When toxicity comes a-knocking

How we protect our headspace in harmful relationships and environments.

Credit: Junseong Lee on Unsplash

Welcome to Solicited Advice, our weekly column that celebrates the helpfulness in health. Because in a world where strangers at the grocery store love to tell you that a specific brand of magnesium will indeed “cure” what ails you (it probably won’t, so sorry), we’re all about passing on our lived experience in a way that makes your life a little better. Are we experts? Nah, not really. But we’re great listeners who have perfected the art of pillow screaming. Let’s get into it!

As I get older, I’m realizing how toxic some of my family and work dynamics are. How do you survive an environment that’s inherently toxic when you can’t walk away?

Ash: This is such a complicated topic, but I think I am in alignment with the other BFFs in a lot of ways. I’m someone who struggles with relationships, and because they don’t come as easily to me, it takes up a lot of my headspace to maintain even the best ones. I frankly don’t have enough energy to keep up with ones that feel bad or drain me. Typically I’d disengage, but sometimes that just isn’t possible. When that happens, I often keep conversations brief and factual — especially in the case of politics or other topics that cause riffs — leaving little space to go deep into, well, anything. I limit my dedicated brainspace for those interactions to the time required, leaving it at the door when it’s over.

For workplaces though, it can be even more complicated — especially if you love what you do or you need the financial security it provides. When you’re just dealing with a difficult coworker, that conversation style works great. But when it’s about leadership or HR — or that they won’t address the issue — you can feel stuck fending for yourself. I think similarly, the only thing you can do is set some boundaries. Only think about work while at work (I know, I know, easier said than done), limit interactions to strictly what’s required to do your job, and don’t push yourself to go above and beyond. Ultimately, there may be some harder boundaries and decisions in your future, but you have to decide for yourself if muscling through is causing more harm than the alternatives.

Jess: That’s a tough one. There are usually two layers for me: the emotional entanglement that steals all of my energy and the actual response. For the first layer, figuring out what exactly is bothering me is helpful. Is it disrespect? The audacity? The incorrectness? Or is it pinging something in me that I’m sensitive about or already judging myself for? Once I figure that out, I can determine whether I need to address it internally, with someone else, or if I need to build an exit plan.

For the second layer, if it’s not something that I need to address in myself, and addressing it with the other person either isn’t working or isn’t an option — I gray rock. Before I knew this was an actual method, I just called it “shutting down a conversation.”

For example:

• That person who can’t help but recommend water as a “cure” either gets a stare and no verbal response, or an “OK” with no inflection. What are they going to do with that? They think they’ve “won” and I’m going to go be cured by water now, and, importantly, they’re going to stfu.

• The boss who kept telling me that it was my job to make the line go up and to the right with no resources and no budget eventually started getting an, “OK. My job is to make the line go up and to the right with no resources or budget.” Repeating it back with no heat in my voice shows that, yup, I understand, and no longer arguing back about the absurdity of it means they won’t lose their temper and yell and cuss at me.

The added benefit of gray rocking is that it can be helpful in identifying who is actually toxic. A toxic person won’t even clock the change in demeanor as a bad thing. They take it as acquiescence, as them “winning” — and that’s what they care about. If you’re someone who likes to argue or prove a point, or who sees discussion and disagreement as potentially generative, this could suck for you. It sure does for me. And. I have to remember my end goal: To stop the toxicity so it stops taking up so much of my energy.

Kat: Not only am I a people-pleaser by nature, but I am also terrified of conflict in all its forms (more so in my personal life, not my professional one). A hard lesson I’ve had to learn — no matter if it’s a toxic relationship or environment, like a workplace or neighborhood — is that I will likely never be able to change a place or a person on my own. This is especially true with friendships and family connections, because the toxic counterpart never sees themselves as manipulative or harmful in the first place. And trust me when I say this goes against everything in my being. I want to please, I want to smooth out the edges; I have even gone as far to rationalize bad behavior by nitpicking my weaknesses and telling myself I can and should do/be better. But over the years as my physical well of energy ran dry, and my emotional bandwidth became more limited, I realized I no longer have the chutzpah or sheer willpower to overextend myself for people who don’t deserve it. Here is the affirmation I say to myself constantly: It is not my responsibility to make someone a better person, and I am not responsible for their behavior. I only have the power to distance or remove myself. Do I follow through on that all the time? No. It’s not always as easy as it seems to wash our hands of a person or environment like you said, especially if there’s a financial or logistical component attached to it (like housing or a paycheck). But, like Jess said, what I can always do is limit how much precious brainspace I’m devoting to the toxicity — I can set up mental and emotional boundaries to where I don’t ruminate on it constantly. Baby steps, ya know?

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