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A New Perspective On Toxic People
I am a self-identified healer. Here, in this moment, I shamelessly announce, that the past few years of life, though filled with immense growth, beauty, and joy, have been the hardest years of all. I have struggled, feeling completely stuck and lost, throwing adult-sized tantrums in my personal life, causing chaos and harm, and being labelled as certifiably “toxic”. Yet, simultaneous to the harms I have caused in my alleged toxicity, I have also helped so many loved ones and clients. I believe this paradox is something to elaborate upon, which might help us all relate to who or what is “toxic”, in a new way.
Within these past years, I have struggled with finding my own power. In many ways, I have felt as though I am drowning in a deep pool of self-hatred, shame, and absolute failure. I have made an art form out of panic. I have grasped for a life raft, and at times clung too tightly to whomever and whatever I could use as my flotation device. I have had several people who used to be my closest confidants, literally up and leave me, because they couldn’t handle my panic, how much I apparently hurt them, and how lost I seemed to be in my life.
I am not naive to the fact that in the eyes of my most intimate counterparts, they currently define me as a “difficult person”, to say the least. I have had to face places in my self that I have never wanted to love, but…