Toxic attracts Toxic. No exceptions!

If you find yourself attracted to broken toxic people there is one harsh reality that you must understand. YOU ARE TOXIC TOO! No exceptions. 

This heart-to-heart is an ultimate call to arms against the cycle of toxicity we're all too familiar with. It's about transforming our empathy into sympathy that doesn't just resonate, but also alleviates, the challenges faced by those around us. 

My hope is that you'll emerge enlightened and empowered to rewrite your story, creating a legacy of healthy relationships built on a newfound understanding of self and others.

Chapters

• 0:04 Attracting Toxic Relationships in Childhood
• 5:16 The Impact of Childhood Toxicity
• 11:27 Toxic Attraction and Self-Awareness
• 25:26 Toxicity and Empathy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

I I still really need to figure out like something more for an introduction other than just my name and what we're gonna be talking about. I've been doing this for three years now and I still can't find a way to introduce myself that doesn't feel incredibly, incredibly awkward. So maybe someday soon, if you listen to these in the future, you will hear like my intro music and maybe I'll just record in like a bunch of intros and then pick which one makes me cringe the least and then I'll just like keep that separate and I can just start the podcast without this little intro bit every time, because it'll already be done and then I won't have to make my skin crawl every time I try to introduce myself as a best-selling author or as a coach or as like whatever. It's really dumb. So anyway, I I did do a podcast that touched on this subject a while back and that one was called why you Will Marry the Wrong Person, why we All Marry the Wrong Person, and the answer to that is well, I can't really sum it up very well. So if you want to figure out why, then listen to that podcast. But we'll talk about it a little bit here today.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Today's episode I'm calling Toxic Attracts Toxic, because one thing I have learned from myself through my own healing and my own addictions and talking and being friends with lots of other people that have done lots of healing or in need of lots of healing and have also fought their way through addictions there is one thing that we all agree on that is really a hard pill to swallow, and it is. I mean, it's that jagged little pill that every single one of us needs to genuinely understand if we're going to live a more fulfilled life. We have this thing where we believe, especially when we're young, that we attract toxic partners. We wind up being with the I call it the same dude different dick phenomenon where you're with the same like it might have a different name and a different body, but inside they're quite similar, from one X to another, to another to another. And if that is the case, if a string of your exes are all basically the same person, then what that's telling you is that there is something in there that you haven't resolved, most likely left over from your childhood, and the reason that you're attracting this toxic person is not because these toxic people are attracted to you because you are perfect or are better and need to heal them. They are attracted to you because you are toxic. I want you to hear me again. If toxic people are attracted to you or you are attracted to toxic people, you are toxic, very plainly, zero exceptions. So the reason I say this is uncomfortable, but very, very true.

Speaker 1: 4:17

That other episode I mentioned earlier is all about how the way that our nervous system is set up in childhood sets us up to be programmed in childhood and then play out that programming for the rest of our lives. And we get programmed in a certain way by our family and we see how our family does relationships and then we do relationships that way, and if there is a toxic person in your family, 90% of the time the family unit comes first. So everybody is. They might have a problem with the toxic person, but the thing that everyone is focused on is keeping the peace. They're focused on keeping the peace and that usually means catering to one toxic person's external toxicity, and this is where I'm going with this. There is external toxicity and there is internal toxicity. There is this balance that I believe is unescapable in the world.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Anything that you do that makes your life easier for you most likely makes things harder for those around you. So in the conditioning of early childhood, say you have an angry mother or an angry father. Say that you have an angry father, and the mother is always trying to keep the father's anger from blowing up. Maybe he doesn't get abusive, maybe he doesn't even drink, or like he doesn't even drink, or like he doesn't even drink or like he doesn't even drink. There's anger from blowing up. Maybe he doesn't get abusive, maybe he doesn't even drink, or like that kind of thing. But there is one person with a lot of volatility in their emotionality and that person's toxicity is external. They are toxic to the people around them. Selfish people live longer. Just going to throw that out there. Selfish people live longer and like ask old people, they'll tell you being selfish is how is a big part of it, and that's that whole. Things that make life easier for you make life more difficult for those around you and vice versa.

Speaker 1: 6:30

And so in a household where there was a person who has external toxicity, what happens is through this attachment authenticity war, which is another podcast episode I did, which I think is fundamental to understanding everything that those of us with childhood trauma struggle with During this attachment authenticity war. Our authenticity. War is a very important part of our life, authentic expression of how we react, to say, our father's toxicity that is external to him blowing up and being chaotic and being angry and whatever. That external toxicity we have to deal with one way or another and our biology chooses how we deal with it according to how old we are, where we're at in our development and that sort of thing. There is some personality and stuff like.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Some kids are just like they are themselves, but they are still very, very heavily and easily influenced. So when a child is raised with a person who is externally toxic, this war happens inside them. They can, over time, learn what's good and bad and they're told this is what a good boy does or this is what a good girl does, which is all bullshit. But like we do understand, and we all agree, that there are like ways that we ought to behave most of the time to make everything easier for everybody. And so as we instill these things in our children, we instill in them the exact opposite of what their lived experience is. We're telling them you can't blow up on people. We're telling them that you can't just let your anger fly everywhere. Meanwhile at home that's exactly what is happening.

Speaker 1: 8:19

And so when that toxicity flies out and bumps up against me as a child, my body launches a adaptive strategy to get me to survive, whatever that toxic thing is. And since my external world is toxic and I see how much that hurts myself or my siblings or my mom or the people that I'm with, I make a decision in my tiny little baby brain, toddler brain, preteen brain, teenage brain, whatever that. I am never going to act like that douchebag. So I make a sordid effort for the rest of my life to not express anger in that way, because it is toxic and I've experienced what that toxicity is like and it's awful. So then I have trouble with my own authenticity, because if you have any amount of self, then like, including just that, like biological, like Eid, that biological sense of self preservation, that alone which is innate in all of us because we are alive, that will launch anger at some point. When our boundaries get crossed, when we are threatened, when we feel under threat for one reason or another, our simple like will to survive easily can launch anger, and the more that we suppress it, it eventually turns into repression, meaning our biology suppresses it for us. So we don't even consciously register that we're angry, and what that does is it turns that external toxicity into an internal toxicity.

Speaker 1: 9:59

You become I become, through trying to survive a externally toxic person in my young life survived by becoming internally toxic and finding a way to. We all found narratives that made it okay. We found ways to make it okay that dad was mad or that mom was. Mom was always angry. We found ways to explain it away because they were working really hard or because they had a bad day or whatever it is, and we spent all of our time excusing their behavior and learning to ignore ours. And so when you wind up in a relationship later on in life, you wind up being attracted to people with similar types of temper tantrums or whatever, as your father, or people who are as work focused, others focused like not focused on you, as your mother, or whatever thing that hurt you. You wind up with people that hurt you in a similar way because we're trying to eventually change the ending of those traumatic experiences, those experiences that linger, where we don't feel good enough and where that person's external toxicity becomes our internal toxicity.

Speaker 1: 11:27

So it's not that you are a super, duper, duper good person and that you're attracted to toxic people because you are meant to fix them. You are a super duper toxic person and you are attracted to super duper toxic people. You are toxic to yourself and the person that you were attracted to is toxic to everybody else, or vice versa. Do you get what I'm saying? I really hope you get what I'm saying, because this is really important to understand, especially for anybody struggling with addiction. We have to understand that, even though our programming is not our fault, it is our responsibility to deal with, and if you don't actively deal with it, you are playing the victim card and you will play the victim card for the rest of your life until you deal with it. Which Understandable. You were a victim, so was everybody else, some worse than others. But how long are you gonna play that victim card? How long are you gonna believe that you were the good person and that everybody around you and everybody that you're attracted to is so toxic and it's your job to empath your way into healing them?

Speaker 1: 12:43

No, you're both toxic and the reason that you're attracted to each other is because, with enough effort, enough work, enough self-awareness and awareness of the other and the dynamics of the relationship the two of you can learn from each other. One is is internally toxic, the other is externally toxic. So the externally toxic person can learn to maybe bring some of that inside and the internally toxic person can maybe learn to externalize some of that blame. What that does is it brings balance. So this is why I say toxic. This is why I say toxic attracts toxic, because it does.

Speaker 1: 13:32

You're not attracted to toxic people because you are healthy. If you were healthy, you would not be attracted to toxic people. Period. There is no way around this. I really want people to get through your heads and I know this is a harsh one, but as I've gone back and I look at the podcasts that people most listen to and most enjoy, they're these ones. I have a lot of kind of not like, not cool, strongly held opinions and they are, and according to me, of course, because they're mine, I think they're pretty solid and this is one of them and I really want to get this through everybody's head.

Speaker 1: 14:17

If this is a thing that happens in your life, if you find yourself constantly attracted to people who are, who are one way, who are toxic in one specific kind of way, you need to understand that you are toxic in some specific kind of way and the two of you have met because you are toxic in familiar ways and because it's familiar and you have survived that familiar scenario before. Your automatic reactions to things will allow you to survive the relationship, but they will never allow you to thrive, ever. Because the strategies that were launched by your body were not cerebral strategies, they were immature, juvenile strategies, and I mean that in like the scientific meaning of the word. They were immature, juvenile, undeveloped, automatic biological responses predicated on survival, not on the best possible outcome or thriving, or what's going to be best in the long term outside of surviving, is best in the long term.

Speaker 1: 15:32

When we finally accept that we are toxic this is the really, this is so important when we finally realize that we are toxic, that there are aspects of us that are very troublesome and what like, it's really hard to to see them. It's really hard to see it as this because, especially for women, especially for women, because women are told and trained and socialized from the time that they're little, that they are meant to be eternally forgiving and to Christianity and their turn, the other cheek and all of that kind of stuff, and forgiveness is great, forgiveness is wonderful and all of that. But when you just do it over and over and over and over again, especially as a child, and you don't have a choice, that's not healthy. It's not healthy at all, because you're not making a choice to forgive, you are simply acting out of your conditioning to be a doormat. Let me say that again you are not forgiving out of a conscious effort to forgive so your life can be better. You are acting out of your automatic conditioning which makes you a doormat.

Speaker 1: 17:00

That is the difference between being a doormat and being evolved and making a cerebral choice to forgive a person and then a conscious choice to stay away, far enough away that they can't step on you. Because if you forgive them and then they continue to step on you and you continue to forgive them, you are enabling, you are toxic. You are not only toxic to yourself, you are enabling the toxic person that you love to continue being toxic to everyone around them, including the people that you love. That aren't that toxic person. Anybody that you bring around them, you are exposing to their toxicity. And guess what? Anybody you bring around you, you're exposing to your toxicity. And that's what's so fucked up, because that's how our daughters become super twisted because they see mom preserving the peace over everything and when you see somebody just preserving the peace, you think that's the good thing. And you see that the external toxicity is so bad that the antidote to that toxicity is essentially being a doormat, because that allows them, that keeps the external toxicity from getting worse.

Speaker 1: 18:16

But with that whole internal, external thing of whatever I do, that makes my life harder, makes the world around me easier and vice versa, you are putting that toxicity on yourself. You're essentially, in a way, you're absorbing it. That's what people mean by like absorbing the toxicity and absorbing the anger. We internalize it, we find a way to excuse whatever it is that they're doing. And they might have good reasons. They might be a combat veteran, they might be a foster child, they might be a survivor of extreme abuse, they might be all of these things that genuinely do need love and affection and care and they deserve forgiveness and like understanding and all of that. But that does not mean you're not being toxic when you do that. So be careful with it. I'm not saying never date anybody or anything like that. I'm just saying that if you are a person who is on a self-development bent, what you need to understand is that there is probably something deep inside you that is fucked up and that something more than likely is also the things that you believe make you a good person, because that's what our society has done.

Speaker 1: 19:31

We have elevated psychopathic, sociopathic, toxic people to the premium. Like we see those toxic, like constantly driven externally toxic people. We elevate them in society and so then the automatic, secondary, unintended consequence is going to be well then we have to foster that, since it's now elevated in social status, we need to foster that, and the way that we foster that, especially with everything being fairly patriarchal, is that we train the women, or the subservient man or feminine man, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. We train everybody who's not type A. We train them into being what's called type B personality, and I've talked a little bit about type B personality. I think I'm going to have to actually do a full episode on type B personality because it's bonkers. But we train everybody else to be type B personality, and type B personality is exactly what I'm describing. They are people who are toxic to themselves.

Speaker 1: 20:45

There is a higher correlation between type B personality and autoimmune disorders than there are between type A personality and cardiac disease or stroke, and we all know that that's where it started. Like type A personality was created. That term, type A, was created by a cardiologist who saw only like really high, like high production, high stress people. These type B people that have been created by society were told about the goodness and the empathy and gets intrinsically twisted up with religion and the forgiveness and all the good things, all the good qualities, because a truly mature person is going to be able to be forgiving and see the toxicity in a person and not react to it. And that's not the same as being conditioned to automatically respond in a way that most of that response is internal, so other people can't see it, so it looks from the outside the same as your Buddhist monk or whoever the mature, evolved person is that you think of in your head, who can handle that kind of toxicity without absorbing it. It's not the same if you're acting out of your conditioning. They have spent years of their life learning to let their mind control their heart and their emotions, and I guess that's a bad way of putting it, but I think you know what I mean. It's not about their mind controlling their heart, but not letting their heart, control their mind. Let's put it that way they're not letting their heart and their emotions rule their mind. They feel what they feel and then can make appropriate steps after that.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Each of us on our journey through addiction, we have to get through our head that there is a piece of us that is toxic, and we can't do that until we start to get sober for a little bit, because we can't see anything other than the pain. It's so hard to see anything but our own pain. That's why we use is to make that pain less, and once that pain is less, then we can see a little bit more clearly. But only if you're also paying attention to the way that you've been socially conditioned through your culture, through society, here, wherever you're listening right now, you've been conditioned in a certain way, and some of that conditioning couples in with this internal and external toxicity in some really interesting ways, because every tradition has ways to deal with being crossed or being hurt, and a lot of it is based around forgiveness, and being forgiving and being a doormat are not the same. They can look a hell of a lot like it, but they are not the same and that's what I wanted to get through to everybody.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Today Looks like this is going to be a really short episode, but I don't think talking about it from a thousand other angles is going to be beneficial. I just want everybody to understand that if you're attracted to toxic people or toxic people are attracted to you, it is because you are toxic, with no exceptions. There is something about you that is internally toxic. You are toxic to yourself. If you're attracted to externally toxic people, you are most likely toxic to yourself, and vice versa. If you are an externally aggressive and toxic person, you are going to be attracted to people who are internally toxic and you will see them as beautiful, giving kind souls who were always there for everybody but themselves, and they're going to wind up with cancer and autoimmune disorders and that sort of thing. We know this. This is it's very well documented. There's a huge. There's multiple chapters in Gabor Maté's book, the Myth of Normal, where he talks about type B personalities and the way that this trauma gets integrated into our neurology and habituated into responding to a certain type of stress in a very specific way, and when that happens on repeat, we're screwed. It affects our biology, our actual physical bodies, in an undeniable way, and that's what I wanted to get through to everybody.

Speaker 1: 25:26

If you're attracted to toxic people or they are attracted to you, it is because you are toxic. You might not be toxic externally to the people around you, and if you are never toxic to the people around you, or if you are never hard on or harsh to the people around you, I can almost guarantee you that you are toxic to yourself. And hey, maybe that's what you want, maybe that's good enough for you, maybe not being externally toxic is good enough for you and that's fine for now. I hope, for your own sake and for those around you and for your children, that you eventually get over that and recognize that being mean to yourself doesn't make you a better person. Just like wringing your hands and being all worried about what's happening on the other side of the world that you can do nothing about and spending hours a day upset about that doesn't make you a better person. Doesn't even make you a good person and like makes it kind of dumb in my perspective. Because if you are, if you have exhausted your empathy for people that you can do nothing about and that causes you to be an asshole to those around you, you're fucking up being empathetic for people 10,000 miles away and having none for those that are 10 feet out your door. That makes you pretty garbage. I know this is harsh and weird, but it's the truth. V celebrity is Overrated.

Speaker 1: 27:00

We need more sympathy. We need to be able to tap into that empathy to understand how other people feel. But we need to act out of sympathy, because if I feel everything that you feel, then I'm right there with you and we both. You're in the bottom of a pit. Now I'm in the bottom of a pit, whereas sympathy throws in the ladder and says, hey, come on out. That's what we need more of and that is the skill that most empathic people that I am talking to about being internally toxic. That is the skill that most empathic people need to learn is to turn their empathy into sympathy, because then that no longer means I'm internalizing your experience. I am internalizing your experience to understand what you are going through, and then I am making a conscious cerebral effort to Make decisions, to do things that are going to be help, more healthy and more balanced for me. All right, and that's what I've got for today.

Speaker 1: 27:56

I Hope that you enjoyed this. It is a short one, it's an intense one and I hope it's something for you to chew on. I really hope that you give this some deep, lasting thought and those who are on the other side of the addiction and Like that, whatnot, those who have are clean and have been clean for a while. You already know, you already understand. It was conversations with friends like you. Specifically here I'm thinking of a conversation with a Lady that used to work at one of the restaurants here in squim that had amazing clam chatter I used to come get and it was a conversation we had with another, with a trauma coach lady who was sitting next to me, and it was really, it was really marvelous and I didn't realize that, I didn't realize how Hidden it was until we had that conversation, because even the trauma coach was like, oh my god, you're right, I am toxic. I was like, yeah, but you already knew a lot of this stuff and she hadn't quite put it that way, I hadn't quite realized it was. It was that far. So there it is. Toxic attracts toxic. Know ifs, ands or buts.

Speaker 1: 29:10

If you enjoyed today's podcast, consider buying me a coffee or leave a comment and Send. Shoot me a question, ask, ask our. Send me a question that I can answer for you next time on the podcast. Thank you for joining me. I know that you have lots of places that you could go to spend your time and you chose to come here. You chose to come to a place that you is carved out to be a place for self-discovery, self-growth, a place for discomfort, a place for you to challenge yourself and challenge your assumptions and challenge your reality and you could be watching cat videos right now. So I appreciate you being here doing this with me and doing the work. Thank you very much. I hope you'll join me then for the next one and remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable.