Lately I’ve been living a life that I like to call “positively selfish”. This means I’ve been focusing on what makes me feel good, saying yes to me and no to others. In this process I’ve noticed I have some toxic people in my life and by toxic I mean people that are always judgmental, never supportive, competitive people that seems to be happier when you’re down, envious people… I guess everyone knows what I’m talking about.
Even though I know that I shouldn’t take things personally as sometimes this behaviour is about themselves alone and not me, I would love to get rid of them, BUT sometimes that’s impossible. So what can I do?? How to stop myself from being affected when around them?

In my case I have 3 good examples of toxic people: My cousin who lives next door and is always at my house, she’s very close with my mom so I cannot stop her from visiting + her husband. My other cousin’s wife, always around as well as the couple is close to my family. And people from work.
The problem here is: I cannot stop them from coming and whenever I try to distance myself they start questioning my absence and I simply cannot look at them and say ‘I’m never around because I cannot stand you anymore.’.

Any thoughts or advice?

• This topic was modified 9 years ago by Susannah.