The truth is that toxic people are very common these days; in fact, there are more than 10 subspecies or types of this people. This people have negative effects on their well organized co-workers. Research has shown that stress can have an extremely lasting, negative effect on the brain. Typically, exposure to even some days of certain level of stress can compromise the neurons’ effectiveness in the hippocampus – a critical brain area responsible for memory and reasoning.
Stress is absolutely a formidable threat to anyone’s success and when it gets out of control; your performance and your brain suffer. So, how can you deal with these toxic people from interfering with your productivity and messing with your mind? Here are 5 strategies for dealing with toxic people.
Establish Boundaries
This is one of the areas where most of us tend to sell ourselves short. Sometimes, you feel like just because you live or work with someone, you don’t have a way or any right to control the chaos, but this isn’t true. Once you have your way to simply rise above an individual, you will start to find their behaviors easier and more predictable to understand. This will help you think in a rational manner about where and when you have to build with them and where/when you don’t. When establishing a boundary, it’s important and necessary to do so proactively and consciously. If you set a boundary and decide where and when you will engage or deal with toxic people, you can easily control much of that chaos.
Set Limits with Toxic People
Negative people and complainers are always bad news because these people wallow in their issues and fail to focus on certain solutions. In most cases, topic people want other well-organized colleagues and other individuals to join their pity-party so that they can perhaps feel better about themselves. Often, people feel pressure to give their attention to complainers simply because they do not want to be seen as rude or callous, but this can result in getting into negative emotional spiral of these people. However, by setting distancing yourself and setting certain limits can help you avoid this. One of the best ways to do that is to ask these people how they intend to solve their problems. Possibly, they will either redirect their conversation perhaps in a productive direction or quiet down.
Rise Above
Topic people can drive you crazy or mad because they have irrational behavior. Truly, this kind of behavior goes against reason – so, make no any mistake about it. Why should you pay attention to them emotionally and end up getting sucked into their mix? The more off-base and irrational someone is, the easier and better it should be for you to get yourself out of their traps. Try to deal with toxic people by simply distancing yourself from such individuals emotionally. Also, try to approach your interactions like they are a science project. Only respond to the facts, not emotional chaos.
In a nutshell, only focus on solutions rather than problems and this can be the best strategy for dealing with toxic people as well. Where you actually focus your attention determines the state of your emotions. So, when it comes to toxic individuals, fixating on how difficult and crazy they are offers them more power over you. Instead of thinking about how annoying and disturbing your difficult person is, try to focus on how you are going to deal with him/her. This will help reduce the degree of stress you probably experience when interacting these people.
