If You Want To Protect Yourself From Toxicity, Cultivate Emotional Responsibility

Some signs of toxicity

Nobody likes to know that he is harmful to others, it is easier to blame the other, examine what he is doing wrong and repeatedly point out what he has to change. The point is that we are all toxic at some point in our lives.

Examples of this are victimizing, selfish and manipulative behaviors to try to convince the other to do what we want or when we are unable to value the successes of others and we criticize their dreams and illusions, we reject their opinions or we exercise the role of victim blaming them of our discomfort … If not, think of those times when we hold ourselves in our position, anchored only by pride, despite knowing that we are confused and have hurt the people around us. So we are also toxic.

Suddenly, we can find ourselves in a negative spiral. A spiral whose central axis is formed by the attempts to control others, the imposition of our will or the search to be the center of attention. It turns out that being toxic isn’t that difficult and we don’t even realize it.

When we manifest this type of behavior, we actually project outwards, from a negative perspective, the deficiencies and internal conflicts that we have not yet resolved. The weight of the past, the chains of fear, the emotional emptiness or the guilt not managed properly can cause its appearance, along with low levels of emotional responsibility and empathy. The toxic are ways of dealing with situations and emotions.

Being toxic to ourselves

We are not only toxic to others but also to ourselves. We can become our worst enemies. The way we treat ourselves and the way we speak to each other influences and condemns us. If we act as judges of our actions, continually qualifying them as insufficient or negative, we will be treating ourselves toxicly, chaining ourselves to discomfort, undermining our self-esteem and undermining our relationships with conflictive behaviors.

We do not have to despise or blame ourselves when we make a mistake. A mistake does not imply that we mistreat ourselves. On the contrary, if we are kind we can see what has happened from another perspective and we can try new strategies, thus indirectly improving our relationships.

Accept our toxicity to change

Accepting that we are toxic implies large doses of sincerity and a high level of emotional responsibility, being the first step to change. For this, it is important that we pay attention to our behaviors to detect the toxic dynamics that we set in motion and then be able to go further and discover what emotional deficiencies we are trying to cover.

Perhaps we discover that our attempt to control others is due to a lack of internal security, that our negativity comes from a strong critical education and we need to open ourselves to other more positive points of view or that our emotional manipulation is the result of a deficit in our emotional development that can be fostered with strategies of recognition, expression and regulation of your emotions.

The important thing is to accept that we have conflictive behaviors and that we must take responsibility for them to discover what their true mechanisms are.  It is not about looking for culprits who explain how we feel, but about taking responsibility for ourselves, with what that implies.

5 keys to learning to live responsibly

To prevent toxicity from gaining ground in our lives, the key is to incorporate emotional responsibility into our lives. A sign of maturity that implies taking charge of our existence and assuming that only we have power over what we feel instead of granting it to others. But how to cultivate it?

• Practice emotional intelligence. To be responsible for what we feel we first need to understand and manage our own emotions and those of others. To do this, learning to set limits, surround ourselves with positive people, exercise self-control, be empathetic and look for the positive side of what happens will help us and prevent toxicity from entering our lives.
• Avoid holding others accountable. The emotions we feel are generated within us, they belong to us. Focusing on them is essential. Because it is not about looking for a culprit for our discomfort, but about learning to manage it.
• Take charge of what we feel. Assuming the full weight of emotions is difficult but we can begin to practice it: change “You make me angry” or “You make me feel terrible” for “I get angry at what you have done or happened. I am the one who feels angry at what happened and I am going to stay with her to see how to handle it instead of avoiding or rejecting it ”. In this way we will assume ownership of what we feel.

• Channel our emotions. Releasing anger, sadness or fear to assimilate what happens to us will facilitate the understanding of your message.
• Choose our attitude.  We cannot change the circumstances that occur or the people around us, but we can change the attitude with which we face life. To do this, putting the focus of attention within ourselves and choosing how we are going to take everything that happens to us is essential. Let’s not forget that the last decision is up to us.

As we see being toxic, it is a mechanism that is activated to protect our wounds and the best way to prevent it from starting is through emotional responsibility. Life is sometimes not so simple and each one of us is an accumulation of stories and circumstances that have taught us to defend ourselves from pain and suffering, sometimes in a healthy way and others in a toxic way. The question is to bring these mechanisms to consciousness, if you have them, and turn the toxic into growth opportunities.