Radical Healing from the Toxic Histrionic

Hi, I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper. Thanks for joining us. We are in the middle of our 30 Days of Radical Healing series where every day a video will drop and you will get information on how to heal from some different issue. So make sure you like this video and subscribe to this channel for more information on all of this. Today the topic is radical healing from toxic histrionics. So in many of my other videos, if you see that I talk a good deal about histrionic personality disorder, if you look at the other videos, it tells you a lot about what it is. But basically, these are individuals who suffer from personality disorders. The core feature of this is individuals who demand, have a high need for attention, and they go through extreme lengths to get that attention. So today we're talking about how to heal from that. So if you are in a relationship with someone who suffers from this disorder, or if you know someone, or if you yourself are histrionic, then this would be some important information for you. And I want to first back up and talk a little bit about what toxicity mean. I'm talking about toxic histrionics, right? So what does toxic mean? Toxic, if you look up the definition, it could mean things like poisonous, but it also mental health means harmful. It could also mean hurtful. But there's one other meaning that I want to point out to you, and many people don't also think about this when they think about toxic, but toxic could also mean draining. Because if something is draining to your system, it's toxic, right? Think of the flu. When you have the flu or pneumonia, you're drained. It's toxic to your body because it's draining all of your energy. So individuals who suffer from histrionic personality disorder are draining. So for that reason, it is toxic. Now let's talk a little bit about healing. What does healing look like? Healing can mean different things, but in this respect, healing means how to get over, how to deal with how you react to a situation and how you react to a histrionic person or a person that demands a lot of your attention, an attention seeker. How do you react to that? That is really where your healing lies, right? You have to be able to react to a histrionic person in the appropriate way, or if you don't, it will just feed into the behavior, and likely the behavior will continue, or likely the behavior might even increase. So it's very important how you react to an individual with histrionic personality disorder. So I have two things that is very important for you to do to be successful if you're trying to heal from this toxic histrionic, right? One thing is, ding, ding, ding, remove yourself. So remove is really the keyword here because that could mean remove yourself from the histrionic person, meaning physically put some space and distance there. Could mean that. Could also mean remove the audience. It could mean remove the attention, right? Because if this person is thriving off of getting attention and being the center of attention and acting up, being entertaining, remove that audience. From that individual because they cannot act on stage if there's no audience, right? Because it's not the same. It doesn't feed the same need for them. So remove yourself, remove the audience, remove the attention, remove whatever it is that is reinforcing to that individual as well. So remove is the one thing I want to highlight here. Second thing is you have to practice mindfulness. It is not just an optional piece of how you heal from dealing with a toxic histrionic. But it's essential. You have to use it. It's very important. You have to survive. You have to practice wellness in your own life. So my next tip, number 2, is practicing mindfulness in those situations. So what do I mean by that? Let's say you're in a situation and the histrionic person is annoying you, frustrating you, and maybe angry at you because you're not giving them the attention that they want and they're lashing out at you. So the proper way to respond to make this successful is to Like I already said, remove. So back, try to disengage from the situation, and then begin with your mindfulness practice. And I'll give you a strategy that can be helpful. I want you to call this a 20-minute mindfulness exercise. So in this case, you're in the situation with the person that is histrionic. They're angry at you, they're lashing out, they could be verbally abusing you, calling you names, whatever. So what I want you to try is to sit there for a minute Act as if you're not in that situation and remove yourself. Start to think about something else. And I want you to think about intention. What is your intention for that person? If it's someone that you're friends with, in relationship with, or family, then you love them, right? So your intention in that moment of what you want to achieve for yourself is patience, right? It could be patience. So let's imagine that what you want to achieve is patience. So you'll think, you'll say, Patience. And then you'll give yourself about 20 seconds to really sit and think about patience. What does patience look like? What does it sound like? How does it feel when you have patience and others have patience with you? And then I want you to, if you're in a place where you can write something down, to jot down patience, just to spell it out, and then kind of start to focus on patience, the visual image of what patience looks, smells, sounds like, tastes like if there is a taste. And if you're not in a place where you can write it down, then pick up your phone and jot down in your phone, take notes about patience. 20 seconds of what is what you should give yourself to focus on patience. You have to be very intentional when you're practicing mindfulness, and you have to be very intentional when you're dealing with the individual with histrionic personality disorder because they can suck the life out of you, and they can eventually cause you to act out of character. And that's not something that we want. It's not helpful for you, and it's not helpful for them. So I've just given you two tips. One, right, one is the remove, and two is the how to practice a 20-second mindfulness exercise in the midst that can help you get healing from situations and people like that. Stay tuned for more videos in this 30 Days of Radical Healing. I'm Dr. Jameca Cooper Cooper. Like the video, subscribe to the channel, drop some comments, give me some feedback on some things that maybe you found helpful when dealing with a toxic histrionic. Thank you and join us again.