spiritual counseling
How To Deal With Toxic People
Toxic people can be incredibly difficult to deal with in both personal and professional relationships and can be detrimental to your personal happiness and well-being.
A toxic person is someone whose constant negativity and dysfunctional behavior causes drama in your life and drains you energy whenever they are around. Typical toxic traits include negativity, cynicism, apathy, lack of self-awareness, arrogance, entitlement, self-centeredness, domineering behavior, lack of empathy, being judgmental, dishonesty, anger outbursts, to name only a few.
The most extreme forms of toxicity includes personality disorders like antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorder. A personality disorder is a rigid, deeply characteristic way of thinking, feeling and acting that severely affects the person’s mental well-being, personal relationships and social life.
Toxic people can however be tricky to identify at first, as their dysfunctional traits and behaviors can be very subtle. Some of them are also very good at ‘gaslighting,’ which makes interacting with them even more treacherous.
Gaslighting is a very toxic form of manipulation, game playing, or crazymaking in which you are constantly being misled, confused, lied to, and made to question your own truth and reality. You increasingly feel unsure about the accuracy of your own memories regarding certain events and your personal opinions and perceptions of the world. You may even begin to think that you are to blame for the toxic person’s actions, or that maybe something is very wrong with you, or worse, that you are losing your mind.
Healing From A Relationship Break-Up
Breaking up with someone can be one of the most difficult experiences in life, especially when it is a long and deeply meaningful relationship. It can feel impossible to see any future without that person and very difficult to move on and find joy in life again.
I find many of my clients do not realize that dealing with a break-up or divorce is very similar to processing the bereavement and grief associated with the passing of a loved one. It is often accompanied by agonizing sorrow, intense feelings of despair, and an all-encompassing sense of loss and confusion.
According to clinical psychologist Dr. Tricia Wolanin it is actually “the death of a relationship, hopes and dreams for the future. The person we are losing was a big part of our world and therefore has taken up so much of our mental and heart space.”
It is however possible to recover, heal and move on after any breakup or divorce. In my work I have found the following strategies to be helpful for clients who go through this kind of life challenge.
Avoid Major Life Decisions
It is usually not a good idea to make any important life decisions if you are working through the aftermath of a breakup. This includes changing your job or career, relocating, or making other drastic changes to your life. It is vital to take some time to heal and reflect on the situation before making hasty life-changing decisions that you may later live to regret.
Helping Children Navigate Divorce
When parents get divorced it is always difficult for the entire family. Navigating through this time is usually challenging. There is also no manual or guidebook for how to do things the right way, so parents have to figure it out as they go.
Same with the children. It can be very scary for them not knowing what to expect and sometimes feeling obligated to take sides. It can be a very sad, stressful time for children, especially when parents are so caught up in their disputes and drama that they lose sight of what is best for their kids. The kids are not the ones getting the divorce.
However, I believe most parents really do try to do their best to soften the blow and make it work for everyone involved.
Children tend to want to please their parents and not cause further upset. So, tend to not speak up. They sometimes suppress their feelings of hurt, resentment or fear. Sometime children feel like they need to choose one parent over another.
Everyone needs to feel they are being heard and their needs considered. It is therefore best to listen to all sides before making decisions. Going through this process can be tricky. You do not want your child to feel neglected or abandoned in the process.
Understanding your children’s needs and feelings, and dealing with it, is the first step into helping your child get through it with the least amount of trauma. If a parent finds this difficult to ascertain, then it is wise for them to get some professional help and guidance.
Learning To Accept Yourself (Warts And All)
A consistent trend I have noticed doing psychic readings and metaphysical counseling for many years. This trend relates to rejection, and our reaction to being rejected by our human family. It is not natural to abandon or reject loved ones, but in my experience as a pastoral counselor and psychic healer, I have noticed that it is a challenge that many have faced in this life.
Recently, as I was doing a channeling session with one of my clients, this came up and we both had a revelation about our own experiences of rejection. The discussion we had was not only about rejection and how we as humans experience it, but also about how we perceive acceptance. Our experience of rejection comes from only one source, namely our expectation, and also how we resonate with the acceptance we receive from others.
When we are children it is natural for us to allow our parents to be our source. They were the picture of God in our lives, and in ideal situations they were our source of acceptance, providing nurture and stability. Many times, when you see a religious group adopting a vengeful and cruel depiction of the Divine, it stems from a refusal to remove the archetypal depiction from God they experienced with their parents.
Many times, the search for source extends itself outward, and the responsibility of our fulfillment is put on other people or organizations. In some cases, fulfillment is found in substances and can also lead to addictive behaviors. We look to these external ‘sources’ to provide us comfort and satisfaction.
It is natural for us to live in community and relationships, so our endeavors toward fulfillment are often projected outward in our relationships. Unfortunately, since we all have an intrinsic need to identify with and live from Source, we find ourselves continually reaching for fulfillment that we rarely find. This leads to heartache, loss, and broken relationships within the human family.
True Healing Begins With Holding Space
A work associate and friend recently offered me a free healing session, which he describes as ‘holding space.’ It involves the healer simply ‘being present’ and mindful in the moment with the client during a video call.
He explained the process beforehand and informed me that was going to simply talk and express myself, with no prompting from him. I gratefully accepted his kind offer.
I was not sure what to expect, but having studied various healing modalities myself over the years and being naturally curious about all aspects of spirituality and holistic health, I was open to the experience.
To begin he invited me to just relax and focus on my breathing. Once he senses that I was ready to proceed, he encouraged me to simply begin talking about whatever came to mind.
“Oh no,” I secretly thought, “what on earth will I talk about?”
Well, I soon discovered that it wasn’t difficult at all! I spontaneously began talking, and soon it was pretty much non-stop! I kicked off talking about my concerns for my aging pets, and then went on to other everyday worries and domestic matters. Eventually, I switched to my family history – specifically focusing on all the times I had felt invisible or let down by relatives.
About halfway through, I briefly hesitated and asked my friend if he was not maybe getting bored? But he assured me that he was perfectly fine, adding that this kind of work was very much a calling for him. He later explained that he has overcome several life challenges and tragedies himself over the years, and subsequent soul-searching, as well as further training in various holistic practices, ultimately led him to begin holding space for others.