So, who or what are toxic people?
Toxic people are those who have either been in your life or are in your life right now. They are the individuals that cause or have caused you upset and anguish. They may have left you with emotional scars, which have resulted in you developing low self-esteem and having little or no self-confidence. This is the result of their actions or words.
How many of us can remember a comment, either from our childhood or adulthood, that we can still hear now? This comment has stayed with us and has warped our opinion of ourselves or, worse, has contributed to low self-esteem, low self-confidence, or to a complex about our appearance, and has shaped what we believe we are as a person.
The comments may have been flippant or made in jest, as toxic people and bullies are renowned for passing remarks then quickly follow the comment with, 'but I was only joking!' Remarks like these, especially when heard in childhood, are instrumental in us developing an in-built belief about ourselves and it can affect how we think everyday.
Comments like 'fat slob' said by a school classmate may have led to the onset of anorexia in some cases. We have all read about the unfortunate teenagers who have taken their own lives as they could no longer face hearing disparaging words from school bullies; it's tragic! The majority of us, thankfully, don't resort to such drastic measures. Instead we keep the thoughts inside of us and sometimes persecute ourselves with reminders of what was said.
Nobody knows you better than you know yourself. That is a fact. Irrespective of what others may tell you, nobody knows who and what you are as well as you. Doubt begins to creep into our minds when we try to understand how others perceive us. More importantly, we place value upon this perception above the knowledge we have of ourselves. We can never know how we are truly perceived by the people we encounter on a daily basis. It's impossible.
Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) has taught me a very important fact. One person's sense of reality is not the same as another person's sense of reality. Let me explain. We are bombarded with millions of bits of information every second of every day and our brains are not equipped to process each bit of information. Thus, we process by deleting, distorting or generalising the information which is presented via our senses. Once the information is processed we store it to our memory, but first we adapt the information based upon our filters, which include our beliefs, values, memories, attitudes, decisions, and meta programs (which in simple terms means habits of thinking). Thus, everybody experiences life differently, as we each have unique ways of filtering the information, and as such, embedding memories. Such experiences and memories therefore become unique to each individual person. Our experiences contribute further towards developing our beliefs, values, attitudes etc. Thus, we end up with a unique interpretation of reality. If you ask two people, who have been present at the same place in time, to describe that event, it will result in two vastly different renditions of the same event. This is because our perception and interpretation and subsequently our memory of the event, is unique. It is based upon how we filtered the information presented to us.
So, if you wonder about what other people perceive you to be, you are wondering how they are processing the information presented to them about you and their interpretation of reality. Hearing a disparaging comment can contribute to us forming a belief about ourselves based upon the opinion or interpretation of somebody else. Thus this belief about yourself is based upon another person's judgement of you. We can even start to believe this to be true and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Who has the right to judge you anyway? By giving credence to another's opinion it allows us to discount our own beliefs about ourselves. Your opinion is the most honest, plausible, understanding of who you are isn't it?
Many people can go through life not really getting to the bottom of or quite fully understanding who they are and what they like and dislike. Generally, people can tell you much more easily what they don't like rather than what they do like. Their thoughts are all geared towards negative perception. If we hear negative comments about ourselves therefore we can immediately begin to doubt ourselves and believe another persons 'perception' of ourselves above our own. Toxic people are renowned for being particularly jealous, envious, and in the main suffering from low self-esteem themselves. This is their way of dealing with their low opinion of themselves, by having a very low opinion of others. Why is that? They have probably spent years listening to disparaging comments made about them, been ignored in childhood by a parent or have abandonment issues. They are basically using learned behaviour and are stuck in this loop. The average toxic person is intent on discrediting another individual due to their perceived threat or because the toxic individual is jealous or envious.
If you were to begin to believe that when you hear a toxic person pass comments about you that are negative that they are merely passing judgement because they see you as a threat, are jealous or envious of you, then that would make a refreshing change wouldn't it?
Toxic people are prevalent in workplaces all around the world, and can even be a family member, In such instances it can be very difficult to distance yourself from that influence in your life. You cannot change that person but remember you can change how you react or respond to their influence and ultimately what you believe about yourself.
We will never rid the world of the toxic people, the bullies, but we can learn to disregard their words, better still, ignore them completely as we allow ourselves to believe the best about who we are, and to be fully confident.
Getting to know and fully understand yourself and being confident in your own abilities and not allowing others to upset or antagonise you is possible. Ridding yourself of years of replaying hurtful comments from childhood is possible too. If you believe you are a toxic person, you too can change years of unwanted behaviour.
Hypnosis is a great tool for building confidence and ridding yourself of low self esteem, by changing the beliefs you have about yourself at the unconscious level. Hypnosis can pass positive affirmation into your unconscious mind, bypassing your conscious mind, to produce dramatic changes. Be confident about who and what you are and begin today, learn to love the new confident you. Make that change today.
I welcome your comments about what I've written. If you would like to discuss any of the above in greater detail or you have had or are having to deal with a toxic person in your everyday life and would like to talk about this you can e-mail me directly at Ri_new@ymail.com.
Until next time.
Maria
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