Toxicity and Negative personality traits in us.

विषारी विश नाही,

विषारी वृत्ती आहे...

विष एक माध्यम...

।।किरदार।।

(Poison is not poisonous,

Poisonous are tendencies, 

Poison is just a medium or instrument. ~ Kirdar)

The poison which is present in us won't affect any situations or relations until we give in to the tendencies or habits to spill it out on ourselves and on others. We need to develop an ability to be able to hold it like Lord Shiva 🔱 as he holds it in his throat. If we don’t heal from the hurt we have, we will bleed on people close to us. .

Some alarming events and traumatic situations in life would shake us throughout to brightly awaken us towards our ways in which we are thinking, feeling and behaving. Those events will mirror us our thought process which is going on in our mind. This situation in our life makes us realise and creates an urgency and an emergency in our life to throw away all the bullshit that we have been carrying within us for years. Just because we failed to realise this truth, no one deserves any ill treatment from us, not even ourselves. What we deserve is a life full of true freedom in which one has a freedom to respond rightly in any given situation (this comes with staying in PRESENT MOMENT, Full Awareness of self and practice). No one is perfect here. Understand that, we all are more or less SHITTY in our own ways. Only difference is that few of us realise this during their lives while others carry this burden throughout their life until they die. Realisation and acceptance of the reality of everything along with the complete acceptance of the related situation is required. Our pessimistic, victimised and egoistic mind-set affects our choices and decision which makes our behaviour subconsciously unstable and erratic in a way that repels opportunities and pushes people out of our lives. At other times one cannot keep their success and opportunities in lives and are driven away just because of these instabilities or poisonous traits. Those who feel odd and awkward, will simply walk away with no explanations. 

While reading this article, take care to find these traits within yourself and not to judge any of your friend or those at your workplace, but your own self. I hope that reading this article will change your perspective towards your own self, towards people around you or in your personal life. Often we judge others but fail to introspect ourselves. As it is said - "Everyone is fighting a battle, you know nothing about, so be kind towards them". Anyone can come back to normal from whatever mental state they are going through. All what is required is a support and acceptance from their loved ones and themself. They needs to stop feeling different from others and give up their sense of entitlement, because this sense of entitlement is like a gangrene of their life. This feeling of being different from others and wrong identifications are roots of all the evil. Some stimulating events can cause them to change and leave their comfort zone about everything. Actually, we really don’t know how people are, but we judge them based on what they show us. We judge, condemn, or get inspired from others based on our ways of looking at them. However, the actual reality can be altogether different.  

What is toxicity and negativity?

The toxicity in us refers to the maladaptive behavioural patterns and coping skills in society and relations. Due to this, one thinks, feels, defends, offends or reacts to a particular moment, situation or to a person in a negative way. They exhibit passive aggressive behaviours which is a way to indirectly avoid either pain or the situation for unknown reasons which need attention and/or therapeutic intervention. Understand that the ways are negative and not the person themselves. Note the fact that they are suffering from such situation because of their identification with their mythical beliefs. Deep inside some people want to be out of it all and live a better life like everyone else.

How are these negativities and toxicities developed in us? 

The question is why and how are these negative patterns developed within us? What are all these toxic traits? What are they and why are they this way? This all could be due to the unmet mental, emotional and physical needs from the past, our failure in relations or traumatic events in life. This is due to emotional, mental or physical abuse or by the combination of it all and/or due to a vast medical history. According to research of psychologists there is found a substantial overlap between emotional pain and physical pain. This all creates complexities in the thinking of the person during their upbringing, during the early stages of his life. This affects even his childhood and adolescence, when he is surviving through the abusive events. The old abuse which happened, let it be of any type creates a large painful void and incompleteness. The negative thoughts and feelings collected from the surrounding and later the disturbing noise of person's own chatter – their mind, negative self-imaging, identities and myths create twists in their neural connections. They suffer through depression, social anxiety and other stress related disorders due to complications in their thinking patterns which in turns creates more stress and depression. This all is like a downward spiral. This results in formation of a weak ego (Freud’s philosophy of ego) or a weak feeling of individuality. Such a person has bad coping skills, weak defences (both verbal and physical) and is unable to give right response in any given situations. Thus, they unknowingly learn unnatural behavioural ways from the surrounding. Doing all this they are trying to cope up with their surroundings, survive and at the same time meet their unmet needs from the past. Their incomplete compensatory methods further create complications in their thinking and approach towards life and people around. This creates more bad relations and failures in their lives. Every simple little task which are easy for normal people may not be that easy for these people due to their inability to adapt to the evolving situations or due to their wandering and anxious mind. Understand the excruciating pain the person must be into while dealing with himself and his surroundings. 

Take note that the evildoers, cruel and monstrous types are totally different criminal type category of people. Not all toxic people are evil by nature but are actually under self-conflict and confused between their choices, their abilities, beliefs and their unmet needs. Their behavioural habits are toxic and negative, not the person themself. Such people act rude, stubborn and unkind sometimes, as rudeness was the way they were treated in their past. Comparisons and rejections from the past, lack of recognition and lack of appreciation in the past caused in them low sense of worth and sense of self. The abuse in the past, over protectiveness or being over pampered lead them to doubt their abilities and be over dependent on others at emotional and mental levels.  

Every individual is basically good. All they want is recognition, and being looked upon. As like every child wants to show its creativity and wants to express itself and amaze the people around, so do adults want to show themselves. The unmet needs create feeling of pain. Pain changes people into either good or bad. The pain shuts out everything, the good and the bad until there is nothing left. Pain shuts down the sensitivity of people, even their cognitive and focal abilities. Pain turns people numb or unresponsive sometimes. Brain sometimes shuts down few memories and makes person forgetful about past events to protect the body mind mechanism from pain and stress due to it. This is a type of defence mechanism and survival mechanism of our brain. These people are not mentally retard but the mistreatment and traumatic events happened to them in the past without their consent made them act like a bitter, unstable, erratic, arrogant and ‘difficult to deal with’ type of person. They have difficulty dealing with other people and situations due to their unusual fear, anxiousness and hesitance to interact. They may even find it difficult to grab opportunities due to the conflicts inside and influence of their surroundings. Some even find it difficult to accept the words of appreciation. They don’t know how to receive and be receptive for any form of appreciation. They are normal people like everyone else around but they feel like odd man out. There are hurtful and incomplete feelings inside them which are due to the underlying fear and natural resistance to avoid pain. The known or unknown desire to avoid vulnerability causes them to behave in certain ways.  

State of person suffering from it. 

In this whole process the individual adopts misguided thinking which keeps revolving around his confusion and uncertainty. They develop myths and complexes of superiority or inferiority, good or bad, inadequacies or adequacies, good enough or not good enough etc. These negative self-imaging (of the similar types) create an identity in mind with which one wrongly identify themselves. These people tend to have some of the following traits (not necessary all). They sometimes become manipulative, timid, angry, blasting, arrogant, ignorant, cruel, liars, cheaters, jealous, blamers with stubbornness and inflexibility. They act too much distant sometimes or at other times they are too close and pleasing. They feel inferior many times and want to feel superior to others and control the situations and subsequent outcome. Thus, they try to dominate, sometimes play victim card and seek too much attention or validation from others. They play mind games with others and their own selves too. They are constantly comparing themselves to others and are a big time perfectionist who take everything personally. They re-live their past constantly and are stuck in it, continuously overthinking the past and worrying too much about the future. They can be a negative thinking experts with constant negative self-talks. They ignore their true self but care only about meeting the unmet needs to the point that their survival depends on it. It is like an addiction similar to alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Understand, what was once just a survival mechanisms of an individual has now become a part of his living. Their false behaviour may help them in their immediate needs, but this never quite satisfy or meet the needs of their long term goals of psychological, spiritual, and cognitive growth which effects their interpersonal skills in relationships and in society. Their idea of superiority is as false as their inferiority, both are backed by weakness, insecurities and defensive mechanisms.

How does it affects them?  

Whatever physical, mental and emotional abuse which happened in the past was ‘Not Your Fault’. Even whatever happened later in the body mind mechanism due to that traumatic situation is ‘Not Your Fault’ but now it is YOUR UTTER RESPONSIBILITY to change all the things back to normal. The negative self-images of inadequacy and false identification need to be identified and changed throughout. Change is possible and interesting part is that only THE PERSON CAN CHANGE HIMSELF because it is completely under their own power and it has always been so, just they were unaware of it or keep forgetting often due to numbness towards pain. All it requires is their own approval and acceptance to the outcomes. There is nothing wrong in to be dependent on anyone, to be felt loved by someone and to be seen and appreciated by someone. A desire to get attention and recognition, appreciation from the surrounding is normal for humans. No living being can be completely independent as there is always some or other form of co-dependency on the environment and people. There is nothing wrong in to be desperate for someone or something and need to get attention but too much of anything is dangerous. Problem arises when ones existence or beingness depends on it and without that one feels inadequate or “not good enough”. One is always good enough for themselves and everything. “Not good enough” is just a mythical thinking. 

These people are unable to pick on the positive clues from their surroundings and are unable to listen to their own intuitions. They don’t understand because they have conflict between their inner guiding voice and the constant insecure and demanding noise of their mind chattering and howling in their heads. Those obscured feelings due to the unmet needs take over their present, whenever they are into an anxious situations. They lose the control of the situation as they are unable to stay in present moment and get into a programmed or habitual ways of thinking, feeling and actions. The constant negative disposition leaves them half-hearted and incomplete everywhere due to which they leave things incomplete. Truth is that no one can complete us truly except us, ourselves. The real reason is if that external materialistic reason / person completing us abandons us and walks away or dies due to some unfortunate reason; the whole situation would be disastrous for our fragile lives due to over-dependency on that external source. We are all little fragile like glass but we just don't carry any tag of "handle with care" so we are unable to read the unseen.

Ways to overcome it?

Now, how to do it? Self-acceptance!!! Self-acceptance is the most important tool for this. Best way to accept yourself is to be grateful about whatever you are and whatever you have. If you thinking that your life is hell and you have nothing to thank for then just hold your breath for 2 mins and you can thank god later with gasping breaths. Acceptance of anything breaks any resistance from inside. They need to give up their resistance to everything, their resistance to change. Acceptance doesn’t mean do nothing about it but accept it so you can see it accurately and work on it rightly with full energy, attention and focus. For that the person has to realise that they are in a puddle of negativity and there is a needs to come out of it. Only then changes are possible in their lives. They need to develop ways to feel good and positive from inside. A rented confidence or a rented good feeling is okay in short term. Such rented feelings are of no use in long term rather they are more painful as they are outsourced. 

When asking out for help from people, some people give too much of idealistic solutions which are impossible to work upon. Here the idealistic thinking won't help to heal. What is instead required is a realistic and pragmatic thinking which is practically possible to workout. The most important thing is that they need to take care of their awareness and the direction of their focus. They need to see themselves in a realistic sense and not through their spectacles of ‘Why Me’. Our ego, ignoring our own karma tells us ‘I am right, I am so good, why did this happened to me. I didn’t deserve this’. They need to find the places where they are lacking, go wrong and improve on that. They need to find all the different ways to bring back their all divided focus and attention from past traumas, future worries, from mind complexities and put it back in the PRESENT MOMENT and on the work at hand. They need to practice kindness and compassion for themself and others in the whole situation. One has got to get rid of those old subconscious programming and self-imaging deeply ingrained in mind. They can talk to their friends, take help of self-help books, guidance from a mentor or a therapist or a psychologists. They have to work on their confidence and faith. The most important thing is that they have got to work on the feelings of ONENESS.  

There are even spiritual ways of cleansing to make peace with self apart from self-help books and psychotherapy. One can adopt anything suitable or all the ways as per their personal comfort, preferences and beliefs. Get aware and defocus from those patterns of thinking and behaviour, negativities and obsession to clear up the mind and system from the effects of the negative thoughts. They have to focus on breaking their old patterns of behaviour and actions and developing new patterns in its place. Focus on something fruitful like life goals instead of drooling on the painful past. Positive actions are required to be taken as they will cause positive hopeful feelings inside them. After defocusing if they don't direct their focus on what's needful, the mind will tend to go back to the same old ways which they want to refrain from. One has to watch the self-talk and stop repeating the old negative phrases and replace them with positive affirmations. Learn new coping ways to adapt to the surroundings which starts with working on oneself and being more self-dependent. They need to throw away their too much of showiness or pretence as it is harmful for their own good. The Real confidence is always full of simplicity and humbleness but with self-respect and self-esteem. They need is to practice forgiveness for themselves and for others from whom they got hurt in the past. They need to forgive their roots / source or the most intimate circle of people in life. They need to be grateful for what all they have in this life. Be thankful for they are yet alive and are breathing and for every help and support which they are getting constantly getting from the surrounding to make their lives better. FORGIVENESS is the best resolving action which has to be taken, whereas GRATITUDE is a best feeling to live in. Being in constant state of gratitude brings humbleness, simplicity and makes one egoless.  

CONCLUSION

One can totally come out of those negative thinking and behavioural patterns with right guidance and with appropriate time and efforts given for developing themselves. Be with yourself first. Maintain a peaceful state with yourself. Learn healthy ways to transmutate the frustration, anger, stress and anxiety caused in the process. Get yourself freed from the guilt, sorrows and mythical thinking of the past and worries of the future. Not all people are there to put you down but many are there to help. They should keep their ego and victimised self aside and practice to be more respectful and kinder towards themselves and other people. They need to be more casual, friendly, compassionate and kind to themselves and the people around. The old pain can no longer be used as an excuse to hurt people in vicinity in any form. The ones who walked away or those repelled people, also what is gone or the lost opportunities may or may not come back. What was gone will heal and come back with time or its equivalent or better will emerge. Some lost opportunities are boon in disguise. Hanging on to what is gone is painful and is a waste of time. Whatever happened was the need of that hour. Leave it there itself because every past event is like dead body we don’t need to carry in our mind. Understand why the thing happened and why the things are happening the way they are. See those things in a neutral way only then will one get the real cause. The law of karma says you reap what you sow thus every cause has consequences. Seek to understand and accept first rather to be understood and being accepted. They have to accept the consequences of their actions although the deeds were done unconsciously under some old negative influences. Past cannot be changed but what is more important is - acceptance of self and our state of mind and acceptance of the situation of self and others. Our life and surrounding takes care to make us learn our LESSONS from the repeated events until we understand them clearly. The emptiness or vogue created due to the loss cannot be dealt forever but the effects can be minimised by focusing on present and what is at hand. Robin Sharma says, “Every minute spent worrying about ‘the way things were’ is a moment stolen from creating ‘the way things can be”. Being aware and being in present, “be here now” moment is most important. Resolve all your conflicts with yourself, forgive yourself and heal yourself, the surrounding will mirror you automatically with time. Next is required is to be ready and receptive for results you want in your life. Our receptivity and openness to things coupled with acceptance will make us take appropriate possible actions and will bring miracles in the life. Understand that the inner peace is the most important requirement and result in the process of healing, more than any every other lost success, lost opportunities or lost people. But loving the process is as important as loving the end result. If one person can change the course of world’s history, then a person can definitely change himself! 

      I WAS NO LONGER NEEDING TO BE SPECIAL, BECAUSE I WAS NO LONGER SO CAUGHT UP IN MY PUNY SEPARATENESS THAT I HAD TO KEEP PROVING I WAS SOMETHING. 

~ Ram Dass.