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Don’t Feed Toxic People as a Part of Your Self Love

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Don't Feed a Toxic Person as a Part of Your Self Love

You’ve been there. A person is constantly triggering you.

For some reason, something about this person makes you feel like you need to defend yourself or argue. Whenever you are around this person you can feel the irritation and anger rise up.

This person is toxic to you. 

They might seem to be able to get along with others, or you may notice that they are always having the same problems with other people. In either case, YOU are not able to keep boundaries with this person. Also, you might notice that you act differently than you want to around this person.

You are improving yourself, keeping cool, regulating your emotions, but this person keeps finding ways to make you feel out of control.

Your Reaction Feeds Them

Whether they are conscious of it or not, a toxic person feels very comfortable with conflict. They might act dramatic or say that they are “no drama,” but that is just not true.

On the psychology side of this situation, toxic people continue to find themselves in hard and volatile situations. It is a part of their makeup. They were probably raised in chaotic environments and recreate this wherever they go. 

Unless they are coming to you to get support in their own healing journey, it is really their problem and not yours. (It’s never actually your problem)

Knowing this, you need to understand that your reaction or overreaction feeds something inside of them. There is a deep satisfaction that they get when you get triggered by the subtle (or obvious) things they do to you.

How to React

When you feel a trigger around someone, it is a sign for you to get some space. 

If you can, safely walk away and be with yourself. You might want to go process your feelings with someone, but be sure it is someone who will not tell your thoughts to the toxic person. A toxic person will claim they HATE being gossiped about, but that’s not true. The gossip will again feed their toxicity.

Instead, take a walk, journal, talk to your therapist, or meditate on the event. Decide if this person is toxic and then decide not to feed them.

By not feeding a toxic person, I mostly mean ignoring them. Communicate lovingly if you have to interact with them, but limit your time with this person. The JADE technique is a great way to remember not to Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain anything to this person.

Here’s what will happen. They might try to draw you back into some kind of relationship with them or lash out on you, at first. But gradually, you will no longer be available for them to get their fix. They will start to look elsewhere for the chaos that they create. 

You will begin to live in peace. Do you want peace? Or do you want the drama and chaos this person brings into your life? Reflect on that.

Dr. Autumn Thomas

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Anger Management and Self Love

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Anger Management and Self Love

Many people beat themselves up when they react in a situation with anger and lashing out. This can increase an angry reaction and make matters worse. You’re here because you know that anger can destroy your relationships and do harm to others, but it does immense damage to you as well. Without a doubt, anger management and self love go hand in hand.

Self Love is a gentle way to nurture yourself while you grow and change in the direction you have chosen for yourself. If anger is getting in the way of your goals, relationships, and dreams for yourself, it might be time to try some strategies based on loving yourself. 

Where to Start

When I work face-to-face with my students, we list out emotion words that describe our anger. Using a scale from 1-10 we decide where each word ranks. For example, a situation that is a 1 would be something that causes us mild irritation. But a 10 is a situation that might push us to violence.

We then associate circumstances, in our lives, that bring us between a 1 and a 10. It is important for us to realize that a 10 is a situation where your life is literally in danger. Many people hit a 10 because their body and mind might feel a major threat, but in reality they are not at risk of being physically harmed.

Overall, the first place you start is recognizing what situations are causing you the most anger.

Recognizing Triggers

After ranking angry situations, you can begin to recognize your triggers. You will notice your anger more and be conscious of it when it comes up. 

At first, you might still lash out when you get angry. This is natural because your wiring in your brain is used to driving you to act a certain way. With any behaviors, you sometimes need to notice them after you act them out before you can begin to catch yourself during your reaction. The growth process will look like this:

  1. You will still get angry and overreact or lash out, but you will remember soon after that you have a goal to stop behaving this way.
  2. After reflecting, you will identify what triggered your anger and will make a plan for next time.
  3. During the next situation you will recognize your anger reaction DURING the reaction.
  4. If you are practicing self love, you will be able to see that you are growing and changing by being conscious of your anger sooner this time.
  5. Again, you will reflect and identify any new triggers you haven’t already noticed.
  6. After some time, you will notice your anger before you react with angry behaviors and you will remove yourself from the situation to go take care of your anger.

With this in mind, you will need some techniques to help you work through all of these steps and beyond.

Techniques for Anger Management
- With a Self Love Emphasis

To work through the stages listed out above, you will need tools. These tools can be applied based on your own preferences and what works best for you. After all, you are unique and will need to bring awareness into how you learn the best.

Connect with Your Anger – You are made of many different parts. You have an amazingly generous part of you, the kind and gentle part of you, the funny part, and also this angry part. While recognizing your triggers and anger, you need to connect to this part of you. You might need to do some inner child healing, or therapy to understand this part of you and not avoid it. You might even need to start working on  communicating your boundaries.

It is not the anger that is the negative part of your experience, it’s the energy that blocks you from connecting to your anger that causes negativity. Connect so you can heal.

Labeling Your Emotions – When you are angry, you can google words for anger and start to label the anger with different words. You might find that you are disappointed, frustrated, betrayed, etc. Labeling emotions is a powerful tool to help calm your nervous system and get you ready to problem solve. 

Meditate and/or Journal – Taking time with yourself to meditate during times when you are not angry, helps to prepare your mind for times when anger arises. Journaling can also help you to release some of the anger, if you do it when you are first noticing that there’s a problem. Doing these things in times when you are calm helps you access these strategies in times when you are angry. After much practice, you will be able to remove yourself from the situation and process in a way that’s best for you.

Conclusion

Overall, you will not be able to fully get rid of your anger.  Anger serves a purpose in survival situations and is a natural part of you.

This part of you needs acceptance and love. When you learn to step away from a situation where you might do something you regret, you will gain time with yourself. Consequently, you will start a conversation with yourself about what you deserve and how you can be healthy. This will begin to impact your relationships in a loving and encouraging way. 

Dr. Autumn Thomas

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What is Self Love?

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What is Self Love?

Start by Defining Love

If you are asking the question, what is self love? Then it might be good for us to first explore the word “love.”

bell hooks described her exploration for a universal definition of “love” in her book all about love. She chose Erich Fromm’s definition that love is, “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” 

The key word in that sentence is the word “nurture.” bell also emphasized that you cannot nurture and be purposefully hurtful or abusive. Furthermore, love is a verb.

There are so many definitions of love. Because of this, it is hard to decide which definition is the best. Many people have been taught that sometimes people who love us will hurt us. We have learned that love might be associated with affection and attraction (either physically or spiritually) to someone else. 

Instead, the word “love” describes the feeling we have for someone/something that we want to see thrive. Love is deep attachment to our curiosity about someone or something outside of us. We feel it on a spiritual level.

True Love

What we think of as love can make us possessive and competitive. It can pull out our egos and fill us with jealousy. The strong emotion that is usually associated with love can confuse us.

Yet, if you think about it, you know what true love really is. All you have to do is imagine your ideal self. Your ideal self is a person who is giving, kind, patient, and mentally clear. This ideal version of you loves in a pure way that is never selfish or hurtful.

This person nurtures all of the people around them. That nurturing is true love. True love is taking the elated and joyful feelings you have and transforming them into the acts of listening, guiding, caring, respecting, trusting, tenderness, and freedom.

If a person who is “loving” were to act in that way towards all the people in their lives, this would be the type of love described in all spiritual theologies. This person lives in you, they are a part of you.

Applying True Love to Yourself

If a “loving person” acts in a nurturing, kind, patient way. Then this means all of the people who come in contact with this person feel heard, cared for, and free to be themselves. Also, they can heal and grow.

Self love is applying all of these behaviors and actions to yourself. Self love is the act of nurturing yourself. Consequently, with self love, you can begin to release hurtful or abusive ways that you might treat yourself.

Gradually, as a result of working on a true love for yourself, you emulate that love for others. 

Self love is just like any other love, it takes investment, time, patience, and commitment. It is beautiful road with hills and various adventures. It is not always pleasant, but it is worth it.

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