Breaking Free from Toxic Relationships: Integrated Behavioral Health

Foreign everybody, we are going to wait just a couple more seconds while anybody else filters in. I appreciate you being here with me today. I'm excited to announce that over the weekend we actually got ahead of what I thought we were going to be over the weekend. We set up a Discord server so people who are members of the channel Bronze and above are able to access the Discord server at any time. And and I'm on there a lot, especially in the evenings. But so if you want to chat directly with me, that is a perk that is available to all channel members. So that is something that's going for you there. Otherwise, I do look forward to seeing you members, non members, people who aren't even subscribed to the channel in our morning shows. Please remember if you are not a currently subscribed to click that subscribe if you and the little bell next to it to be notified when I go live every Weekday morning at 9:30am Except Thanksgiving morning. Sorry y', all, I'm taking that day off. You can also, let's see, subscribe, click the bell. Yeah, I guess that's all you need to do. So let's go ahead and get started talking about letting go of toxic people people. And as always, please ask your questions, share your insights in the comment section and that way I can respond to you. And it's a little bit more interactive because it's a little more fun that way. Toxic people. How do we let go of them? Well, the first thing we need to think about are what are toxic people. You know, that's kind of a cheap, generic kind of term there. A toxic relationship is one that is very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive and insidious way. A toxic relationship is one that is harmful to you emotionally, mentally or physically. That's really what we want to talk about. And it also can harm your other relationships. A lot of times. Toxic relationships, if you stay in them, the people that really love you may end up backing away or it may create conflict with those people. Let me start out with a cookie metaphor because I use this to describe healthy relationships and everything we talk about after that will be a contrast. Cookies. I love cookies. Sugar cookies are great on their own. They are the foundation for pretty much every other kind of cookie out there. Sugar cookies are great as a dessert all by themselves. Chocolate chips, they're pretty good all by themselves too. I will eat them straight out of the bag. I will admit it. Semi sweet or even milk chocolate. They are great as a dessert all by themselves. They don't need anything to make them into a dessert. They don't need anything to make them acceptable. They are good as they are. Sugar cookies are good as they are. You put the two of them together and you get something that is absolutely amazing. Sugar cookies, chocolate chips, they can stand alone. But when you put them together, they synergize and make something even better. And that's really what we want in relationships. We don't want to try to find someone to complete us that we need in order to feel whole. We want somebody to complement us that makes us that, that synergizes with us and can help us rise to a new level than, than we ever thought before. Toxic behaviors in relationships that we want to consider are things like inconsistency, unresponsiveness. So if some, if you need something and somebody is, is there for you sometimes, but not always, you know, that's inconsistency. If you need them and they may be there for you, but they're not responsive, they're like, whatever, suck it up. That's not going to be helpful either. If they're inattentive, they just assume that you are going to be there in their shadow, on their coattails. Whenever they don't pay attention, they don't nurture the relationship. That can be part of a toxic relationship. If they don't provide validation, if they're constantly or frequently telling you you're wrong, your feelings are wrong, your thoughts are wrong, your behaviors are wrong. That's going to wear on you quite a bit. If they are self centered. Instead of being encouraging and supportive of you and the things that you want to do and your thoughts and your feelings. The self centered person, it's all about them, what they want, when they want it, because they want it. They may be unsupportive, they may engage in gaslighting, they may be controlling and they may be dishonest. And there are a lot of other behaviors that go under that toxic umbrella. But these are some of the most common ones that can contribute to you looking at it and going, I, I think maybe I need a change. So how do you let go? You've decided that this relationship is toxic for whatever reason. One of the first steps is to allow yourself to grieve the loss of the person, the relationship and the illusion. You may be hanging on to the illusion of that person as they acted, as they presented themselves in those first couple of weeks. You know, when we first meet somebody, we tend to be on our best behavior and have this facade of perfection and you may be still gravitating and remembering that and saying, I know that person's down in there somewhere. Well, in reality, that person may never have existed. That may have been a facade. That may have been an act that the person put on to try to make themselves seem more acceptable, more lovable. Unfortunately, that created an illusion. You saw yourself with that person that you initially met. You saw that yourself with that person in the future, and you saw them behaving that way. Well, that's an illusion. That's not really who that person is. And that's not really what your relationship is like. It's not what you envisioned it being. So it's important to grieve both that person not being in your life, the loss of the relationship, and the loss of the illusion or the dream. So there are three things that you may need to grieve when you're letting go of this toxic person. And this can be, you know, interpersonal relationships, it can be best friends, it can be significant romantic relationships, and it can even be, for some people, family. Sometimes family just cannot engage in a healthy way. And you decide, you know what? I have got to let go of this toxic relationship. Not encouraging you to necessarily do that. That's going to be something that you need to decide what is best for you. When you're grieving or getting ready to grieve, it's important to remember that the toxic person is either not willing to change, you know, sometimes it's a will thing, or they are not able to be the person that you want them to be. They are, too. They've got too much stuff. They've got too much baggage. They've got too much. They're too broken right now. Not to say that they can't be healed and fixed, but at this point in time, they cannot be that person that you want them to be, or they're not willing to. It's their stuff, not you. It's not that you're not worthy of them changing. It's not that, you know, you failed at something. It's the fact that they are not able or willing to make that change. And at a certain point, as the saying goes, you may need to cut bait and say, all right, this is not a healthy situation for me. So begin the detox process. Admit that you're powerless over this person. We cannot, no matter how much we want to, even our children, for in. In large part, we cannot completely control. Now, we can motivate them to make changes, but we can't completely control them. They are independent Little entities. So are our relationships. We are not powerless, powerful enough to make somebody to do something. We can motivate them, we can encourage them, we can ask them, but ultimately they have to choose to change. And at this point, you've decided that you are powerless over this person. You're not able to motivate them to change. And with them in your life, your life has become unmanageable. You are unhappy, you are miserable. Make a list of all of the ways that that person negatively impacts your life. Physically. How does this person impact your life? Do they cause you a lot of anxiety? That impairs your ability to sleep? Do they, do you get stomach aches? Or do you have a lot of symptoms of tension because of the discord in the relationship? Look at some of those physical aspects affectively. Do they contribute to your anxiety, your depression, your anger, your grief? Cognitively, do they put you in a positive mental space or do they make you feel confused? Do they put you in a negative frame of mind where you are looking at the worst, where you are expecting the worst? Environmentally, when this person's around or even when they're not around, how does it affect the energy in your environment? And you know, if you're living with them, you can even think, you know, how does this person affect my environment, period? Maybe they are very slovenly and that bothers you. Well, that's, they're infecting your environment. And relationally, how does this person negatively impact your relationship with yourself, your self esteem and your relationship with other people, other significant people in your life? Does it bolster those relationships? Does it nurture those relationships? Or does it cause discord in those relationships? And then it is important to identify the way, the ways the person positively influenced your life or what they provided and other ways to meet that need. Maybe they provided security, maybe they provided companionship, maybe they provided, you know, whatever it is, what roles did they fill? In what way was being in this relationship at least partially rewarding? And then how can you meet that need? Now remember, Maslow's hierarchy says we need to get our basic needs met first. So food, shelter, medical care, and if this person was helping you afford a house, you know, without them you can't afford your rent. That is something you need to look at addressing. You know, can you meet your basic needs without them? The next level is safety. In what ways did this person contribute if, if at all to your sense of safety and how, how else or who else can fill that role? Right now? The next level is love and belonging in what ways did this person make you feel loved and like you belonged? And how. How else can you get that need met besides relying on this one person? And then there are some random things that you can do. Block the person from your life to prevent random reinforcement. When a toxic person is not getting their own way, a lot of times they will go back to that ideal facade. They can fake that for a short period of time. And when you see that, you may think, oh, they've changed, and get right back into the relationship, but only to find out that, no, that facade quickly dwindles. So initially, you may not have to do it forever. But initially, during what I call the detox period, block the person from your social media, from being able to call you, from being able to text you. That way you're not tempted to, you know, try to rekindle that relationship or try to convince yourself that it's going to be different this time. Have a plan for dealing with inevitable contact. If you live in the same city, there's a possibility you're going to run into each other at the grocery store or the doctor's office or who knows where else. That's. If that happens, you need to have a plan so you don't all of a sudden get a wash with anxiety or dread or despair. How are you going to handle that? Who can you call? What can you do? Be prepared for craving. And in behavioral behavior modification, we call this an extinction burst. When you are trying to eliminate something from your life, you know, you're trying to get rid of it, and you're doing okay. But there's going to be a time where you. You really, really want it again. You know, you think you've got it, and then this little idea pops up in your head and you're like, oh, I really love to have that again. Be prepared for that. During an extinction burst, you may have selective memories. All of a sudden, you start dreaming about or thinking about only the good times. You're, you're pondering. You're going. You may be going through photos, something like that. And I would suggest purging those photos. You don't have to get rid of them forever, but put them somewhere where you're not going to be exposed to them during the detox period. That way you're not sucked into just remembering the good times. During this extinction burst period, this craving period, you may rationalize that, oh, it really wasn't that bad, and even maybe start blaming yourself. It really wasn't that bad, and it was probably my fault. Well, that Is that person, that toxic person telling you, you know, you're taking those messages that you got from that toxic person and blaming yourself and rationalizing that you know something's better than nothing or it wasn't that bad. Be aware of your thoughts and remember that urges, cravings, desires, if you don't feed them, they will eventually, you know, subside. They usually come in and go out. They say in about 20 minutes there's kind of a wave where they come in. They intensify when you don't reward them, when you don't feed them, they tend to go away. So during that time when you start having these pinings, it's important to have distress tolerance skills available to deal with them. You can keep a list of activities, things that you love to do or things that you have to do that'll at least distract you. I won't say I love weeding, but if I need distraction, I can go out and start weeding. And it takes just enough concentration that I'm not thinking about other stuff. And I've done a lot of videos on distress tolerance skills, so you can look at those on the YouTube channel. But it's going to be important to not only have identified your distress tolerance skills, but keep them. You know, you can keep a list of them on your mobile device somewhere because when you start having that urge, you're going to be in your emotional mind. You're not going to be rationally thinking, now, hm, you know, what are my options? What could I do here at home? Keep it on the refrigerator or your bathroom mirror or something so you can easily access it. In addition to planning for these urges, to learning how to deal with these urges, and remember, the urges over time will get less and less intense, but it's going to take time. Remember, you're going through a grieving process. So in addition to developing those distress tolerance skills and preparing for inevitable contacts, it's important to practice PACER prevention and mindfulness. And remember, PACER stands for physical, affective, cognitive, environmental and relational. So what does that mean? Practice physical prevention and mindfulness. When you are physically well rested, well nourished and healthy, it's easier to deal with life on life's terms. Your body factory is going to be operating more efficiently and keeping all of your hormones and neurotransmitters and all that other stuff more imbalance. So you are able to deal with life a little bit easier. So it is important. Sleep, nutrition and general health and pain, if you've got that, to address chronic pain effectively, yes, you are going to have feelings of depression and despair and, and that those may come and go and they ebb and flow. What you're shooting for is for those episodes to become less intense, less frequent and not last for as long, but they're going to pop up periodically and just be aware of that and when they pop up, have a plan for dealing with that distress. What am I going to do when I start feeling, you know, super depressed? Maybe call a friend or walk your dog or whatever it is that you want to do affectively. It's important to also add positive feelings. You can have happy moments and be grieving the loss of a relationship. It's possible find things that you love doing. I have on my mobile device a whole playlist on Amazon music of different comedians that I really like. And if I get into a funk or sometimes when I'm going to the gym and I just don't want to be there, I will put on those comedians and they make me laugh, they make me happy and they take my mind somewhere else when I'm listening to them. I will also sometimes go on YouTube and there's a continental giant rabbit called Jabba. I love watching his YouTube videos, but I will find videos usually of animals that, that make me happy. And it's important to add that happiness in to dilute some, some of the stress chemicals. Cognitively practice hardiness and we've talked about this in a lot of other videos. I, I know, I've got videos on hardiness too. Commitment, control and challenge. Look at the big picture. When you're stressed over letting go of that relationship, you've got tunnel vision, you're focusing on that and maybe your fear of being alone. Well, let's look at the big picture of what's going on. What do you have in your life that makes it rich and meaningful that you're committed to? That's important. You know, it could be your dog, your kids, your other family members, your job, anything, some of your hobbies. How are those things going? Hardiness helps us really look at our life as a whole as multi dimensional, which can be really helpful. Control making sure that the things that you are focusing on, the things that you're using your energy on, are things that are within your and challenge viewing those things that you're using your energy on as a challenge instead of as an obstacle or a barrier. Look at them as with curiosity. Cognitively, it's important to be mindful of your mood if you are in or of your point of view, I guess is a better word. If you are in a negative frame of mind, guess what? You're probably going to see everything through a negative lens. You're going to see the worst in things. You're going to notice a lot more stuff that stresses you out. So it's important cognitively from a prevention standpoint to try to don those rose colored glasses and look at things through a positive lens. Try to look at it from a glass half full sort of perspective. Environmentally, prevention. Put things in your environment, colors, smells, sounds, even lights. Pictures that make you happy, that help you feel calm, that help you feel relaxed, at peace, at ease, and eliminate anything that doesn't. You know, if there are things that remind you of that person, you know, try to get them out of there. You know, if you live together with that person, so, you know, the whole house kind of reminds you of that person. Well, maybe it's time to, you know, go to Goodwill and see what kind of pictures are there and maybe do some redecorating or even in some cases, especially in the very early stages of that detox process, maybe it's time to take a vacation, go visit family for a while just to get out of that environment and relationally pay attention to the relationships that you have. Use your energy to nurture those healthy relationships with others, but also your relationship with yourself. Getting to know yourself again, getting to be your own best friend again, and remembering all of the things that you deserve. Some people have stuff that they still need to say to this toxic person. And my experience has been in, in, in large part, the toxic person doesn't really care what you have to say. A lot of times that's, you know, you can talk until you're blue in the face and it's not going to change anything. So sending this letter or conf. Confronting them with this stuff may be an exercise in frustration and futility. But a lot of people still have that stuff that they need to get off their chest. So it's. Sometimes you can write a letter to that person, not send it, just write it down, get all that stuff out of your head, out off of your heart, and then you can either burn it and sort of give that stuff to the universe. If you are a spiritual person, you may put it in your God box. You know, there are different things that you can do with it. But if you have that stuff to get out, maybe you need to take that step and explore what a healthy relationship looks like to you. Not everybody has the same ideas of exactly what a healthy relationship looks like. And whenever I work with supervisees and they're writing treatment plans and stuff. I want them to define what the endpoints look like, what the goals look like, as evidenced by. That's my favorite phrase, and you'll hear me say it in multiple different videos. So there are two different acronym acronyms that we have. The first one is craves, and that is the acronym that describes the characteristics needed for. For good attachment, consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, encouragement and support. But what does that mean to you? So in a healthy relationship with you, you want to have someone in your life who is consistent, as evidenced by what can they do that will demonstrate consistency to you? You want somebody in your life who is responsive to you. What does that look like? So responsiveness as evidenced by. And you can go through attention. What you want them to pay attention and nurture the relationship, but how do you want them to do that? Remember, you may want to go back to love languages for that. Giving attention and energy to the relationship, as evidenced by not everybody wants somebody to be there 24 7. You know, sometimes attention is as evidenced by, we go out once a week. Other people want contact every single day. So what does that look like to you? The other acronym is hacker. And you know, we talk about life hacks, so I thought hacker. You know, that works for me. And these are other characteristics that are helpful in any relationship. Honesty, awareness, communication, kindness, emotional intelligence and respect. And obviously there's some overlap between the characteristics in secure attachment relationships and any old relationship, but there are some differences. You know, we didn't talk about honesty yet, but honesty is important in relationships. So honesty in your relationship, as evidenced by, do you want to know everything that's going on? What is it? What does honesty look like to you? Awareness in relationships, being mindful and attentive to the relationship. You know, how do you know that somebody is being aware in your relationship? And sensitive, you know, awareness and responsiveness kind of go hand in hand kind communication. What does that look like to you? Do you want the occasional text message or do you want to have these long, deep discussions every day? And what are you. What is important for you to talk about? Some people are fine having these fluff, surface discussions. Other people really want to talk about, you know, thoughts and feelings and dreams and that kind of thing. Kindness, what does that look like to you? Emotional intelligence and respect. So those are things that you know, obviously each one of those ask yourself, how will I know if someone is doing this in a relationship? What would I want them to. How would I want them to show me or to act to demonstrate that they are being honest, aware, communicative, kind, emotionally intelligent and respectful. Like any grieving process, letting go of a toxic person will take time. Aim for progress, not perfection. That first few days, you may feel like you're miserable constantly. And, and that's not unexpected. You know, you're. There's a big change there, and it's. Change causes crisis. Even if you're leaving something bad, what you're leaving is something known. And we, when we leave the known for the unknown, it can be very scary and devastating. So anticipate, initially, there's probably going to be more upset and less happy and contentment. But you want those periods of distress to become less intense and less frequent. Alrighty. I am looking at some of your questions. Some toxic people make it seem like they need you because they're always in crisis. Crisis and drama that they deliberately create. Yes, they're. That's their manipulation. If they know that that is going to suck you back in, then they will make you feel needed. And that's where you look and you recognize that, hey, I am in this relationship right now because I feel like I need to be needed or I feel like this person's behavior is my responsibility. And it's not unless you're talking about a child, and that's different. But when you're talking about another adult, their feelings and their thoughts and their behaviors are their choice and their responsibility. It's hard to accept that. It's hard to, you know, set that boundary and say, you know, I am not going to let you control me through this manipulation. If, for example, you're in a relationship with someone who is in active addiction and they say that they need you in order to help their recovery, or maybe they're in early recovery and they say, if you leave me, I'm going to relapse. Well, you know what? That's their choice. They have the, the ability to choose not to or to choose to. And if you feel, you know, the. That it's important to you to do something and not just, you know, cut it off, then maybe contacting their sponsor and saying, you know what? I'm having to leave this relationship for my own mental health right now. And Jim Bob said that if I left him, he was going to relapse. So I'm letting, you know and put that. Give that to somebody else who is still in that person's life. So you can feel like you did a warm handoff. That helps with. In some situations. And it is important to address guilt about getting rid of Toxic people remember, guilt is self anger. When you feel guilty or ashamed, that is anger at yourself for failing to do something that you think you should have done, or failing to do that you should have done, or doing something that you shouldn't have done. And it's important to remember and look at that guilt and go, you know, did I do what I needed to do in this relationship? Did I maintain my boundaries? Did I try? Did I communicate? Did I do these things? Okay, that other person may try to play on guilt, may try to manipulate you through guilt and make you believe that the relationship didn't work out because it's your fault, or make you believe that they cannot survive without you. And those are ways of playing on your guilt. And you know in the first one, if they're trying to make you believe that it's your fault. Examining the facts. What are the facts in this situation? Did you do what you needed to do? Did you try and you know the answer's probably going to be yes. And, and recognizing that someone who is, has baggage, we'll just put it that way. Somebody who has baggage that's trying to manipulate you that way, that's worked for them in the past. And they may truly believe that it's your fault because they have justified, minimized and rationalized everything in their own brains. But that doesn't mean that you have to join them in their dysfunctional reality and the guilt that they can't, quote, survive without you. Well, that's where that warm handoff comes in. If you are worried about them and you've been in a relationship with them, you know, as friends or their family or a significant relationship, you probably know some of their friends. And this is the time that you may reach out to some of those people and go, hey, I am having to step away from this, but I'm, I still am care about this person and I'm still concerned about them. And they say that, you know, they're not going to be able to cope with this, so can you please check on them? Do that warm handoff. And a person who is toxic, one of their goals is to make you feel guilty and helpless and powerless because you won't leave if you feel powerless. So it's important to figure out where is your power in this relationship? What strengths and resources do you have? You know, yes, you may leave them, you may leave this relationship, but what other relationships do you have in your life? If you're in a domestically violent relationship, obviously you need to take a significant, significant care and caution when leaving that relationship, what I'm talking about here is not domestically violent relationships, although a lot of these things ultimately will apply. If you are in a violent relationship, you need to get to safety. That is the first thing that you need to do. But if you are in a relationship that is just dysfunctional and we've all had them, it is important to recognize the benefits of this person's behavior. If they're trying to shame you or guilt you, what's the benefit to them for doing that? How do you reward that behavior? And generally you reward that behavior by giving in, examining that, trying to maintain a logical assessment of what's going on, but also remembering and reaching out to those people that are, can be your support and your resources. Yes. You may not have this person to come home to every night. All right, well, who else do you have? Maybe you've got some other friends and you can take turns, you know, making dinner for each other for the next month. That way you don't have to eat dinner alone if that is something that really bothers you. You know, there are things, things that you can do, there are modifications that you can make. It may take some creativity and it's going to, you're likely going to need some support from those people. So, you know, gather your army, gather your alliance, and let them know ahead of time that you're getting ready to leave this relationship. They can support you in that, they can help you nude you along because you may start thinking about, okay, I'm going to end it today and then chicken out. And there's, you know, 365 today later, you still haven't left the relationship. If you have gathered your support system ahead of time and said, all right, I need to do this, then they can be there to kind of give you that extra little push to say, all right, you know, let's let, let us help you do it and let us help you cope with it. If they have no friends and that can be, that can happen in a domestically violent relationship, especially. It's important to figure out where your supports are. Family, religious leaders, people at work, who is it that you can start spending time with? Who is it that you can connect with if it's a domestically violent relationship, even if it's at this point only emotionally abusive, where the person has been isolated from friends and family has, you know, lost a lot of self confidence and those sorts of things. It's important to reach out to a domestic violence counselor or shelter to number one, make sure that you've got a safe place to be, but also to get support from other people who have felt like they had to start completely over because they had lost everything when they were in that relationship. And in relationships with. With toxic people, you know, that's going back to how it affects you. You know, what do you want to feel like in a relationship? Do you want to feel loved, accepted, like you're enough? And if you don't feel that way, it's important to evaluate, you know, why if you feel like you're not enough, that's conditional. Regardless, in. In healthy relationships, we love each other for who we are, not what we do not, you know, whether we're CEO or a good housekeeper or a good parent or whatever. We love each other because we are, you know, human beings. We may dislike some of the behaviors the other person does, but it's important to feel in general compatible and, and like. Like you are complementing each other. Remember the analogy of the cookie that I gave earlier in the presentation? You want to feel. Well, for me, I want to feel like chocolate chips, but. Or sugar cookies, whichever one you want to be in that relationship. Like, you are whole and you are good enough on your own, and you can look in the mirror and say, you know what? To quote Stuart Smalley, for those of you who are older, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me. Are there other questions? I really do appreciate so many of you being here on this Thanksgiving week, Monday and tomorrow, I was asked to do a presentation on bereavement. So we will be talking a little bit about that bereavement during the holidays because that is an issue for a lot of us. Everybody, have a great day.