from http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/8-toxic-personalities-to-avoid-461078/
by Brett Blumenthal – Sheer Balance, on Wed May 13, 2009 8:01am PDT
Although we like to think that the people in our lives are well-adjusted, happy, healthy minded individuals, we sometimes realize that it just isn’t so. Personally, I’ve had moments where I’ll be skipping through my day, happy as can be, thinking life is grand and BAM, I’ll be blindsided by someone who manages to knock the happy wind out of my sails. Sometimes it is easy to write it off and other times, not so much.
Maybe you are a positive person, but when you are around a certain individual, you feel negative. Or, maybe you have an idealistic view of the world and when you are with certain people, you are made to feel silly, unrealistic or delusional. Or, maybe you pride yourself in being completely independent and in control of your life, but when you are around a certain family member, you regress into a state of childhood.
Some of these situations, and yes, these people, can have a tremendously negative impact on our lives. And, although we are all human and have our ‘issues,’ some ‘issues’ are quite frankly, toxic. They are toxic to our happiness. They are toxic to our mental outlook. They are toxic to our self-esteem. And they are toxic to our lives. They can suck the life out of us and even shorten our lifespan.
Here are the worst of the toxic personalities out there and how to spot them:
1. Manipulative Mary: These individuals are experts at manipulation tactics. Is a matter of fact, you may not even realize you have been manipulated until it is too late. These individuals figure out what your ‘buttons’ are, and push them to get what they want.
Why they are toxic: These people have a way of eating away at your belief system and self-esteem. They find ways to make you do things that you don’t necessarily want to do and before you know it, you lose your sense of identity, your personal priorities and your ability to see the reality of the situation. The world all of a sudden becomes centered around their needs and their priorities.
2. Narcissistic Nancy: These people have an extreme sense of self-importance and believe that the world revolves around them. They are often not as sly as the Manipulative Marys of the world, but instead, tend to be a bit overt about getting their needs met. You often want to say to them “It isn’t always about you.”
Why they are toxic: They are solely focused on their needs, leaving your needs in the dust. You are left disappointed and unfulfilled. Further, they zap your energy by getting you to focus so much on them, that you have nothing left for yourself.
3. Debbie Downers: These people can’t appreciate the positive in life. If you tell them that it is a beautiful day, they will tell you about the impending dreary forecast. If you tell them you aced a mid-term, they’ll tell you about how difficult the final is going to be.
Why they are toxic: They take the joy out of everything. Your rosy outlook on life continues to get squashed with negativity. Before you know it, their negativity consumes you and you start looking at things with gray colored glasses yourself.
4. Judgmental Jims: When you see things as cute and quirky, they see things as strange and unattractive. If you find people’s unique perspectives refreshing, they find them ‘wrong’. If you like someone’s eclectic taste, they find it ‘disturbing’ or ‘bad’.
Why they are toxic: Judgmental people are much like Debbie Downers. In a world where freedom rings, judgment is sooo over. If the world was a homogeneous place, life would be pretty boring. Spending a lot of time with these types can inadvertently convert you into a judgmental person as well.
5. Dream Killing Keiths: Every time you have an idea, these people tell you why you can’t do it. As you achieve, they try to pull you down. As you dream, they are the first to tell you it is impossible.
Why they are toxic: These people are stuck in what is instead of what could be. Further, these individuals eat away at your self-esteem and your belief in yourself. Progress and change can only occur from doing new things and innovating, dreaming the impossible and reaching for the stars.
6. Insincere Illissas: You never quite feel that these people are being sincere. You tell a funny story, they give you a polite laugh. You feel depressed and sad and they give you a ‘there, there’ type response. You tell them you are excited about something and you get a very ho-hum response.
Why they are toxic: People who aren’t sincere or genuine build relationships on superficial criteria. This breeds shallow, meaningless relationships. When you are really in need of a friend, they won’t be there. When you really need constructive criticism, they would rather tell you that you are great the way you are. When you need support, they would rather see you fail or make a fool of yourself.
7. Disrespectful Dannys: These people will say or do things at the most inappropriate times and in the most inappropriate ways. In essence, they are more subtle, grown up bullies. Maybe this person is a friend who you confided in and uses your secret against you. Maybe it is a family member who puts their busy-body nose into your affairs when it is none of their business. Or maybe, it is a colleague who says demeaning things to you.
Why they are toxic: These people have no sense of boundaries and don’t respect your feelings or, for that matter, your privacy. These people will cause you to feel frustrated and disrespected.
8. Never Enough Nellies: You can never give enough to these people to make them happy. They take you for granted and have unrealistic expectations of you. They find ways to continually fault you and never take responsibility for anything themselves.
Why they are toxic: You will spend so much time trying to please them, that you will end up losing yourself in the process. They will require all of your time and energy, leaving you worn out and your own needs sacrificed.
All of these personalities have several things in common. 1) the more these people get away with their behavior, the more they will continue. 2) Unfortunately, most of these people don’t see that what they do is wrong and as a result, talking to them about it will fall on deaf ears, leaving you wondering if you are the crazy one. 3) Most of these people get worse with age, making their impact on you stronger with time.
Frankly, life is too short to spend your time dealing with toxicity. If you can, avoid spending mucho time with people who are indicative of these behaviors and you’ll feel a lot happier. Have you encountered these personalities? What have you done? Any personalities you would add?
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Posted by Jett Wed May 13, 2009 1:00pm PDT
Boy do I know what you mean! I have had many people in my life who have been toxic to various extents. I don’t know that I can classify them completely into the categories you’ve outlined, though:
My best friend all through elementary school was a Manipulative Mary, I guess. We became instant best friends in first grade and remained so until fifth grade when I defected from her table in the lunchroom to a table of another friend. Mary wasn’t truly manipulative in the sense that she would get me to do immoral things, but she liked to be queen and would treat me sort of as her servant at times. At the time I actually left the group because of her two other friends, not her, but in the end, if she had been a better friend and if our friendship were meant to last, I would have stayed, or we would have become friends again later. We called it quits officially in 7th grade. I’m just glad I had enough willpower and self-esteem to look for better.
Ironically, it was in this second group of friends that I found Debbie Downers and Judgmental Jim! Debbie would make us all feel that if we had any good news we had to stifle it. She would call it bragging, and it took me many years to realize that it wasn’t bragging — it was just feeling good about an accomplishment. Jim would make me feel (and still does to an extent) that I’m sort of stupid and my tastes in things like music aren’t good enough. Why’d I stay friends with them? Because besides their faults, they were actually really good friends when I needed them. I guess we all have Jim and Debbie and Mary in us somewhere. And to Debbie’s credit, it turned out she’s clinically depressed, so after high school when she was on meds, she became a lot nicer. Still, it’s awkward when I go back and visit them (I live almost 6 hours away now) because I realized we just don’t have a lot in common. I was friends with them for convenience I guess, because I’d been dumped by Mary and had nowhere else to go. Once I met other people in college I realized just how my high school friends had affected the way I would think and found myself repeating the mantras that Debbie would spout about how stupid certain things were. It took me awhile to get past that.
But the only person I would truly list as a Debbie Downers was a co-worker I had a few years ago. She would talk about her own life — her lazy, emotionally-abusive husband and bratty children — constantly without even coming up for air so I could interject. Literally, I would sit on the phone with her for AN HOUR and not have to say anything other than “yeah” or “huh.” Eventually she would say she had to go, if I didn’t manage to interrupt her monologue to tell her I really had to hang up, and afterwards I would either feel so drained from how bad her life was or so glad that my life was so much better! She would almost never ask about me, or if she did it would just remind her of something else to complain about and she’d go of again for another half hour. Finally I just stopped calling her. I didn’t let her know my new number when I moved (Both of us had left the company by then, so we didn’t have to work together.) That relationship was completely one-sided, and the weird thing was she didn’t even need me. She had family and other friends she ranted to also — all the same things she would repeat to me.
