I have experience with a toxic person, so I can relate. This person was not a spouse but much of what I will be writing can apply to spouses, friends, anyone significant in your life.
I am writing a book that I hope will be beneficial to others. I will blog a lot of it along the way as I write it.
There are many labels put on persons who harm others in
non-arrestable ways: Narcissist. Sociopath. Psychopath. While there is a
definite agreement with constitutes a narcissist, it isn’t quite so cut-and-dried
with what constitutes a sociopath versus a psychopath.
So we will call these people Toxic Persons, or TP for short.
Toxic people are not good for us. And we’ve learned that lesson the hard
way—through experience.
The book that I am writing will not be a scholarly textbook. It is not meant
for a student in school. It is meant for those trying to understand and heal
from toxic relationships.
It can be difficult for ordinary people to determine if
someone is a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath. But we all know what “toxic”
means. We know that toxins are not good for us. That includes toxic people.
Let us not worry about their label. They are toxic, that’s
all we need to know. Chances are, we’ve spent far too much time trying to
figure them out. Let us now focus on ourselves. And as we learn we can pass
along what we’ve learned to others, to help others who have also been hurt. And
to hopefully help others before they
are hurt.
As we learn, we may be eager to tell others, to talk about
what happened to us. You will be fortunate if you find a listening ear, someone
who will let you talk and just support you. But chances are you will hear
variations of “Stop obsessing!” “Get over it!” “Move on!” That is your clue that
the other person either doesn’t know how to help you, or doesn’t want to take
the time to understand. Or they may think that those useless phrases are
actually helpful…it’s what they have heard repeated so much.
But it isn’t helpful. If you had been physically hurt in an
accident would they demand that you “Stop bleeding!” “Get better”! Or if you
were in a collapsed building would they demand that you get out immediately?
You would if you could, right? You have had a psychological trauma. If your
Toxic Person was a spouse, your whole world may have collapsed. That is not an
easy thing to just “get over.” Everyone is different. There is no time table
for when you “should be over it.”
There will likely be aspects that you will never be over.
But you will be better. And you will be stronger! In your own time.
There are times you will obsess, especially after a
relationship has ended. This can be a marriage, a friendship, or relationship
with a family member—mother, father, sister, brother, etc. Any relationship
with close bonds that ends badly due to toxicity can cause severe emotional
pain, anguish, heartbreak.
Obsessing, at first, is normal. You go over and over in your
mind trying to make sense out of what happened. You may have been trying and
working hard on the relationship but no matter what you did, it wasn’t enough.
Or the right thing. You were nice, empathetic, giving. Trying hard to be
perfect. You overlooked little slights, hurts. Until they kept getting bigger.
And more awful. They games that the TP played made you feel as if you were
going crazy. And by the end of the relationship they may have convinced you,
and everyone else, that you were the crazy one!
Trying to make sense out of the senseless is crazy making.
It’s like you’re faced with a 100,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. It seems hopeless,
at first. But little by little, piece by piece, the pieces will fit. You will
learn that you were not crazy. You were normal, trying to make sense of crazy.
The jigsaw puzzle may not ever be entirely finished. That’s okay. Eventually,
you will fit enough of the pieces together to see the bigger picture. That’s
enough. You don’t need to see the entire train before deciding to stop at the warning lights do you?!
All content copyrighted Julie P. Clark. 2014. Please ask permission before using content on this blog.
