How To Deal With Difficult & Toxic People

By Leo Gura - September 10, 2014 | 75 Comments

Strategies for cutting toxic people out of your life or limiting their influence

Video Transcript

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Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org. In this video I’m going to talk about how to deal with difficult and toxic people.

You Are Who You Surround Yourself With

Let’s talk about how to deal with people in your life who are bringing you down. These are people that I call either difficult or I like the word toxic. What’s the secret with dealing with these types of people because these types of people can destroy your life? There’s really a spectrum of toxicity of all the people in your life. Sometimes you have mildly toxic people who are just more like an annoyance or a frustration but then it can get so bad on the end of the spectrum that it really gets into abusive territory, just like very dysfunctional territory.

One of the things that is really key to understand about your life is that you are like a sponge. No matter how personally developed you are, how successful you are, how happy you are, how optimistic you are, if you are living in a negative environment, whether it’s a negative physical environment but here we’re talking about negative relationships, if you’re living in this kind of negative environment then this is robbing you of your potential. It’s basically making you miserable.

These people are dragging you down because they are constantly feeding you with negativity, pessimism, limiting beliefs, anger or other things and these are rubbing off on you. You’re the sponge so you’re soaking it all in and it’s affecting your psyche. You have to work really, really hard to counteract these effects. In this video what I want to do is I want to cover some of the ways that you can go about handling these kinds of people and to give you different techniques and strategies.

Basically my philosophy on this is really simple. It’s the philosophy that life is too short for dealing with difficult and toxic people. Why make life more difficult for yourself? Life’s already pretty challenging. You’re already working really hard on your own life, on your own self, why are you bringing yourself down with these toxic people? There’s no reason for it.

My strategy here and my solution ultimately is to get rid of these people out of my life. I want to live a life where the people that are in my life are supporting me, encouraging me, bringing in positivity. They’re building something with me rather than going against me. That’s kind of the ultimate solution.

I want to really get to the root cause of it here because a lot of people what I see them doing they’re still stuck in the social matrix. They are so worried about relying upon various social relationships that they are not willing to get rid of these toxic people out of their lives. What this does is it creates this spiral of negativity that goes down and down and it brings you with it. There’s no need to live a life like that.

In fact, what I’m going to argue is you can’t really self-actualize. You can’t really create a powerful and happy fulfilling life if you’re surrounding yourself with these types of folks. Jim Rohm, love Jim Rohm, he has a lot of great wisdom. One of the wisest things that he said was that, ‘You are the average of the top five associates that you hang out with’.

What this means is if you take and make a list of all the people in your life and you write a number down for how many hours per week you’re spending with each one of those people and you then rank everybody according to the number of hours you spend with them, the top five people that you spend the most time with, these are the people that have the most influence on you. It’s a very simple theory. Basically whoever you hang out with is who you’re going to absorb into yourself and you kind of become the average of all that.

If this principle is true then who do you want to surround yourself with? Positive empowering people or negative disempowering people? If you do this exercise, you actually write this out and you actually tally up the numbers, you might be shocked to discover that you hang out with some people a lot more than others. You might also be shocked to discover that some of those people that you hang out with and spend five, ten, even twenty hours a week with, that those are super negative, super pessimistic, super miserable and depressive anger-prone type of people.

Maybe that’s why you’re not getting the success you want in your life, is because you’re around these types of people all the time. You’re stuck in this kind of environment. If that’s the case then we’ll help you sort that out right now.

Types Of Toxic People

Let’s talk a little bit more about the types of people that we’re talking about here. I want to get very specific. Take the abstract, bring it down into the concrete. Here are some of the people that qualify as being toxic. It can be anybody but here are some categories you want to look out for.

Your boss, your coworkers and/or business partners that you have. These are people that you usually spend a lot of time with because you put a lot of time into your work. If these people are negative you really want to look out for that.

Next are clients or customers that you have. If you’re self-employed, you’re working with clients or customers or if you’re even working for somebody else you might be working with clients or customers who are really toxic. You might want to watch out for those.

Of course you want to watch out for your friends. What kind of circle of friends are you keeping around you? You have a lot of choices about what kind of friends you keep.

Next is, of course, your intimate relationships. Girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband. You’ve got to really watch out for that because of course your intimate relationship is your most intimate relationship so that’s where you get the closest to the other person. It’s also probably your relationship that you spend the most time in or one of the most so toxicity there is very damaging.

Finally, and this is the most difficult really, is family. Your mom, your dad, your brother or your sister, aunts, uncles, cousins and of course your own children. This category is pretty broad and there’s a lot of stuff in here that’s difficult to deal with because family issues tend to be the most sticky and thorny issues. These are the people that are the most difficult to cut from your life, these are the people that you grew up with, these are the people that you probably want to keep around for a long, long time to come.

Those are the categories. Anybody that we didn’t cover, other types of people, they can also be toxic. Basically anybody can be toxic but these are the people that are the most important to look at.

Breaking Down Toxicity

The next thing that I want to get really clear on is what do we mean by ‘toxic’? What does ‘toxicity’ actually mean? This can mean different things to different people. It’s a pretty subjective term. Let’s break it down a little bit.

Here’s what I consider toxic and these are the things you really want to watch out for. One is depression; people who are very depressed, feeling really down on themselves. Two is negativity and limiting beliefs. There could be people that aren’t per se depressed, but they’re always pessimistic, they’re always casting doubts, they’re always talking about how stuff can’t happen, stuff won’t work, they are always playing the victim role. They’ve got all these sorts of beliefs about how life can’t allow them to do what they want to do and how it can’t allow you to do what you want to do. It starts to rub off on you.

Next are really dogmatic and closed-mind people. These are folks that are really, really set in their ways. They have certain sets of beliefs maybe religious beliefs, political beliefs, business beliefs, life beliefs.

They just have to have it that way and they want you to fit into that one particular mold that they’re playing. They’re playing the role and they want you to play the same role. Really closed-minded people.

Next are anger-prone people and violent people. Anger can be a spectrum. You can have mild forms of anger and then you can get worse and worse and devolve into full out violence or fights, throwing objects… that kind of really toxic stuff.

After that comes drama. Drama is horrible. You know those people there’s always something happening in their life, it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are they always make it dramatic.

They always take a mole hill and make a huge mountain out of it. It’s always up and down and it’s predictable. These people just have a very turbulent and dramatic lifestyle. That’s just how they live but that’s not how you want to live.

Finally, criminal activity. Maybe your friends are involved with criminal activity, maybe someone in your family is, maybe someone at your job, maybe your company is involved in some sort of shady activities that you don’t want to be sucked into. Criminal activity is a really dangerous one because once you have those types of people around you, you tend to get more and more sucked into that and then you’re prone to get involved with that even though you didn’t intend to from the very beginning. Those people can be real leeches on your life because their life is so upside down that it can help rubbing off and affecting you. So that one is really important to consider as far toxicity goes.

Lastly I would say people with addictions. It could be hard core addictions but even soft core addictions. Of course if you have people around you who are using drugs and really involved with something pretty heavy like that that’s obviously very toxic, but even more milder forms of addictions.

Maybe your friends are addicted to television or video games and they suck you into it too. Maybe they are addicted to food, they go out and eat all the time. Maybe your family is addicted to food. I know that’s how my family was. That stuff can be really toxic to you and keep you from progressing and breaking out of those negative habits.

The Solution

So what’s the ultimate solution? We’ve talked about the types of people, we’ve talked about specific types of toxicities, what’s the ultimate solution for how to deal with this? It’s actually pretty simple. It’s to cut people out of your life. It’s so simple that sometimes people forget that this is an option.

Literally what you do is you take a scalpel and you cut that person out of your life like a tumor, you excise a tumor from your body. This is a very apt metaphor for what you’re doing. This is what’s happening: because of this sponge-like effect of your mind it soaks everything up. Because of this averaging law that we talked about from Jim Rohm it really is the case that once negativity seeps into your system it just builds and builds and it metastasizes like a cancer and it spreads throughout your whole body, spreads through your mind and then sooner or later it starts to affect your habits, it affects your behaviors, it affects your ways of thinking, it really colors your perspective of the world.

This can be a dangerous thing if it happens over prolonged periods of time, months and years go by. What you’ve really got to do is you’ve got to build the courage to cut these kinds of people out of your life. Simply cut them out.

One of the things I want you to acknowledge and admit to yourself right now is that it doesn’t matter who, if someone is violating your standards, your principles and your values in life, then that person can be cut. It doesn’t matter who it is. Bosses and coworkers, friends, customers… they can all be cut. Even family can be cut.

This is where sometimes people have trouble is with family. They’ll say, “Leo, family, you can’t cut family”. You might even say something like, “I have this really good friend, old friend from middle school. I’ve known them for decades now. I can’t cut him. I can’t cut her. I can’t cut this client, it’s a really important client. I can’t cut my boss off, my work off”.

There’s all these sorts of excuses and stories about who you can and can’t cut and why there’s certain people in your life that you can never cut. You’ve got to accept that everyone can be cut. You have to have boundaries. You have to have principles as a human being. You hold yourself to principles. You hold other people to principles.

This doesn’t mean that you have to be a stickler and just for any stupid reason you cut someone off, that’s not what I’m saying. If somebody violates an important of yours they get cut. Of course the closer the person is to you, the more important they are, then the more leeway you can give them. Even with people like your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, even with your own children you still have to have boundaries because if you don’t set any boundaries, subconsciously people realize that you have no boundaries.

Even people that are really close to you, what they’ll do is they’ll basically see what they can get away with and they’ll get away with more and more. Especially these toxic people, they are not really self-developed people. They are not operating from a place of high consciousness. They’re just kind of running their life almost like an animal. It’s a very animalistic type of lifestyle.

Very low consciousness, just kind of doing the lowest in life. That type of person they’ll tend to demand more and more life out of you and they’ll be a bigger and bigger drag. I find that with those types of people boundaries are even more important.

Right now acknowledge yourself that there are circumstances under which you will cut anybody, even someone that’s really close to you, even a child of yours. At some point if your child starts to behave in such a ridiculous way, just doing some totally wrong things, after a certain while you have to set some boundaries and you have to enforce those boundaries. Those boundaries have to have teeth. You can’t just be issuing idle threats because people quickly learn that it’s just empty threats and then they just keep breaking those boundaries of yours.

Some people you’re going to cut as a last resort. That would be your family. Other people maybe you’d have less reservations to cut.

How To Cut People Out Of Your Life

How do you cut someone out of your life? It’s actually pretty simple. Depending on the type of person, how close they are to you, how important they are to you, there are different situations but here are some ideas.

One is you sit down with the person, you really tell them the problems you have with them and then you tell them that that’s it. It’s over. Don’t contact me anymore, I’m not contacting you. Then just draw a line.

The other thing you could do is you could simply delete the other person’s number if it’s someone that’s more of a casual acquaintance. Delete their number, don’t contact them anymore. Block their number, block their emails, block whatever means of communication there is. Literally block it or stop responding to them.

If it’s the case that you’re in a relationship and it’s an intimate relationship that you’re dealing with then break up with that person. Breakups are really tough but sometimes you’ve got to do them even when they are really tough. If you’re in a marriage and the person is really toxic, consider divorce.

That can be a long, nasty and grueling process, but hey, it’s better than sitting through a toxic marriage for ten, twenty, thirty years. You’re not going to be able to sit in that for a long time. It’s going to rot you. It’s going to rot your soul. You’ve got to cut it off before it gets even worse than it is.

If it’s with career and business, consider quitting your job, changing jobs or transferring to a different department, doing a different type of job within the company if you’re in a bad department. If you’re the boss or self-employed and you have employees then consider firing bad employees. If you have contracts with customers or clients that are bad, cut off those contracts, say no to those contracts even though they are going to bring you business.

If worst comes to worst and you are in a really negative environment, maybe you’re in a really bad part of the city, part of the state, part of the country, you’re in a really toxic or dangerous country even somewhere in the third world, then consider relocating. Worst comes to worst find a new part of the city or go to a new city, a new state or a new country if you have to do that because your environment is very influential on the kind of life that you have, the kind of emotions you’re going to feel and the kind of success you get so take this stuff seriously.

Of course you don’t need to cut everybody, sometimes it’s possible to do a reform, like a reaffirmation. You can sit down with somebody who’s really violating your values if you’re really fed up with all the toxicity, negativity, anger and all that stuff, then you can sit down with that person and you can resolve what your principles are, what your expectations are. It’s going to be a difficult talk but you could have that talk and then you could see what happens.

Sometimes that kind of talk will really change that person. It will be kind of like a light bulb in their head and they’ll say, “Wow, I didn’t even realize I was hurting you so bad. I didn’t realize I was messing up your life with my toxicity and my negativity. Let me see if I can change something”.

Become A Good Judge Of Character

Sometimes they’ll do that because they value their relationship and they know that you’ll cut them off if you don’t. There’s that seriousness to you. Then of course some of these people are in such a low consciousness state that they can’t help themselves.

Maybe they are addicted to stuff, maybe they are chronically depressed, maybe they are just so negative, maybe they have a lot of bad habits. Maybe they don’t want to change. Maybe they don’t care about changing.

This is actually probably going to be the most common case. These people simply don’t care they don’t want to change, they don’t want to accommodate you. They are going to keep violating your values, not really going to listen to you even if you sit down and talk to them, they’ll just continue running on auto pilot and continue breaking your boundaries.

You have to be smart about this. You have to become a good judge of character. This is something you develop as you grow older as a human being is you get a good eye for who is a good character in life and who is a bad character according to your own values. It’s not an objective thing it’s a subjective thing, but you get a good eye for that and then you can see which kind of people will keep on those bad habits.

Usually human beings we run on patterns. We’re very simple-minded creatures. When we’re stuck in a bad loop of habits we just kind of keep going down that road and it gets worse and worse. Some people they just can’t help it. They are incorrigible. You’ve got to look out for those and then when you see that that’s the type of person and you think there’s no way that guy is going to reform then steer clear. Those are the people you’ve got to cut. Then of course if your boundaries keep getting broken repeatedly then you just decide to cut that person off.

That’s as far as cutting goes. What happens if you can’t cut the person off? Why would this happen?

Here’s a metaphor for you. I think it’s a good metaphor. It’s a chess metaphor.

Imagine that I’m playing white you’re playing black. We’ve got a chessboard like this. In chess they have a scenario that you can get yourself into, it’s kind of a pickle of a scenario, and it’s called skewer. What is a skewer? You’re the black player, I’m the white player.

Let’s say your king in in the middle of the board right here, your queen is in the corner and it’s on a diagonal from your king. I’ve got a bishop. A bishop is a piece that moves diagonally. I’m white. What I do is I put my bishop here in the corner and it’s diagonally right across and it checks your king and your queen is right behind it. This is called the skewer.

Why is it a skewer? What happens is because your king is in check you have to move your king, but if you move your king then I can take your queen because now your queen is vulnerable. The queen is the most important piece but you can’t move your queen first because your king is in check.

Basically in this situation what happens is that you really exposed yourself. You left yourself very vulnerable. Now because you did that from a strategic standpoint now I can just position my bishop right here and I’ve basically got you by the balls.

This is ultimately the most fundamental reason of why you can’t cut people from your life so easily. You’ve exposed yourself and you’ve put yourself strategically in a bad position and so now you’re there and they’ve got you by the balls. What does this mean?

If You Can’t Cut Them, Redesign Your Life

One solution to figure out how to deal with toxic people when you can’t cut them out is kind of a long term solution. This is to actually sit down and redesign your life so that you’re no longer vulnerable, you’re no longer exposed and you’re no longer relying on these people then you can cut them off. Here are some problems you might have.

Maybe you can’t cut off that person over there but you can’t because you rely on him financially. He literally pays your bills or he pays your rent, he pays for your food. What can you do? You can’t really cut them off because you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to pay the rent. You’re not financially independent basically.

What about with intimate relationships? There the thing that could have you by the balls is you either want love, companionship or sex. That’s the thing that you want and you feel like you’re getting it from this relationship. So you can’t cut her off, you can’t cut him off because you need that exchange that’s going on there. You don’t really have relationship abundance, you don’t have sexual abundance. That’s the problem you have there.

What about with work, with employment situations? Maybe you’re relying on someone who’s giving you employment opportunities. Maybe you’re relying on someone to grease the wheels of employment and make stuff happen there and so that’s important to you and you don’t want to cut that person off because you’d lose something that’s very valuable there. Well, that shows you that you’re relying on bad characters in business and you’re not independent with your business or with your employment.

What about with your friends? Sometimes you really like your friends. You have a whole history built up with your friends, sometimes your friends are a good shoulder to cry on so they give you emotional stability. That might be something that keeps you attached to a friend who’s being toxic to you and there again you’re kind of putting yourself in a compromising situation.

Also with business, you might have a client or customer. Maybe you have a big client who’s going to give you millions of dollars to make something happen but this person’s also toxic. On the one hand you don’t want to do it, on the other you do want to do it and so you’re in this bind.

What you really want to avoid is you’re thinking about how to reengineer your life is these kinds of binds and skewering situations. Long term the root of this problem is solved here is you think about, “How do I make myself independent? How do I make myself have financial independence and abundance?

“How do I make myself have relationship and sexual abundance so I’m not needy there? How do I get myself abundance in my business and abundance with my friends?” Once you build up all this abundance then actually it’s very easy. You can enforce your boundaries very easily because you don’t need any particular individual in your life.

That’s a powerful place to come from. This is not something you can create immediately but this is something you can start to work on.

If you have a situation where you feel like you’re trapped the bright side there is that you can sit down and say, “Okay, I’m trapped now but over the next year or two I can un-trap myself. Let me see the kind of steps I need to take to un-trap myself”. Then go ahead and take those steps.

Limit Your Exposure To Toxic People

The next thing you can do is if you can’t cut a person simply limit your exposure to that person. Sit down and ask yourself, how many hours a week am I spending with this person? Is it five hours, ten hours, twenty hours? If it’s something like twenty hours, let’s say with a coworker you’re spending twenty hours, that’s twenty hours of toxicity, that’s a lot of time. If you can reduce that to fifteen hours or ten hours, or even five hours, that would be pretty good.

Maybe you can’t cut that person off entirely, you don’t have that authority at your job, he’s a coworker, but maybe you can do what you’ve been doing. You can just limit your time and exposure with that person. Cut in in half, that’s going to half your toxicity. It’s pretty simple, kind of obvious thing but you can find a little creative ways about how to limit your exposure even to your family, to your kids if they are really toxic to your life, even to your spouse, even to your girlfriend or boyfriend, for now al least to hold things over. Hopefully in the long run you’re working to solve that stuff more at the root like I was talking about earlier.

The other thing you can do is add more positive people into your life. Let’s say you’ve got someone who’s really negative in your life, you can’t cut them out for whatever reason you’re in a bind, what you can do is you can add more positive influences into your life. These could be people but also the next thing is you can add influences that aren’t just face to face people. They could also be like digital media for example listening to self-help videos, self-help audios, reading quality books, going to seminars… this kind of stuff.

This can be one of your associations. When Jim Rohm was talking about those five associates that you hang out with the most, if you spend a lot of your time reading, or watching these videos or somebody else’s videos, stuff that is positive, uplifting and inspiring to you, then that’s like a virtual associate that you have. That can help you to pull you out from a negative situation that you’re in face to face with somebody. So if you can’t cut the negative influences at least raise the positive influences. Good. So those are some ideas for if you can’t cut somebody.

Lastly what I want to cover here is what do you do in the heat of the moment? Let’s say that you’re dealing with a toxic person and everything we’ve talked about now is kind of like long term strategy. What if somebody literally blows up in your face?

Let’s say you’re sitting there at home, watching TV clicking through the channels and somebody, let’s say your spouse, your girlfriend or boyfriend bursts through the door and it’s drama, it’s anger, they’re throwing stuff, they are yelling out you… this is happening. Now you’re in the heat of the moment, what do you do? How do you handle that situation?

The problem here is that you’ve allowed yourself to be in this situation in the first place. I really want you to realize much earlier in life, you’ve got to ask yourself, “Why am I in this situation in the first place? Why am I allowing this kind of person to be in my life?”

Simply Walk Away

Let’s say it’s too late for that now, you should have thought about that before but let’s say you didn’t so now what do you do? Really these types of people the best thing to do, and this is difficult, is not to engage them. Don’t engage them mentally and definitely don’t engage them physically. Try not to engage them verbally either because what you’re going to do if you engage them is you’re going to get into a mudslinging contest. Because they are in a low consciousness state and you get into a low consciousness state it just starts to devolve into something nasty and nothing good ever comes from that.

You’re not going to get any piece of gold or some beautiful piece of wisdom from that kind of interaction with somebody. That only comes from a high consciousness type of interaction. The best thing to do there is kind of distance yourself as much as you can. If you can, walk out. Walk out of the house, walk out of the car, walk out of the office, walk out of the building. Just leave.

If you’re on a phone call hang up the phone. If it’s a text message just block the texts. If you’re shooting emails just cut off that email thread. Very simple, very obvious but a lot of people what they do is they get triggered into it.

It’s difficult because you’re trying to work on yourself, you’re trying to do the best you can, this person comes in, maybe they’re totally in the wrong, they are violating your standards and your boundaries, maybe you’ve already talked to that person a lot of times about it and they still keep doing it so you’re very frustrated obviously. This is going to take the most from you to maintain that kind of equanimity or evenness of mind. That’s the best way to handle this situation is to not react emotionally at all, to be detached from the outcome, totally emotionally unreactive, just cool, collected and practicing mindfulness.

This is where mindfulness practice really helps, where meditation really helps. I have a lot of different videos out there that tell you how to deal with stress, anger, negativity from other people and how to calm your own emotions. There are very different techniques when you use them to calm yourself down in the heat of the moment.

Of course if you practice meditation every morning like you’re supposed to be doing and you’ve been doing that habitually for weeks and months every single day then that makes you grounded, that makes you even keeled, that makes it easier for you to deal with these kind of difficult people simply by not reacting to them. You see that when you don’t react to them these people just settle down or even if they don’t settle down at least you don’t feed into their anger and their negativity. A lot of times that’s the worst thing is when you start to feed in to it and it creates this cyclone.

Practice walking away and practice mindfulness. Don’t engage these people. Also, don’t be too judgmental of these people. A lot of times what we’ll tend to do is we see someone doing something very wrong in our life and we’ll say, “How could he? How could she? What are they doing? What are they thinking?” Then we start getting into this kind of judgment mode.

That’s also a low consciousness trap that you don’t want to get caught in. In fact I have a video called ‘How to Exploit People to Grow Yourself’, which tells you an advanced technique that I’ve learned about how to reframe in your mind these situations where people are doing stupid stuff, stuff that isn’t right according to your values, how to reframe that instead of judging them, how to use that to actually build yourself up to develop wisdom and see, “Okay, they are doing something weird there, how am I doing something similar in my own life?”

Basically what you do is you use those people as a mirror to show you how you can improve yourself. You always want to be focused on yourself versus focused on trying to control and manipulate and fix other people because that tends to backfire a lot. These people that are toxic they can actually be important reminders for you of your own personal development needs. If you keep all that in mind then I think that’s going to help you a lot to fix some of these toxic people, cut them off or to minimize their effect on your life.

Wrap Up

All right, this is Leo, I’m going to be signing off. Go ahead and post me your comments down below, I’d love to hear what you think. Click on the like button, leave me a like, that spreads the video around. Go ahead and share the video on Facebook or somewhere else. The more these videos spread the more free content I can keep releasing.

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Comments
(75)
Sam says:

You are a god gift Leo.
I watch all your videos and learn from them on daily basis.
Bless you for sharing those self development tips and solutions
And for sharing your own life and experiences.
So much gratitude !
Peace

Leo Gura says:

Hehehe… Thanks!

Mina says:

Hello Leo.
First I’d like to say is that I enjoy the videos you’ve posted. I find the allowing technique very helpful.

I have two questions;
after watching “How to Deal with Toxic People”… What happens when the toxic people are ones you need to deal with every day at work?

Also wondering how you would suggest dealing with negative emotions when you’re in the middle of a debate or argument with other people?

Thank you again for what you’re doing here.
Kind regards

-Mina

Leo Gura says:

1) Well… you either ignore it, learn to cope with it, confront them about it, or you find new work. Those are your 4 basic options.

2) Don’t get into debates with people. They’re very avoidable. They serve no purpose other than ego-stroking.

enrique says:

Sam- If i may be so bold.. I would like to respond to calling Leo a God Gift. I am a huge fan of Leo and his content also, but be careful of putting individuals in any walk of life on a pedestal and comparing them to a notion of “godliness”. The stuff that Leo talks about is stuff that he took the time to devote and became a student of through very hard work– some may use the phrase “labor of love”. Yes its very convenient with the production and subject matter is always spot on and relevant but after all he is just a person as well. He makes mistakes and learns from them just like we all should learn from our mistakes. You are capable of exploring yourself and elevating your consciousness with or with out Leo’s videos. I get a bit concerned when people who are in positions of power from a psychological standpoint start becoming ‘gifts from god’ Always remember due to circumstances beyond your control you are still master of your fate and captain of your soul.

Christine says:

We are all gifts of God/Allah/The Universe. You too Enrique. And I agree with you message to be careful about worshipping someone. We all are here to learn and to share. Sometimes it is just nice to express your gratefulness in that way.

I believe in people and encounters as learning and sharing experiences. I prefer some people in my private life, other people whom I not prefer I receive as a learning gift, like during work or other meetings. They come as often on my doorstep till the moment I can experience them and make contact with them as the gift of God we all are. It is great when that moment occurs, although I have to accept that I am not always in a ‘bless full’ state (grumpy or otherwise) to notice.

Leo Gura says:

Definitely don’t idolize me. All this stuff is common sense really.

Luke says:

You are just bickering over points of religion. Assuming god and gift and all this nonsense means the same to you as it does to everyone else. Pointless self masturbation.

Aliza says:

I don’t think she meant ”god gift” like you have taken it. I think of it like this. Leo helps people immensely, and some people are like angels on the earth. I say my kids are presents from heaven, but they didn’t come pre packed with instructions, I wish they had at times. It doesn’t mean Leo is being turned into an Idol. He has his role in life, a path he has chosen, lucky for us that he choses to share.

Jean Keats says:

Hi Leo. I’m Sorry, Sam, I didn’t quite know how to ask my question. Anyway, Leo, I have to deal with this girl who is not happy in life. I go to a medical place where she has to have a particular doctor whom I never see, I see someone else. She has to have him sign a form so I can submit it to our insurance company. She ALWAYS has an excuse when I go there, of why the form is not ready. She doesn’t look at me when I talk to her. She is barely audible when she speaks and she slurs her words on purpose to just stuff me off. I now need her to set me up with the insurance company for the next year, 2018. I asked her a month ago, she still hasn’t done it. When I start pressing, VERY nicely, she says I’m reminding her of what she is WELL AWARE of. HA! I had to email her for the monthly form and she was extremely indignant simply because I asked nicely! Leo, please help me. How do I deal with this? Please help, if you will! BTW, you’re a very nice looking guy and have your head screwed on straight. I hope you find the very best in life, I love to watch you talk!!! I’m a person who can “taste” words. I thought I was crazy but I found out there are others!!!

Carla says:

Leo, thanks for this video when I most need it. Your advices are always helping me to be better person. Thanks for your support, guy.

James Agan says:

Great Video Leo, I’ll have to check your “exploit people to grow yourself”

Thans
Jim

Tina Hays says:

Wow! awesome video Leo. Felt like you were speaking to me. Thank you so much for these helpful insights. You are a huge help. Look forward to your next video.

Talya says:

Thank you for this. This was very helpful because I too am always in contact with toxic people and the country that I live in is very toxic and negative. This is one of the reasons why I am moving out of this country. The people and the culture have a tradition of being pessimistic and seeing life as negative. And I know many people who have a victim mentality and my previous relationship was with some one who was very toxic for me.

This video gave me so much clarity.

Thank you.

Alejandro says:

Great video Leo

Thank you

Raz says:

This one was really good too! It’s harsh, hard, excruciating; but events are not a fatality; it just demands a lot of courage; especially with people you become close to. I think the other related thing we can learn, is how we allow situations to take place. So really, it’s a two-facets situation, where you can have the choice not to allow a situation to happen, or subsequently, take responsibility and cut what needs to be cut.
Thanks for all this inspiring material!

marc says:

It’s a long story going on the details how i run my life in relation with the topic you touched here… but one thing i’de like to say.. you’re a great help on how i see things positively and perceive all things in my favor. You are such an inspiring person! you’re genius makes me feel a winner ! thanks.. more power to you Leo.

Hello Leo, Interesting video. I have listened to 2 of your videos so far, and I find them intelligent and empowering.

I agree that if you have friends/ family that is toxic you need to distance, or even cut them off. I have a friend who was bullied for decades by a sister with a narcissistic personality disorder. After researching about that type of personality she was able to cut off – because she understood how that hopeless the situation was.

Emma says:

Thank you.

Lori says:

Can you help me? I guess talk to me, maybe that one on one that you offer. I was assaulted in June by my boyfriend of 10 years. He has a no contact order and is waiting for a court date. I haven’t worked since 2011 when I had a back injury (due to another altercation). I could have gone back to work a year or year and a half ago but I fell into a big depression and became a hermit. Now I have to start all over just to get myself outside. My start is going to the YMCA for free twice a week. I need “brain” help. Can you contact me please. P.S. I found your site looking for info on why my boyfriend is the way he is. So your Anger video let me to you.

Leo Gura says:

Your bf is an idiot for hitting you. Leave him immediately and never contact him again. You need to work on your co-dependency and neediness issues before getting into more relationships.

Lori says:

Thank-you for replying. My first and foremost issue is finances. Like I stated I haven’t worked in a while and have no income. I can’t just jump into the workforce without taking baby steps to get reacquainted with society. He makes really good money but is not helping out. So I really need his money at this time. What you said to me is totally the right thing to do but, my kids and I also need a place to live and food to eat.

Leo Gura says:

So take those baby-steps then. You can get back into the work-force for sure.

Fabio says:

Hey Leo, Im in a bad situation… I started working for a company in April (60%) and now Im also going to college (40%) + about 20 hours of studying every week. I gotta get up at 4am almost every day during the week. well im not complaining but it kind of got worse ever since people at work became toxic.

I feel like I got no energy left to do what needs to be done for school and I dont really like going to work anymore. Well Im sure Ill have to quit my job but Im already 24 and I want to be independent. and also big exams are coming up and if I dont pass Ill have to start all over again… Its just messed up for I was the one to take the job (+the responsibility) and I feel like a quitter…

Pam says:

Jobs aren’t commitments for life….they can be bridges to something better. We don’t always know what we want, but we learn by knowing what we DON’T want. It’s all about the journey. Find a way to cut back on the 60% job, even if you have to do something different (bridge) to focus on school. Times might be tough, but when you fight for something you want, it’s all the sweeter when you get it. Good luck!

Lorize says:

Hi Leo, I really like your videos. I’m 17 and my life is just full of toxic people. My parents emotionally abuse me, I am getting psychological therapy right now, I have very low self-esteem, mostly because of all the emotional abuse. Then, there is my best friend, I love her a lot, and like everything about her, but she has this habit of putting me down a lot sometimes, she likes me, but she picks on little things i have and really gets to me and then I really get very very self-conscious about the things she says. I can’t change her. Anyway, is there any help? I have so many dreams and desires and I’m ready to work my ass of for it, but only if i had some encouraging people other than my own self.
I HOPE YOU READ THIS. Thank you so much.

Leo Gura says:

You need to create some boundaries and start enforcing them, so people don’t trample on you. You’re 17! Almost an adult.

It may also be that you’re exaggerating this abuse, and that in fact it is your interpretations of the situations that need to change. Either way, watch more videos, read more books, and start doing personal development.

Jesse says:

Great stuff. With my view, I don’t reject toxic people. I do the “Zen” accept-the-pain-thing. I view toxic relationships the same as pleasing relationships. I use agreeable negotiations, empathy, forgiveness, understanding, and courtesy. And, I wait for the toxic person to either 1, develop good character/relationship skills, or 2, wait for that person to not need my relationship with them. During these tough economic times where toxic relationships are the norm, I choose to be the rare person who chooses relationships over competitive, selfish greed. I understand that it will inevitably come back to me (someone viewing me as toxic)-by the law of karma, what goes around comes around, treat others the way you’d like to be treated, and the golden rule-love thy neighbor as thyself.

Jesse says:

I have just learned the concept of “mirroring.” The concept that we put toxic relationships/events in our lives for a reason. When we have toxic relationships from our past from which we are unable to accept and recover from, we/life attracts similar people until we are able to accept that unconscious relationship tension from the past. And, until we accept all of the toxic relationships from our past, we will continue to attract toxic people. It is inevitably going to happen this way based on karma, what goes around comes around, treat others the way we’d like to be treated, and love thy neighbor as thyself. In the end, we must form an agreement with our environment/relationships with complete acceptance.

Tushar says:

This is the most mature reply I have come across. Most people don’t take responsibility of their relationships, most don’t persevere enough before putting up the white flag. Our life state, esteem, karma attracts the kind of person we are.

I had a violent Dad, who crushed my childhood and confidence. My mother used to take the shit to avoid social stigma of divorce, as I child I was clueless about his behaviour and ended up demonizing him. As I grew up I encountered Buddhism and the common sense of cause and effect. Buddhism states that our environment is a projected of our inner self and the change happens within not without. I was asked to pray for my father’s happiness, in the begining I would do it mechanically, as the hatred for my father was deeply embedded.

Slowly things started to change, as I prayed I realized through compassion, the pressures on my dad, the reasons for his anger and how much it injured him. My own faults were visible and I deeply reflected on my behavior. I checked the verbal and non verbal gestures that ticked him off, I respected the dignity of his life. My father reflected the change and slowly realized his mistakes,In 8 months I was able to transform my family karma and bring harmony to my family. My brother, a victim of a similar childhood required understanding, encouragement and empowerment to get out of the rut

Without getting into a philosophical arguement I would request people troubled by sour relationships to take charge of their environment, to contemplate and do their inner transformation first, before passing the buck. Without demeaning your principles, identify the cause of the person’s pain. With an honest effort you will spot the dirt on your face and not on the mirror(environment).

If nothing changes please walk away but only with a satisfaction that you gave it your best. Unless we realize the real causes of our misery and uproot the karma (tendencies) it will haunt us wherever we go. One can only be self actualized by facing adversity and swimming against the tide.

With due respect to Leo I have taken this video with a pinch of salt.

Natalie says:

Sometimes a situation leaves you depressed. What about family growing up. So this makes you a toxic person so there fore you are not good to be around.

Leo Gura says:

What’s why we do personal development as adults, to correct all the crappy conditioning from our childhoods.

Megan says:

I have watched this video multiple times to get the process down and the message to sink in. I’ve struggled with breaking some connections with a few toxic people due to the fact that they are family. With this video I’ve come to the realization that it is perfectly acceptable and allowable for me to put that distance in place so I can truly move forward and have the life I want for myself and my husband. Thank you very much for sharing these videos and for delivering the message in a relatable way. I appreciate the time you take to share these details and tips.

Leo Gura says:

Goooood!

Asaiah Powers says:

Thanks Leo,for pointing me in the right direction this year.Its wasnt the external circumstances holding me in place it was me. It took knowing that i can do it that i have the power to create an extorinary life.

PRABU says:

Thanks Leo

Such a great remote control you gave me today. I can choose my own channel that i want to watch and live. After i have seen your video all my unwanted screen play in my mind gone thank you.

Ruby mumtaz says:

Hi Leo,

Some great videos. I watched your video on Toxic people especially because members of my family at the top are toxic. My family originates from the East and we tend to be a tight community but at the same time if you don’t comply you get alot of grief. But anyhow, our culture doesn’t allow you to cut people out.

In reflection though, I now realise that I’m already making myself independant so that any impact is minimal for me and my children.

I found some of your video useful like the techniques to distance yourself but I would like to see more techniques to deal with stuff rather than cutting them out.

Keep up the good work.

Ruby.

Leo Gura says:

Yes, Easterns and Middle-Easterners may find this very difficult. It’s like a taboo.

Carolina says:

Hi Leo,

My cool dad sent me this website to help me improve my life. I don’t have much to complain about thou, I am positive I think a have a good life. After watching this video thou I have one important question:

What if I want to help someone that is very important to me but he is a toxic person?

Sadly, I cut my links with this person already but I wish to help him.
How can I do that?

PS: I also watched your visualization video, great stuff! ill definitely give it a shot

Thanks

Leo Gura says:

The best way is to set a good example yourself and share your passion for personal development with them. But in the end, you can’t force a person into this. They have to be ready.

David says:

Hi Leo,

Thanks for the great videos.

How would you deal with friend who has been part of your spiritual development..very supporting…very encouraging. But this person has no drive (which I’m trying to install into the person). The person just demands time which…due to low self motivation (ie animalistic…physically)… drains me and takes my completer/finisher element of self esteem away.

Cheers

David

Leo Gura says:

You’re not meant to be friends with everyone on Earth. There are 7 billion people. Find ones that you’re compatible with.

nadolphus says:

I really admire the way you present facts. I am a teacher and these ideas are very productive for my students. I have great admiration for your knowledge and presentation of facts.

May the good Lord bless you and help you to continue your good work of sharing your knowledge and ideas to others.

Maggie says:

I found this talk really informative, but it got me thinking about people who go through toxic periods. For instance, I have a good friend who went through a horrible divorce and became very toxic for about a year. I could have cut her out because she definitely did not have good energy and it was not very much fun to spend time with her during her crisis. Anyhow, she has been pulling herself out of it and she is almost back to her usual energetic happy self now–I am so glad I didn’t cut her.
I agree with the idea that you don’t want people dragging you down, but I also feel that loyalty is very important. Everyone needs a friend.

Leo Gura says:

Good judgment is required in these situations. Because while in this case it ended up well. It could also have been the case that she became more and more toxic and soured your life considerably. And you would have remained loyal while enduring the toxic effects to your life. Sometimes a bit of toxicity is okay. Sometimes it ruins your life.

Gina says:

Good article. I’m in a real funk because of a truly toxic person prone to violence. My daughter in-law. There’s my son, grandkids, etc. She’s like a disease & it’s been a horrendous experience meeting her & having her in my life. No upside, all downhill for 10 years. A roller coaster of I’m, mad at you, I might not be mad at you, I might or might not want you to see your grandkids. Though I live 800 miles from her! You have to be a real creative bitch to invent long distance chaos & misery where none really exists. There’s lots to her deviant personality. Like ten years ago she physically attacked my niece in my parents house. Police were called, she was arrested. I lived in another state at the time. So it’s not just me. Her own Mother called me in the past to say her daughter is toxic, as well as her sister. She holds grudges against them from something they did supposedly 7 years ago. They are speaking again, for now. The latest episodes are me emailing my son to say hi & touch base with the kids. And her emailing me back the most foul, insulting responses pretending to be my son. Like don’t bother me with sending a vacation photo of us on top the twin towers Mom. I don’t have time to respond to your foolishness. Get off your ass & do something besides emailing me Mom. What do you do all day?Crazy, nasty stuff. Here’s a sneak peak of our family Mom on Halloween. Too bad you don’t care. Out of left field since I do care & that’s why I call, write, used to visit until I stopped because she was so hateful I’d cry on the flight back home.

He says he’s sorry for her out of bounds behavior but I’ve had it with his gutlessness. Sorry, just venting & am so close to never, ever letting them into my life again. I was OK with her when we helped them keep their home & paid for the kid’s catholic education. Now I’m garbage when they think they won’t need my money anymore. Venting & in deep pain. I don’t care a wit about her but the grandkids, that’s killing me. The emails pretending to be him was the last straw. Thanks for making me realize I’m probably not alone.

Leo Gura says:

Sounds fucked up.

Gina says:

I over shared huh? It is fucked up. I’m hurting. Any advice? If not I bookmarked your video. Which already helps.

Leo Gura says:

Doesn’t bother me.

Look, even if she is the biggest bitch in the world, as long as you’re blaming her, you cannot create the life you want. It’s okay to vent, but at the end of the day, you need to take full responsibility for this and start coming up with creative solutions. I don’t know what those solutions are but I do know they definitely exist. It is your job to work that out once you’ve accepted the challenge. If you need someone to vent to for now, find a good friend to support you or use a therapist/coach.

Cosmin says:

I’m curios what do you think about people that think only “dumb people” ca be happy, because in this sad and “horrible” World we live in, if you’re aware of all the negative stuff that’s happing everywhere, from wars, to poverty, to deasise and other stuff, you cannot be happy.

I’m not a negative person, but I often have negative thoughts, demoralizing thoughts, but luckily don’t last long, I cannot undertand people are pessimistic and have such a negative and toxic way of perceiving life, that they actually think that makes them more intelligent, and only dumb people can enjoy the little things in life and be happy.

priyanka says:

hi leo,
This video is really amazing as it removes the guilt from a persons mind that though you want to help someone …some people are so not worth it..that eventually they dont change but you change for the worse…so its better to pack the bags and run away from such negative people…even if its family.

Kristin Reichborn Kjennerud says:

I very much appreciate your perspectives on life and your insights in personal development. But at the same time your perception of how to relate to other people, and also your accounts of sexual relations come out as somewhat instrumental. They are presented as something that is there to make you enjoy life more and if they are not up to your standards you would cut them out of your life. It makes me think that you lack a perspective on (unconditional) love, like the love you would feel for your own children.

Kristin Reichborn Kjennerud says:

I wanted to continue this argument. Was it too long?

rocket says:

Thank you for all the efforts that you put into the making of this site and all the videos. I’ve downloaded all your videos and they are really changing my life.

I’m currently living in a flat with a very toxic person, my landlady. I’m studying in a small city, and the previous flat that I lived in has shitty condition, so I searched for a long time then moved to a much better one – the one that I’m currently in. But, the landlady is an asshole. Just an asshole toxic shit who can blame you anything for any reason. Sometimes it is my “fault” (mainly due to our different habits) to activate her rage mode in the first place, sometimes it’s just her fucking me up for no reason.

The problem is, I have prepaid the rent (which is quite a big figure for me) for my whole study period (til next March), and it is really hard to find an alternative accommodation in the area. I really don’t want to return to other shitty places and pay the extra rent… So I think I am not able to cut her off sadly, I have to tolerate her for now, but it is really annoying to deal with her. To be honest, this is the very first time for me to live in other people’s flat. These stuff are distracting me so often from my study now.

I tried to please her a little bit sometimes, be super friendly or helpful or so, and it did work usually for hours before her entering rage mode. I have watched your video on stop being a victim, and have decided not to be that pleasant any more.

I know that I’m so lucky to be in a much better situation than those who have family members or close friends who are toxic. Maybe it is just me being stupid, missing an obvious but important point. But could you please share a little bit of your thought here with me? I really want to cut off this toxic piece from affecting my life.

Thank you!

Roger

Kim says:

As always, good stuff!! Signing up for newsletter. New to your site and love it!

katrine says:

Thanks Leo you are amazing !!

Remi says:

A lot of people probably found out they are toxic

Jon McGill says:

This is another awesome video. I unfortunately, have quite a number of toxic people in my life… my mom’s husband in particular who just about attacked me with a knife yesterday. Quite a coincidence that I stumbled across this video today because it is the perfect thing I needed to see, and I am certain that I will now be able to cut him out of my life. It sad because my mom has to live with this guy, a retired air force major who spent his life yelling at people. He shows no respect to anybody, and particularly none to my mom or our family, and so everybody has been living in a toxic environment. This guy literally cares about nobody except himself… he has two daughters from his estranged wife who never have anything to do with him… he is maybe the purest sample of how selfishness can lead to misery. Thanks for the advice… I already cut this guy out of my life yesterday, but now I feel very good about the decision to do it!

Colin says:

A valuable and excellent video.

I reached a point in my life where I could no longer live as I had. I’d been fundamentally changed by an experience. It was explained that now others around me would also have to change or I would leave them behind.

Cutting people out of my life was simple either maintain the status quo or survival. Toxic people impact into those around them, rob out Self belief, undermine our sense of Self. Not only had I grown up around toxic Parents but I went out looking to repeat those relationships.

There is a price to be paid, I was judged and turned against, it’s the price of sanity and peace

cherbear says:

Yes but these people are in my family. One is my parent and one is my husband/father of my child. Im not WILLING to cut them out of my life so can you do a video that explains how to better manage having them in my life?

Amanda says:

what if the people that are toxic are you family members like your mom that wants a to be close with you? How do you show them love and make them feel close without being to close to them?

Leo Gura says:

You don’t. You distance yourself from the person and limit contact. Whether or not that’s appropriate in your case with your Mom is a judgment call only you can make. I can’t tell you what’s right there. If the person is truly toxic, I recommend exercising the distancing option.

Kate says:

Hi Leo, new subcriber here. Listened to this video so many times. Problem? I’m stuck in a state hospital job and mobility to other place is impossible here. So, boss is hypocritically endearing but tough and has chosen a young pretty but totally ignorant woman to run the dept, i.e. Organising exams we do to patients and how to do them (no notion at all).Unfortunally in my country the radiologist is legally and totally responsible for what happens to the patient. Her job is to make up the daily patient lists oblivious, for example, that fasting is not only necessary but anbsolutely important fir medical reasons. She has a secretarial approach (numbers not people) just what the boss sats (seems like a private money making place but it’s nit)! Tried talking to her but totally useless she doesn’t care she wants things done in numbers. I can’t quit my 30 year job and don’t want to face exam -induced accidents which can be fatal not to mention my legal responsibility following usual protocol procedures. Had a flair-up today, not the first, but can’t see any way out because co worker dictors don’t care or don’t understand. So can’t change job, can’t change her, can’t change coworker attitude (pro boss anyway), can’t avoid danger (for patient and me).. In fact don’t know what to do: trapped. Assure you it’s not fussiness it’s plain safe procedure protocol, all the flair ups are totally public because she burts into the procedure room and loudly demands attention shouting in front of everybody. Last time was an hour ago, just got home

Leo Gura says:

Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t… << that is how a victim talks. Don't feed us, and yourself, that bullshit!

Kate says:

Thanks for your experienced insight and sorry for bulshitting you and other blog members, not my intention of course.
Had thought that describing a personal specific situation, as others do, could stimulate a different type of feedback.

justme says:

Hey, Leo thanks for these videos it’s great stuff. Can you make one about setting boundaries specifically?

I had trouble with that in my previous relationship, by the time I actually realized I was enabling him to walk all over me and had a talk I was so hurt that it was hard to give him any space for error. The relationship is done and destroyed. I know he needs a lot of self work (including addictions) to be able to sustain a good relationship but I really regret not understanding this stuff earlier and I keep thinking maybe if I had a good talk with him early on or have been more direct and firm instead of can you please do this or that he would have taken it more seriously. It’s torture. Any advice on that?

Anyway, I think a lot of people could benefit from knowing how to set boundaries in an effective way.

Thanks

JJ says:

I like your comments. Some are really tough reminding people to own it, own their lives. No pity parties allowed. It took me years to learn these lessons. Sure do wish I’d ran across you sooner. Just beginning to listen. I still have a lot to learn.

John Davison says:

I have known some very inspiring people who refused to cut anyone out of their life. They were motivated to serve and support.

If we label someone as “toxic” we are falling into judgment, and judgment reduces our capacity to love.

Daniel Heanes says:

Thanks, Leo, for another uplifiting and clarifying video.

Your point about ‘exploiting others’ chimed with me, as I have made a habit over the past few years of trying to remember that ‘Everyone (I) meet has something valuable to teach (me)’. Whenever someone offends me I think back to when I might have done something similar myself to another person, and – unfortunately – am usually able to come up with an example. Feeling less ‘above’ my offender in that way helps to lessen the impact of the offence itself.

Additionally, in several cases this reflection has actually shown me WHY a person I interacted with in the past suddenly appeared to be offended, or to snap at me. Whereas, prior to today, when I feel offended myself, I might have ‘written such a person off’ as over-sensitive (or something less flattering) because the situation was incomprehensible to me then, suffering the same ‘offence’ as I must have given that person in the past shows me that that was what I did, and explains her or his reaction.

Anyway, I can agree that this particular tip is an internal win-win, and must eventually be an external win-win too.

Daniel

Dana says:

Is there a line though between cutting off toxic people and just simply running away from anything difficult?
I worked in a really toxic environment, I quit my job and started my own business, mostly to be able to choose the people I co-exist with. I always thought that I just took the easy way out and didn’t adapt with the situation.
With that being said, I feel MUCH better now, but I can’t help but feel like such a quitter.

Stephanie says:

Hey Leo,

I’m in a relationship where I do a lot for my partner, and think of ways to make her smile because, well, that’s A. Something I enjoy doing, and B. Behavior I wish to receive as well (do unto others, etc etc). However, no matter what I do for this girl, it never seems to be enough. I’m constantly ridiculed and nit-picked, from small things to very serious topics, like how I raise my son. I am a single mother who does a damn good job raising a respectful little boy. I do a lot for her, and I am loving, and I don’t deserve this kind of treatment. She has a drinking problem as well. And as I type this, I’m not even sure what for lol. I love her dearly, she loves me dearly in her own very weird way, but this is a person who has a lot of her own personal issues, and I cannot stick around because it is rubbing off on me (sponge effect) and I refuse to let it rub off on my little boy. I guess my main reason for writing this is this other thing: She runs. A lot. Like, every month. We’ve been together for 8 months now, and everything will be great and we’re getting along wonderfully and we’re best friends and the sex life is amazing, and she sees how much her family loves me and I love them, and then BOOM–she’ll retract. She’ll push me away one way or another every time. What’s that about? Fear, yeah? Perhaps she thinks she doesn’t deserve happiness? Afraid she’s gonna F it up? Often, she’ll get drunk (never around my child, mind you) and ask me “Whyyy are you with meee???” What do you think?

Thanks for the insight!
-Stephanie

Stephanie says:

Hey Leo,

I’m in a relationship where I do a lot for my partner, and think of ways to make her smile because, well, that’s A. Something I enjoy doing, and B. Behavior I wish to receive as well (do unto others, etc etc). However, no matter what I do for this girl, it never seems to be enough. I’m constantly ridiculed and nit-picked, from small things to very serious topics, like how I raise my son. I am a single mother who does a damn good job raising a respectful little boy. I do a lot for her, and I am loving, and I don’t deserve this kind of treatment. She has a drinking problem as well. And as I type this, I’m not even sure what for lol. I love her dearly, she loves me dearly in her own very weird way, but this is a person who has a lot of her own personal issues, and I cannot stick around because it is rubbing off on me (sponge effect) and I refuse to let it rub off on my little boy. I guess my main reason for writing this is this other thing: She runs. A lot. Like, every month. We’ve been together for 8 months now, and everything will be great and we’re getting along wonderfully and we’re best friends and the sex life is amazing, and she sees how much her family loves me and I love them, and then BOOM–she’ll retract. She’ll push me away one way or another every time. What’s that about? Fear, yeah? Perhaps she thinks she doesn’t deserve happiness? Afraid she’s gonna F it up? Often, she’ll get drunk (never around my child, mind you) and ask me “Whyyy are you with meee???” What do you think?

Thanks for the insight!
Stephanie

Tim says:

Hi Leo,

I have watched 3 of your videos so far and the information you are sharing is awesome. I have a question concerning dealing with toxic people. My wife’s ex husband is very toxic, however they had 2 kids together and communication is pretty much required. I don’t believe it to be possible to completely cut this jerk out, but what is the best avenue to deal with this situation?

Thank you for your insight!

Tim

Jing says:

Thank you so much, Leo. I love this video! a lot of wise advices on how to deal with toxic people in your life even if he or she is your family member.

DR says:

This is good logical strategy, but logic does not work on women.

If a angry spouse jumps on you and start throwing stuff and making accusation…
– “don’t react, don’t give then anything”.
Done that.

Now I am a “an emotionless monster, that can not communicate!”.
Ironically … I make my leaving communicating and understanding people needs&emotions.

If this is a person close to you, ignoring such situation is not good advice.
In high emotional state (anger, depression) experiences&ideas leave much stronger mark on the person memory/psyche.

So if you leave them in this state, call you names and portraying you as the “worst thing”.. This can grow with time …

My advice would be to break such behavior as soon as possible, and don’t let it play out. I don’t yet have good suggestion for how …

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