Have you ever heard of people being referred to as “toxic”? The term has become a common way of referring to people who aren’t healthy to be around. They are the people that seem to drag us down and wear us out with negativity. Even when we know we need to break away from them for our own good, it isn’t always easy. Today, we’re going to work on how to identify the toxic people in our life and what we can do to regain the energy, and sometimes sanity, they are draining from us.

Toxic people can generally be associated to one of four personality types, although some may fit all four to varying degrees. As you read, take mental inventory of the people in your life, both on and offline, and see who fits descriptions. The odds are, those are the people you can identify as being your least productive, healthy relationships. Once identified, do consider whether or not your relationship with them is helping you or hindering you and what you can do about that.

1. The critic.
The critic is the person that is going to sit back and offer nothing but negative input. Even when they offer a glimmer of something positive, they will often tie in some negative rider to it. In general, they tend to make you feel devalued and incompetent.

2. The sponge.
The sponge is there to absorb everything you have. It doesn’t matter if it is time, money, clothes or even just space in your head – whatever they can sop up, they will. Much like a sponge, whatever has been absorbed it keeps – unless you wring it out of them. They take and take and take some more until there is nothing left and they have no intention of every returning anything willingly. When there’s nothing left to take, they move on until you eventually have something else they want.

3. The energy hog.
The energy hog is the person that drains so much of your emotional energy that they actually start to wear you down physically. This is the type of person that no matter what the situation is, they always find ways to turn it into doom and gloom. If you were excited over a new job, this would be the person that would make it a point to tell you everything they didn’t like about it. If you’re having a rough day and try to pick yourself up by saying something like “it can only get better”, they would give you ten reasons it could get much worse. This is the person you spend twenty minutes talking to and feel like you need a two hour nap to recover from it.

4. The walking crisis.
The walking crisis is the person you constantly try to get away from, but somehow or another they suck you back in. You get yourself set to cut ties, then suddenly, they are in a life and death struggle of some sort and they will do everything they can to drag you into it with them. When you try to help them, no matter what it is, it is never enough and it is never going to make things better. They always have one crisis after the next and they need you to be a part of it with them in some way.

The question is, what can you do about the toxic people in your life?

1. Take responsibility! That’s right, you have to take responsibility for what happens with the toxic people in your life going forward. The toxic people around you are not going to change your life for the better, you have to do that. You have to start by resolving that you are not going to let others drag to down. You are going to do what is the best thing for your emotional and physical well-being and remove toxic people from your life. Even if they try to drag you back into their chaos, stand back and follow tip #2.

2. Forget about fighting fire with fire. No matter how crazy someone is driving you, no matter how much they gossip about you and no matter how much they may have drained from you emotionally and perhaps monetarily, let it go. Resign yourself to giving them the last word and walking away. Stop being an audience. They will move on to someone else who is willing to listen. Don’t worry about gossip and rumors, anyone intelligent (and non-toxic) will consider the source and brush it off.

3. If it is someone you have to deal with for professional reasons, keep it strictly professional. Don’t engage in any talk aside from the job at hand and move on. Work is supposed to be about getting the job done and not chewing the fat.

Just say no to toxic people.

4. Avoid letting new toxic people into your life by setting more stringent personal boundaries and sticking to them! Just because you got involved with toxic people in the past doesn’t mean you have to repeat that history. Create a personal space in which you control who comes in and out of it. Be aware of how much of your personal life and time you make available to others. Take control of who gets space in your life and when and how much of it they get. Remember, this is about being happy and healthy not only for yourself, but the people you do want in your life.

Letting go of toxic people is not easy – not at first at least. It can be very emotional. Toxic or not, we do have ties to these people. We may feel bad for them. What has to be realized, however, is that we have to put our own well-being first or we’ll wind up just as toxic as those surrounding us. You will notice that once you begin removing emotional leeches from your life, you will feel better. No matter what kind of tantrums or tactics they may use to draw you back in, do not engage them or you will be back at square one.

Do you have any advice on dealing with toxic people? Share them with us in the reply section below. We’d love to hear from you!