Dealing with toxic people

[Alex]

Thankfully I don't have to deal with many toxic people at work. IRL toxic people are harder for me to deal with because not only do I have to ignore them, I also have to convince myself that they are wrong. I am naturally pessimistic and negative reasoning generally 'clicks' easier in my mind as opposed to positive reasoning.

But if it's online toxic people in video games I just ignore them or make a joke out of them. Those people are pretty easy to deal with.

 

[Corrin]

I've never really dealt with these sorts offline, most of the people I've associated with were decent. I guess I'm lucky there! I'm a huge doormat though, so I imagine it would be easy to manipulate me since I want to make others happy.

I've met a few online that I've just blocked. It was hard but it was for the best.

 

[Rune]

Lots of people have said it but cutting off relations seems to be the best way to go about it. I've tried many ways in dealing with them like confronting, the nice way, ignoring, or even going physical. So far, only cutting off relations seems to work the best.

If I'm stuck with them due to circumstances like them being a co-worker or classmates, same rules still apply. I just stop talking to them and who knows, maybe I or they might reach back out after a while. People do change often or eventually. But still, I don't think it's worth it to keep all the bridges in life if it means I live in constant mental anguish.

 

[Kanzler]

TBH, I think avoidance and separation are important, if not the primary, principles when dealing with toxic people. Toxic people have the potential to develop co-dependent relationships and influence the victim to enable some of their behaviour which makes those relationships very very messy. It's not about being holier-than-thou as much as it is about being rationally harm-avoidant.

 

[Linyit]

Oh, toxic people. I've dealt with some of those.

Toxic People Type 1: The manipulative liars who love to use people. Just make clear you are no person to do the work for others.

The negativity toxics, which bring everyone down with just one comment: Avoid them as much as possible. You can't change them to positive people.

Then there is my personal favourite(not): The "I-isolate-you-from-your-friends-without-you-even-noticing-lol." And yes, they actually managed to do that to me. I was kind of dense to not have noticed earlier that I left out my friends for her, because she did "feel bad" when they were around.

Funny thing is, I had another friend of those, who did not manipulate me, but my other friends of another group to not hang out with me and the thing is they listened to them, except for one. I found out later that they sent them letters with threats etc.

Those isolating people, you must just cut ties forever. Easy as that.

 

[zakisrage]

Most of the answers here have the theme of "ignoring" or "telling them off". This really isn't feasible when the toxic person is your colleague or coworker, much less boss or supervisor. Then it just becomes a nightmare. You can't just ignore them and move on with life. You have to hone your patience and learn to walk the line between being servile and aggressive. Most of the time it doesn't work and no matter how much you love your job it becomes very stressful.

I spent the last three months working with two incredibly difficult people in my lab. Worst of all, they were a couple, so their dual dynamic made it even more unbearable. This basically made me realize- learning to deal with particularly toxic people is a life skill, just like driving or cooking.

I wholeheartedly agree. Running away from toxic people isn't going to make them stop. Fighting back is only going to get you in trouble. If it's your coworker or boss, it could get you fired.

If only people these days would realise that...