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Rethink Toxic Relationships—Including The One You Have With Yourself
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• No man is an island. Your unique thought patterns and habits are in a constant relationship with the unique thought patterns and habits of those around you. Relationships are shared patterns, and there is no such thing as a toxic person, only toxic patterns, behaviors, and relationships.
• All relationships are occasionally difficult, but toxic relationships amplify and recreate negativity in a way that is destructive and unhealthy for all parties involved. Focus on recurring dynamics and patterns rather than specific isolated behaviors, be accountable, and ask how your core beliefs are manifesting in the relationship.
• If you are bringing toxic patterns to a relationship, make a list of the behaviors, understand the function they are serving, put the pattern in context, then commit to making changes internally and externally.
Transcript
Coming to you from Atlanta.
Speaker:This is The Science of Self, where you learn to improve your life from the inside out.
Speaker:This is your host, Russell.
Speaker:Today is April 20, 2023, and here's a few quick hits to start your morning for your music fans.
Speaker:Moon Bin, actor and member of the K pop group Astro, dies by suicide at age 25.
Speaker:You're a coachella fan.
Speaker:Frank Ocean is pulled out, but don't worry, Blink 182 is supposed to take his place.
Speaker:It's National Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day.
Speaker:International Pizza Cake Day.
Speaker:Not sure what that is.
Speaker:National cheddar fries day, and even lima bean respect day.
Speaker:A lot of food things today because as you probably know already, it is 420.
Speaker:Our episode today comes from Nick Trenton's book stop Negative Thinking.
Speaker:We've talked at several different episodes in this podcast about toxic relationships, and one of the most important toxic relationships to deal with is the one that you have with yourself.
Speaker:Let's hear more on this from Nick Trenton.
Speaker:So much of every single day is automatic and unconscious.
Speaker:We resort to the same old patterns and habits without thinking about it or being aware that it's what we're doing.
Speaker:The negativity habit can be imprinted in our early formative years, sustained by our culture and society and kept intact by our own set of narratives and core beliefs.
Speaker:But people don't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker:No matter how personal and private your own thoughts, feelings and core beliefs seem to you, they are in fact embedded into the social environment around you.
Speaker:The relationships you have with others are constantly interacting with them, and there is mutual influence, for better or worse.
Speaker:All of this is to say that negative thinking can be like a house of cards.
Speaker:Pull one card and you realize how many other cards fall as well because they were supported by it.
Speaker:Your unique thought patterns and habits are in relationship to the unique thought patterns and habits of those around you.
Speaker:As you gain more awareness of the role that negativity plays in your life, you cannot help but notice how your relationships and general environment are all connected to to put it bluntly, if you have a problem with negativity, it's almost guaranteed that the negativity plays a role in your relationships with others.
Speaker:A quick example will make this clear anne has worked really hard with a therapist to undo a whole complex web of negative core beliefs about herself.
Speaker:She can clearly see how her negative self talk is jeopardizing her happiness and how her distorted thought processes are making her miserable.
Speaker:She makes enormous strides and achieves genuine transformation, learning to diffuse from difficult emotions and see herself and the world with completely different eyes.
Speaker:But somehow it doesn't stick.
Speaker:She keeps finding herself back at square one and doesn't know why.
Speaker:One day, her therapist gently suggests something.
Speaker:Could her husband be the reason?
Speaker:After gaining big insights into her behavior at every weekly therapy session.
Speaker:She then goes straight home and spends the remainder of the week with her husband, bickering.
Speaker:It's not that her husband's a bad person.
Speaker:Rather, it's that Anne has deeply entrenched patterns of negative behavior that she plays out with him every day.
Speaker:There's a lot of complaining and fault finding, squabbles following some miscommunication, a little bit of sulking and stonewalling, a constant and low grade level of irritation, all of it adding to a growing pile of resentment and negativity every moment of every day.
Speaker:What chance did Anne's single therapy session have when pitched against all that?
Speaker:The reason that Anne cannot make any improvements or maintain the improvements she does make is because she's not aware of the situations, relationships, and circumstances around her that are sustaining and creating her negativity.
Speaker:She's looking at the problem on one level emotional, psychological, cognitive, and completely ignoring the other levels, social and relational.
Speaker:It's not that the work Anne is doing with her therapist is not useful.
Speaker:It's just that it doesn't go far enough.
Speaker:Importantly, it's not that Anne is a toxic person or that her husband is.
Speaker:Rather, the relationship between them.
Speaker:I e.
Speaker:Their shared pattern of behavior is toxic.
Speaker:Once she realizes this, she goes back to her therapist, who encourages her to think strategically.
Speaker:What can she change, and what does she have to learn to cope with?
Speaker:How well is this pattern serving her life, and does she want to rewrite it?
Speaker:To make the perspective shift that Anne has, you can ask yourself what toxic behavioral patterns exist in your own life right now?
Speaker:And how do they interact with other people?
Speaker:If relationships are shared patterns of behavior, what relationships in your life right now are part of a pattern of negativity?
Speaker:A pattern is toxic.
Speaker:A person is not.
Speaker:Before we go further, let's make a clear distinction.
Speaker:There is no such thing as a toxic person, but the way a person relates to other people can certainly be toxic.
Speaker:After all, you may be reading this book because you have a pattern of negative thinking, but if you call yourself a negative person, then you're saying that this pattern of behavior is fundamentally who you are, and that means you cannot change.
Speaker:If you call yourself a person who has a pattern of negative thinking, then you are in control and can change.
Speaker:It's a big difference in the self help realm.
Speaker:It's been trendy for a while now to go on toxic person witch hunts.
Speaker:I e.
Speaker:Identify anyone in your life who acts like a poison to you and forcefully remove them.
Speaker:While it may be 100% true that another person treats you in abusive ways and negatively impacts your mental health and well being, focusing exclusively on their role means you ignore your own.
Speaker:Thus, if Anne came to understand her husband as abusive but called him toxic and simply left him, she might find herself in precisely the same kind of relationship once again.
Speaker:That's because she never understood and challenged her own patterns, so she promptly repeated them with someone else.
Speaker:Remember that your unique thought patterns and habits are in relationship with the unique thought patterns and habits of those around you.
Speaker:If we think that the problem is merely that the other person is a jerk, we rob ourselves of a deeper understanding of our own ingrained relational patterns.
Speaker:For example, Anne might begin to understand that her negative thinking habit is actually part of a broader relational habit where she continually picks romantic partners who belittle and undermine her, because that fits with her core belief that she is worthless.
Speaker:If she merely blames her husband, who is, to be fair, to blame, she never gives herself the chance to break that pattern within herself.
Speaker:This is why it's so important to not lose sight of the fact that relationships are shared patterns.
Speaker:Anne's husband, should he find himself single again, may go back into the dating market and meet many new women.
Speaker:And none of them are interested in him because they're unwilling to tolerate his behavior all alone in a room by himself.
Speaker:Is he still toxic?
Speaker:Anne might say, he's an abuser.
Speaker:He makes me feel worthless.
Speaker:But this is not strictly true.
Speaker:It was Anne herself who first held the core belief that she was worthless.
Speaker:She then selected a partner who confirmed this and reflected it back to her again.
Speaker:Neither Anne nor her husband are bad or toxic people.
Speaker:Rather, they both share in a mutual pattern of behavior that is toxic.
Speaker:It's all too easy and pretty tempting, if we're honest, to label people as toxic, as though we didn't share equal responsibility for the quality of that relationship.
Speaker:But we do, and we commit to claiming our responsibility, not because we want to take the blame, but to better understand why our life is the way it is and what we can do to make it better.
Speaker:What is a toxic relationship?
Speaker:A toxic thought or feeling is one that's become so distorted and unhealthy that it is dramatically impairing your quality of life.
Speaker:A toxic relationship is the same in CBT.
Speaker:You can challenge an unhelpful thought and rewrite it.
Speaker:But patterns are bigger than single thoughts, and they involve other people.
Speaker:All relationships have some degree of difference, tension and friction at times, but toxic relationships are more malignant.
Speaker:They amplify and recreate negativity in a way that is destructive and unhealthy for all parties involved.
Speaker:You'll know that you're in a toxic relationship.
Speaker:If one or both of you feels devalued, disrespected or abused feels utterly exhausted, drained emotionally and defeated, feels unsafe, either physically or emotionally, experience a constant state of drama, angst and conflict experience a loss of self esteem and dignity feels their boundaries are repeatedly violated experiences chronic deceit, lies, or manipulation experiences violence and aggression.
Speaker:Trying to undo negative thinking patterns when you're in a relationship like this is like trying to train for a marathon when you have cancer.
Speaker:I e not easy.
Speaker:Instead, you need to first remove yourself from relationships that are amplifying and sustaining negativity so that you can start to work on those patterns within yourself.
Speaker:Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you broaden your perspective.
Speaker:Tip one turn your focus from the relationship to the relationship dynamic.
Speaker:Look beyond the current situation or disagreement and become curious about recurrent patterns.
Speaker:What keeps happening over and over again?
Speaker:What is the bigger picture?
Speaker:Sometimes negative behaviors are just a one off, but look to see if any repeating cycles can be found.
Speaker:It's not about identifying the good guy and the bad guy or deciding where to place blame, but rather asking what is actually happening here and being genuinely curious about the answer.
Speaker:Look at this broader pattern and ask yourself where it might have originally come from.
Speaker:Did you share this pattern with a caregiver as a child?
Speaker:Is this a coping mechanism you picked up after a particularly traumatic event in your past?
Speaker:Tip two be accountable.
Speaker:Ask what your role in the ongoing dynamic is, bearing in mind that this is not an exercise in shame or judgment.
Speaker:Rather, be honest about the ways that you've enabled the pattern to play out or at least didn't stop it from playing out.
Speaker:It's vital to be able to call out bad behavior and identify abuse, but if we cling too tightly to the victim identity, we may forget our own power to change the situation.
Speaker:What are your core beliefs about your role in life?
Speaker:How does that assumption manifest in your relationships right now?
Speaker:How are your thoughts and feelings sustaining the dynamic, and how are they challenging it?
Speaker:Tip Three examine your core Beliefs our relationships with others are a reflection of our relationship with ourselves and vice versa.
Speaker:Ask honestly what a current relationship is revealing about the core beliefs you have about yourself.
Speaker:For example, if you find yourself repeatedly complaining that nobody takes you seriously, become curious about whether you hold a core belief that plays into this and whether you don't take yourself seriously either.
Speaker:The disrespectful people in your life are just one half of the story.
Speaker:The other half is the unconscious core belief you hold that you are not, in fact, worth anyone's respect.
Speaker:If you change the core belief but keep the disrespectful people in your life, you've only solved half the problem.
Speaker:Likewise, if you get rid of the disrespectful people but maintain the core belief, then sooner or later you'll just attract new people, much like the old people, who will continue to reflect that core belief back at you.
Speaker:To make real progress, you need to tackle both.
Speaker:When you're the Toxic One the internet is awash with advice on how to deal with negative family members, partners and friends, and long checklists to help you identify the narcissists, energy, vampires, and toxic people you need to cut out of your life.
Speaker:But what if you're the one who's toxic?
Speaker:Well, let's just say there aren't as many people interested in that material.
Speaker:We'll now consider a delicate topic that can be difficult to talk about or even think about.
Speaker:The truth is that if we have a problem with negative thinking, we have the potential to be toxic people ourselves and bring the lion's share of negativity to our relationships.
Speaker:Again, being aware of these patterns is not about blame and shame.
Speaker:Rather, the more we are conscious of, the more we can be in control of.
Speaker:Here's an exercise to help you identify the toxic and negative patterns you may be contributing to the relationships around you.
Speaker:Step One make a List sit down and compile a list of behaviors you know that you engage in habitually, positive or negative, major or minor.
Speaker:This takes some self knowledge and honesty, but the exercises in the preceding chapters may have given you some useful insight.
Speaker:Don't list single behaviors or events, but ongoing and recurrent patterns.
Speaker:For example, you may list complaining about the weather, going for bad boys, making jokes in awkward situations, gossiping, and spreading rumors overworking minimizing achievements.
Speaker:Step two understand the behavior.
Speaker:Look at the list and explore the results you're getting with each pattern of behavior.
Speaker:Look beyond whether the pattern feels good or how inevitable it seems, and consider whether it's working for you or not.
Speaker:Also, ask where the behavior might have originally come from and what purpose it serves.
Speaker:The big thing to understand is what core beliefs may be at the root of this behavior.
Speaker:For example, you may realize that your pattern of minimizing your own achievements is having a very negative effect on your life.
Speaker:You may know that it stems from growing up with very strict and critical parents who were sparing with praise.
Speaker:The core belief behind it all is you're nothing special.
Speaker:Now, not all your patterns of behavior are going to be big and serious.
Speaker:Some will be fairly minor and insignificant.
Speaker:Step Three put the pattern in context.
Speaker:This is the most important step.
Speaker:Ask yourself how this pattern of behavior fits into your bigger world.
Speaker:How is it sustained and maintained by the relationships around you?
Speaker:In what way might your own core beliefs be amplified by certain key relationships?
Speaker:For example, you may look at your work life and realize that your bosses are happy to take advantage of the fact that you are a workaholic without properly compensating you.
Speaker:Inadvertently, they are taking part in the you're nothing special dynamic and are an extension of it.
Speaker:Step four make Changes both Inside and out once you understand your own core beliefs and how they fit into bigger patterns of behavior with other people, you can start making changes.
Speaker:Do this on both levels.
Speaker:One, commit to making one small change to your inner thought processes.
Speaker:But also two take a step to changing your environment or relationship.
Speaker:For example, you may start working on your self esteem and start each morning with a mantra that counters the I'm nothing special core belief.
Speaker:At the same time, you can start putting up more boundaries at work and not agreeing to work overtime.
Speaker:You might also consider asking for a raise.
Speaker:Of course, a pattern like overworking is a lot less noxious than the pattern of, say, gossiping and starting rumors.
Speaker:It can be far more difficult to be honest about these less than flattering habits we might have overeating.
Speaker:Being lazy, avoiding responsibility.
Speaker:Petty addictions.
Speaker:Seeking revenge.
Speaker:These patterns are difficult to face, but they offer the biggest opportunity for growth if we're brave enough to face them.
Speaker:Step Five be proud of yourself.
Speaker:It's important to stop and take stock of the changes you do make, even if they're small.
Speaker:Celebrate those wins.
Speaker:It's not easy making this kind of change.
Speaker:Give yourself credit where it's due and you'll find that the momentum will build.
Speaker:And next time, the process will be easier's.
Speaker:A recap of the main points of today's episode no Man's an island your unique thought patterns and habits are in a constant relationship with the unique thought patterns and habits of those around you.
Speaker:Relationships are shared patterns.
Speaker:There's no such thing as a toxic person, only toxic patterns, behaviors, and relationships.
Speaker:And while all relationships are occasionally difficult, toxic relationships amplify and recreate negativity in a way that is destructive and unhealthy for all the parties involved.
Speaker:Focus on recurring dynamics and patterns rather than specific isolated behaviors.
Speaker:Be accountable and ask how your core beliefs are manifesting in the relationship.
Speaker:Now, if you're the one bringing toxic patterns to a relationship, make a list of those behaviors, understand the function they're serving, put that pattern in context, and commit in yourself to making changes both internally and externally.
Speaker:Once again, this is from Nick Trenton's book stop Negative Thinking.
Speaker:We appreciate you joining us again on this Thursday.
Speaker:As you may be aware, on this date in 1990, 913 people were murdered at Columbine High School.
Speaker:Possibly related to that.
Speaker:Today is also College Student Grief Awareness Day.
Speaker:Those of you that like attractive Indy 500 racers, on this day, Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy car race.
Speaker:Two years later, on the same date in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing another eleven people and starting a months long oil spill in the Gulf.
Speaker:To wrap up today's episode, in 2010, Dorothy Height, a civil and women's rights activist, died.
Speaker:We quote her, you never teach a subject, you always teach a child.
