Are We Toxic or just having a bad day?

Most people are toxic at one point (or moment) in their lives ? Are you?

​We humans are in process and I am firmly in the camp that EVERYONE is doing the best that they are able with what they have (resources, learning, skills) on hand.  When I learned this...when I really came to understand it, my life radically changed from being in an economy of merit thinking that everything was to be earned...to living in an economy of grace, where I saw that we are all gifted with so much more than we earn.  Paradoxically, I had to both take 100% responsibility for my actions and, in parallel, I had to accept that it was 100% out of our control.

​(Which came first the chicken or the egg?  Yep, they both did.)

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How did I change?  Sadly, it took a "bottom story" to get me moving.

My bottom story was not the infamous ones of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Mine came half a decade into caregiving with another six years to go.

I had judged everyone – (everyone included me of course).  It was how I was raised. It was woven into the bootstrapped, meritorious middle-class upbringing in my family. It was not until I was truly exhausted by caregiving of my diva and the slow drip, drip, drip of her dementia, that I saw me... in her mirror. 

Fat vs. thin, rich vs. nar-do-wells, beauties vs. frumps, entreprenurial vs. wage earners ... It was an infinite dualistic list.  However, as the judgments fell away from her, my powerful, smart, talented, professional, superpower of a mother figure, what she was left with ( and what I saw there instead of power) was fear of not enough– in every category. ​

She became my itemized 'fearless moral inventory" of our transgressions, footnoted with each of their root causes.

It is our human story.  We want to control that which can hurt us. I see it everyday in my hospice patients.  I can see myself in them, too.  Having created a mess, or two, of my own relationships (and businesses) through my fear-based actions.  My home spiritual community at Unity, says
                     "We are not punished for our sins... but by them." 
Richard Rohr has a similar take.  He says:

" We do not pull ourselves up; we are pulled. 

​God does not directly destroy evil, the way our heroic and dualistic minds would like to imagine.  God is much wiser, wastes nothing, and includes everything. The God of the Bible is best known for transmuting and transforming our very evils into our own more perfect good. God uses our sin in our own favor!  God brings us - through failure - from unconsciousness to ever-deeper consciousness and conscience. 

– Richard Rohr, an author, Breathing Underwater, Spirituality and the Twelve Steps​

 What do do and how to "protect yourself" once you spot toxic people...
LADDERS recently posted some traditional advice which is tactical but not particularly transformational. It led me to the title of this article: Toxic or just having a bad day?  It suggests:

Maintain conscious emotional distance
Think strategically about when and where you have to put up with them and when and where you don’t.
Define the issue and establish boundaries consciously and proactively
You may find yourself in situations where you’ll need stop and choose the best way forward. Take time. Make conscious what is the issue:  decide when and where you’ll engage this difficult person, and you will be more likely be able to  control much of the chaos.
–10 toxic people you should avoid like the plague, LADDERS 

Do we need protection from toxic people?  How do we best engage them?

In one of my first jobs as a chaplain, there was a CFO who consistently micro-managed the clinical team and generally acted like a bully. It was ridiculous: a bean-counter telling the clinical team how long their meeting had to be?  What they needed to talk about? Who needed to talk?  My first response was to act like a rescuer to counter his persecutor...in the traditionally "Dreaded Drama  Triangle" (DDT) because it felt like he was attacking our patients and the care we were able to give them.  

But then I paused.  I had a breakthrough.  I centered myself and, for the first time since I was ordained,  I embodied (my spiritual authority) and became a more neutral, supportive Presence. This was not mine to FIX.

Here is quick index of the rescuer recommendations of TED: The Emplowerment Triangle: which is a counter to the DDT.

Keep a neutral attitude. Even if you feel defensive (especially if you feel defensive) do not act from that mental state. Use a non-reactive, non-emotional, easy-going tone. Make statements that stop the conflict, for instance, use terms such as, Perhaps you're right.

Here are 4 helpful tips to stop rescuing and start supporting

1. Listen to their worries, without trying to fix it for them.
2. Ask them supportive questions. This takes a little practice. Just focus on what you would ask yourself in a difficult situation. ...
3. Offer them lots of validation and encouragement.
4. Take time.

He continued to demand for a while, but I just did my job to the best of my ability, each time explaining what needed to happen in our meetings. (Right, I know. It is not usually the chaplain's job to do this, but it worked here - at least for a time.)  He stopped interfering and let us do our job. 

What was interesting, was that I was internally imagining myself as a lighthouse and a positive NEUTRAL presence. I did not make him wrong, or really confront him, nor did I seek him out, I simply and gently supported the goal by explaining again the Medicare Standards of Care of Participation... (concerning my areas, at least)  and he stopped - not entirely - he was the CFO- but his management was more in his lane and not outside his lane.

Six months later, we did part ways.  We can choose to stay or choose to go and I was gifted with a better opportunity and I left with more confidence and better ways to be in service. 

​This works for all kinds of caring - of a team, of a loved one and ...of yourself.