve outgrown.  Yes, there may be fear and pain, but in passing through that fear and accepting the pain that comes with growth, we free ourselves to pursue our fuller potential.

Onwards!

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It’s Easy to Be Unhappy

It is easy to be unhappy. 

It is easy to focus on the day to day distractions while avoiding the bigger, underlying issues. It is easy to deflect and blame others, to make excuses for yourself or a situation. It is easy to take the low road, to give that person ‘just one more’ chance, to ‘wait and see’ how things play out, to sit in the safety of inaction.  

But happiness requires action. It requires rolling up your sleeves, pulling on your boots, and hiking up the mountain you’ve been avoiding–and sometimes all night, through sleet, snow, and storm. It requires thinking and work, a little risk, and, sometimes, pain.

…And it is more effort than most of us are willing to make, more risk than we are willing to face.  We would rather sit in the unhappiness, endure an unfulfilling job, live in a place we hate, stay in a relationship that is toxic, than risk being more unhappy than we already are. We are afraid to make that risk. But without taking that risk, we also have no chance at happiness.

Worse, the danger with tolerating unhappiness in your life is that unhappiness has an intrinsically infectious quality. It can start in one corner of your life and slowly seep into the rest if left unaddressed. While we can often contain our unhappiness for a time, manage it, ignore it, live with it and convince ourselves to be content, this fix is only temporary.  Soon enough it will grow to be present in so many aspects of our life that we simply won’t be able to ignore it, and pain becomes a certainty.

So, before it gets to that point, ask yourself today: 

  • What’s stopping you from being happy?  Why?
  • What big problem or toxic person are you avoiding dealing with?  

If you can’t quite figure it out the root of it all, or if you feel like you have a lot of things going on, try making a list. Don’t over think it the process. Set aside 5 minutes and write everything that comes to your mind that makes you unhappy. From there, choose the three things that give you the most stress, anxiety, or fear.

Once you’ve narrowed it down, then ask: 

  • What can I do today, in the present, to start addressing this?

Even if it is as small as acknowledging the problem out loud. Take steps today to identify the roots of your unhappiness and a map leading up and away from it. Then, tomorrow, take the first step.  

I’ll tell you right now, yes, it might not work out, You might get lost along the way, or hurt. You might end up somewhere completely unexpected or unhappy in a different way. But, without any action, there is also no hope for happiness.  

As Aristotle wrote, Happiness depends upon ourselves. 

-Caitlin Pontrella