Most of us know how it feels when we surround ourselves with people who behave in unhealthy manners consistently. It drains our energy, kills our spirit, and plays with our minds.
Yet, unfortunately, we keep toxic relationships longer because we treat this behavior as normal regardless of the negative impact on our mental health.
The study found that exposure to negative emotional stimuli such as consuming negative content on social media and hanging out with negative people will negatively influence our hippocampus which is the part of our brain that is responsible for memory and reasoning.
Toxic behavior comes in different forms such as blaming, manipulation, controlling, envy, or drama. These behaviors have similarities that make them difficult to recognize.
Here are 5 types of toxic people that help you to spot on, so you can remove them from your life.
1. Blame-shifting
This behavior comes from someone who doesn’t take responsibility for their action, they manipulate situations and convince you that it is your fault. They blame you for their actions.
This toxic behavior will drain your energy emotionally because they want you to take responsibility for things you didn’t do.
When they get lost while driving with you, they blame you because you talk too much. When your relationship falls apart, they blame you because you never listen to them. So on and on.
They don’t care about your feelings because their feeling matters the most. They want the world to understand them regardless they can understand others.
These people never take responsibility and pretend to be victims by blaming negative situations as others’ faults.
2. They Always Bring up People’s Past Mistakes
“You are weird as a kid — That’s why you are always single!” *Old friend said*
How does someone’s opinion about your past relate to what you are today? This statement has nothing to do with you right now.
This toxic person lives in the past, what they see towards you is a reflection of yourself a couple years ago. They think you don’t change. But the truth is they are the ones who never change.
These toxic people will try to drag you down and beat you by using your weakness in the past. They like to bring up your old wounds to remind you how pathetic you are.
No one can save this toxic behavior because no one knows and understands their insecurities. They deal with it by projecting on you because they are afraid to look at themselves in the mirror.
They talk down on you because that’s what they do to themselves every day. Their behavior has nothing to do with you, it just reveals who they truly are.
3. Too Competitive
This toxic behavior likes to compete with anyone either with friends or family.
They don’t care if what they do harms themselves or others as long as they can be the best in the group. The only reason they stay in business is to be better than anyone else.
They see their relationship as a competition to seek who is winner or loser, better or worse, and right or wrong. You might feel stressed and under pressure to be around them because they see you as an enemy, even if you are close friends.
They see competition in every situation.
These people don’t like to celebrate you when you win because their ambitious trait comes from jealousy and envy. They measure every achievement by numbers, more money, more cars, more incomes, and higher status.
They don’t acknowledge you as worthy and valuable if you don’t meet their criteria.
4. Complainers
These people always focus on the negative aspect of their life, so they complain about everything.
They complain at work, house, street, grocery store, coffee shop, you name it. They never look at the bright side, they always think life is unfair.
Instead, reflecting on their behavior, they blame and find mistakes in others. They focus on what they lack and make them never feel satisfied.
They want you to become exactly as they are.
Research from Stanford University found complaining will reduce your hippocampus and a study found that just hearing someone complain for more than 30 minutes will damage our brain.
It’s easy for us to complain about many things in life. But most of the time, life’s just fine as it is. There are enough reasons to be grateful for what we have.
The problem with complainers is their behavior and thoughts are in a default state. There is nothing you can do to change it, what you can do is avoid or let them go.
5. Narcissist
People who have traits of narcissism are described in the article in Psychology Today as:
“Characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment.”
These people love talking about themselves and want to be self-centered. They always think their opinions are more important than others.
These people love to get attention, admiration, and appreciation because they believe that they deserve to be treated as a special one.
However, the truth is their trait will be more damaging in their professional and personal life.
They just want to hang out with high-status people or have more benefits than them. They will treat people who can fulfill their desires so well and treat people who have no advantage over them badly.
These people are not worthy to be your friend because what they care about the most is only about themselves.