How to stop socializing with toxic friends and family

Dealing with selfish, manipulative and judgmental people is very difficult, although many of us reluctantly do it. Because such people are our loved ones. Some of them can radiate charisma, be an incredibly interesting interlocutor and a real soul of the company. But one of their remarks in our direction - and the mood spoils at the same second.

It is not necessary to immediately exclude such relatives or friends from your life. First, you can try to establish communication.

How to tell if your loved ones are toxic

In applied psychology, toxic character traits are viewed through the prism of the "dark triad"D.N. Jones, D. L. Paulhus. Differentiating the Dark Triad within the interpersonal circumplex / Handbook of Interpersonal Psychology - narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

Daffodils are as self-centered as possible, they have an inflated sense of self-importance. Machiavellians are dexterous manipulators who playfully use those around them to their advantage. And psychopathy is expressed through apathy, impulsivity and a desire to take risks.

Some of these types of toxic people just annoy us endlessly, like a buddy who constantly brags about how awesome he is. Communication with others threatens our self-esteem, happiness and even mental health.

How to stop communicating with toxic relatives

Staying away from a toxic family member can be difficult, if not impossible. When you are dealing with someone who regularly and diligently ruins your life, but rarely appears in it, ending the relationship is usually easy.

However, things get more complicated if you do not want to start a family drama or simply cannot stop communicating, because you live under the same roof. In this case, two tactics can help.

1. Set clear boundaries

The main problem with toxic people is that they do not understand how negatively their words and actions affect others. Or, even worse, they are perfectly aware of everything, but they are not going to change their behavior.

Remember the famous phrase: “Treat others the way you want to be treated”? So, forget it. Remember the other: "Treat others the way they want you to treat them."

This rule is ideal for dealing with toxic family members. And it requires you to seriously talk to them about what kind of relationship you want to build, instead of guessing on the coffee grounds.

It should be borne in mind that among the most common traits of toxic people are denial of their actions, as well as the inability to take responsibility and sympathize with those whom they have harmed. If you start a conversation with the position "You hurt me, and we need to talk about it," there is a high probability that the toxic person will refuse to listen to you, will ignore your feelings and shift a responsibility on you.

You don't owe anything to the person who spoils your life. But if you still want to start a productive dialogue and try to convince a toxic relative that he is wrong, try to formulate your emotions this way:

• When you said [insert phrase], it made me feel like [describe your emotions] because [tell us about the reason for your feelings]. I would prefer that you [suggest an alternative] in the future.
• I don't like the way you [insert phrase or describe the action]. It hurts me because [state the reason for the offense]. Maybe we can discuss this issue?
• I love you, but I don't like the way you [insert a phrase or describe an action] because [provide a reason]. I think our relationship would be much better if we [suggest an alternative].

2. Self-distancing

Thanks to 2020, we learned what social distance is. Self-distancing is somewhat similar to her. Only this is not physical, but psychological detachment.

This approach involves assessing the situation from the outside and resembles attention management techniques. It helps you understand yourself and your feelings and develop emotional resilience to resolve conflicts.

Let's say you're dealing with a particularly stubborn relative who refuses to take responsibility and apologize for their words and actions. From experience, you probably already know that it is useless to argue with such a person - he will still turn everything around so that you remain guilty. Take a step back and look at the problem from the perspective of a neutral observer. Imagine that this situation did not happen to you, but to your friend.

A reasonable question may arise here: if my relative is a toxic person who does not care about my feelings, why should I do something? It's all about how we react to people and situations that hurt us. Researchers have found outA. Dorfman, H. Oakes, et al. Self-distancing promotes positive emotional change after adversity: Evidence from a micro-longitudinal field experimentthat people who distance themselves from problems are more likely to remain in a good mood than those who are used to immersed in experiences.

Simple techniques will help to master the skill of self-distancing:

• Analyze the situation from a third person. Internal dialogue is especially effective when we use the pronouns "he", "she", "they", "him", "her", "them" instead of "I", "mine". For example, if you had a fight with your sister, ask yourself, "Why did her sister behave like this to her?" instead of "Why did my sister act like this to me?" Such formulations provide an opportunity to reflect on what happened from a neutral point of view.
• Practice expressive writing. Take 20 minutes and honestly, without embellishment, record all your emotions associated with the conflict. This will help you understand how you are feeling and figure out how to deal with them.

How to stop hanging out with toxic friends

One study foundW. J. Chopik. Associations among relational values, support, health, and well-being across the adult lifespan / Personal Relationshipsthat friends influence our health and happiness more positively than family. Perhaps this happens because we choose friends at our will, and relationships with family sometimes become an onerous duty. On the other hand, scientists also found out that friendship, in which tension and stress are present, negatively affects the physical condition.

Of course, everyone has different situations. However, research findings suggest that toxic friends are far more dangerous to our mental health than toxic relatives. Several techniques can help you eliminate narcissists and manipulators from your life and not ruin your relationships with other friends.

1. Discuss the behavior of your friends

If you are close enough and have been in contact for many years, and your friend has just begun to behave toxicly, it is worth talking to him. Better not to do this on social media or posts. An honest live conversation will give you many more answers to your questions.

To build a dialogue correctly, first calmly explain the essence of the problem, then take responsibility for your feelings or mistakes that you made during the conflict, and then offer compromise.

If your friend still doesn't want to listen to you or even starts to get angry, think about how important this connection is to you as it stands. After all, the main goal of companionship is mutual cooperation, trust and support. When you are the only one who makes the effort, friendship becomes a one-sided game. And it is better to stop communicating with a toxic friend, and save your emotional energy and care for people who really appreciate and love you.

2. Chat less online

If this is not a very close friend or you do not want to completely burn bridges, minimize your social media communication. And it may not be just your friend - the Internet itself is full of toxic people.

Scientist from New Zealand found outL. Munn. Angry by design: toxic communication and technical architectures / Humanities and Social Sciences Communicationsthat social media algorithms favor emotional and controversial content. This is because it is precisely this that causes great involvement - hundreds of thousands, or even millions of views, likes and comments. In other words, social media is largely responsible for the rise of toxicity in society.

To interact as little as possible with a toxic friend, but not block him completely and avoid conflicts, try these steps:

• Unfollow him or hide his posts from your feed. In many social networks there is such a function, thanks to which the person does not know in any way that you have excluded their content from your feed. This will help remove the toxic friend from your daily life without seriously breaking up the relationship.
• Tinker with your privacy settings. If your friend constantly leaves ambiguous comments and mocks your posts, it's time to restrict his access to your posts.

Cutting off or even cutting back on contact with toxic people with whom we are physically or emotionally connected can be tricky. In friendships and family relationships, it is difficult to identify the toxic traits of a friend or family member, understand that you deserve better, cut all ties, and move on.

The above methods will help maintain peace of mind, regardless of whether it is possible to establish communication with a toxic person or not. We cannot control other people's thoughts, feelings and actions, but we can control our own. Allow yourself to set a higher bar for the people you think are close. They should be the reason for your smiles, not tears.