334 Holly Worton ~ How To Let Go Of Toxic People In Your Life & Mind

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m back again, with another solo episode! This week’s show is inspired by something a little bit embarrassing: I ended up coming across a social media profile for my old business partner, and it stirred up some crappy feelings. I thought I had done a good job of distancing myself from him over the past ten years, but clearly I’m still bothered by seeing his stuff. Letting go of toxic people isn’t just about getting them out of your life – it’s about getting them out of your head, your thoughts. As is often the case, this episode is not just for you – it’s also for me.

Listen To This Episode

What You’ll Learn

How to give yourself permission to let go of this person/people
How to choose to stop being the victim + take responsibility for the situation
Why it’s so important not to wait for an apology
How to create physical distance (and how to stay safe if this is an issue)
How to create online distance: unfriend, unfollow, block
Why it’s so important to allow your feelings, even when you judge them as negative – and what to do with them
How to forgive them + (more importantly) forgive yourself
Why you need to recognize what you can + cannot control
What do you want instead? Focus on that
Why you need to focus on YOU – self care + self love
How to focus on the healthy relationships and people in your life

Things I Discussed

Connect With Holly

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 334. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about how to let go of toxic people in your life; and distance yourself from toxic people, not just physically but also letting go of them in your head.

Before I get into today’s episode I would like to mention a couple of podcasts that I have been recently a guest on. So the first one is the smart conversations with Yvonne DiVita, that is a podcast, but it is also a video and I will link to that in the show notes. We had a really good chat about my latest book, If Trees Could Talk, and all kinds of other things. I was also on the Honest Uproar podcast with Isabel Firecracker and that was another really good conversation. We talked about, travel, we talked about writing the book and we talked about being child-free, this is a child-free podcast. So, if you find any of those topics interesting the links will be in the show notes or I have created pretty links to that you can access them easily. So the Honest Uproar podcast with Isabel Firecracker can be accessed at: https://www.hollyworton.com/Firecracker; and Smart Women conversations with Yvonne DiVita can be accessed at https://www.hollyworton.com/Smart — so that’s where I have been hanging out.

Let’s get back to today’s episode, so how to let go of toxic people not only in your life but in your mind. This episode is inspired by something mildly embarrassing that just happened to me. So I planned this evening to record this podcast episode and I have a list of podcast topics that I have come up with and that people have given me and I was looking through them and I couldn’t really think of something that I wanted to talk about on that list and I was kind of at a loss for a topic. And then, I was going online, and I was sharing this week’s episode and I got onto Instagram and I saw something, and I saw the Instagram post from my previous business. And I thought: you know what, I don’t want to be following this, I don’t want to have this in my life, I am going to let go of this. And so I went to unfollow it and then I saw a link, somehow, for my ex-business partner and his Instagram profile so I did what any reasonable person would tell you not to do, and I clicked on it and I went through the last few posts and it just bothered me. It is like I saw this person creating this profile and this public image and being super, successful, and spiritual, and it really bothered me. Knowing this person as I know him, knowing how toxic he is, knowing what a toxic Narcissist, and quite probably a psychopath, he is.

So it just, to be honest it doesn’t bother me as much as it would have a few years ago but still, I would like to have a neutral feeling when I come across these things. So I clicked away, I only spent a couple of minutes going through his profile, managed to click away, but I was still bothered by that and I thought you know what? I have disconnected mostly from this person; we still have a business connection, but we communicate through an intermediary. So I don’t have direct connection with this person but, clearly, it still bothers me, clearly I am still bothered by this person and I would really like to disconnect even more, and I would really like to feel just neutral and detached and not bothered. And I know that might sound like a big ask of myself if you really knew the full story, I know I have hinted at this story quite a bit but it is not something that I am willing to really go into the details of, it was bad, and distancing myself from this person has really changed my life in a fantastic and powerful and very positive way. So, I started taking some notes on advice I would give someone else and also myself because whenever I do these episodes I am not just talking to you I am also talking to myself because I am still learning, and I am still tweaking stuff in my life and I am still figuring stuff out. I fell like I have come a long way in terms of letting go of this toxic person and other toxic people in my life. I still have things that I could do, and I still have things that I can learn.

So let’s get into today’s episode. I really think that the first step to letting go of toxic people is to decide to let go, to make the decision to let go of this person and most importantly to give yourself permission to let go of this person. And I think a lot of times we hold onto people; we hold onto toxic situations, because we are afraid of being rude or we are afraid of being impolite, or we are afraid of doing the wrong thing. But I think you know when you are better off without someone, I think you know when someone’s presence in your life is making your life more difficult and more painful than their absence would be. I think in these situations you don’t owe these people anything. So, I encourage you, if there is anyone popping into your mind as you listen to this, give yourself permission to let go of this person. Give yourself permission to let go of this person in your life and in your head. Give yourself permission to let go of this person taking up your head space, your mind space, your thoughts, and that is easier said than done and this can take time. I have been distancing myself from this person for the last ten years, again, this person has been mostly out of my life for nine of those years but there are still some connections and those are connections that I am working on getting rid of for my own peace of mind. So decide to let go of this person or people.

I think the next step, if you feel like you are the victim in this situation and I certainly did for a long time, choose to stop playing that role. Choose to stop being the victim and take responsibility for your role in co-creating the situation. So as I said this person was abusive, physically, mentally, emotionally, and I still take responsibility for getting myself into that situation, for staying in that situation, for the time that I did and ultimately for leaving that situation. And I also take responsibility for still holding onto these ties which are business connections, I have still got that, I haven’t yet cut those ties. I need to take responsibility for co-creating that situation because it takes two people to form a relationship, to create a situation like that. To create a situation in which this toxic person is causing you trouble, discomfort, whatever. So, I feel like, a long time ago, I stepped out of that role of being the victim and stopped seeing myself as the the victim and I was able to take responsibility for co-creating that situation. But I think that this is something that is really challenging for people and I don’t really remember what the process was like for me, but I don’t think it was easy.

And I think a lot of people wait for an apology from this person and they want this other person to acknowledge that they were wrong, and you were right, and I think it’s really important to also let go of that need, to let go of that want. People who are really toxic won’t apologise. If we are talking about someone who is with a narcissistic disorder they are not going to apologise for you because nothing, they can’t see themselves as having done something wrong. I heard for years that I should always apologise for things, even if I didn’t think I had done something wrong because probably I did I just didn’t know it. So, these people, toxic people, narcissists, they won’t apologise, ever, because they can’t see that they have ever done anything wrong because in their eyes they are perfect, they are the victim and everyone else is wrong, everyone else is bad. They don’t take responsibility for the chaos and the shit they bring to this world. So don’t wait for them to acknowledge that they were wrong, and you were right because it is not going to happen, if you continue to wait for that acknowledgement you are never going to get it and you are not going to be able to let go of these people. There is a part where I know this, as I am saying this to you, I know this, I have been reading a lot of books lately about psychopathy and the covert passive aggressive narcissist, I will link to those books in the show notes, but I have been mentioning them in my emails, I have been reading this, I know this. But at the same time there is a part of me that wants this person to just recognise how horrible he is, I know that is not going to happen, but there is a part of me that still wants it. So do yourself a favour, acknowledge that you are not going to get the apology, and allow yourself to move on.

So start by creating physical distance, I have created physical distance over the last decade it has been ten years since I last saw him, that is fantastic, that feels really good. But if you are still in touch with this person try to let it fizzle out and I also want to say, stay safe, if this person is dangerous, if you are in an abusive relationship, get help, get support, get professional help, get the support that you need to do this safely. I am kind of going to assume here that you are not going to be in physical harm if you distances yourself from this toxic person. If you are in danger please get professional help. Be safe.

So, if you can, create physical distance if you are still in touch with this person just let it fizzle out, there is no need to formally break up with a friendship. If this is a romantic relationship yes probably you are going to have to formally end things with them. But in addition to creating physical distance, it is also important to create online distance, so unfriend the person, unfollow the person, block them online. I remember when I unfriended him on Facebook I knew he want even active on Facebook. This was like ten years ago and I remember it was a big deal for me to up friend him even though I knew he didn’t use Facebook. I felt like: oh god what if he sees and he gets angry and I get yelled at? But I did it anyway, I cannot believe it has taken me this long to unfollow the Instagram account of my previous business, part of me really liked seeing ow things were changing and growing and that is a part of my life that I am proud do, but it is also painful which is why today, when I saw that update I thought: urgh! And I unfollowed. Block them if you need to.

For a couple of years after I distanced myself from this person I would occasionally get emails, business-related emails and oh god I would see his name in my inbox and it was just like a knife in my stomach, I would just think: my god, what is this? What is he saying? I can’t deal with this. So if you can block them, do. If you have that horrible knot in your gut when you see an email, a text, whatever from this person block them if you can. Healthy people, healthy relationships, don’t give you that horrible knife-in-the-gut or knot-in-the-gut, whatever you want to call it. Healthy relationships should not, don’t, cause that. So, it is usually the toxic ones that do.

So create the physical distance, create the online distance, but also allow yourself to feel the feelings even when you judge them as feeling negative. So when you are angry, or you are sad, or you are hurt, don’t repress those feelings, because it is not going to do you any good. Don’t wallow in the feelings either, don’t get lost in the feelings but allow the feelings to be felt. One thing I have mentioned before is sitting in the whole brain posture which I can’t teach you that but if you google it you will find videos on it, it is very easy to do and if you work in PSYCH-K® you will know what that is. Sit in the whole brain posture as you feel those feelings and allow that position, that way of sitting, to help you transmute those feelings into something neutral, that can be really, really, useful. Again I can’t teach that to you, but if you search for “whole brain posture” you will find videos online. That can be a good way to help you to feel the feelings and not get lost in them, not get sucked down a black hole of crap, and just allow yourself to more easily move on.

Also I think it can be helpful to acknowledge what you have learned from this person or this situation. Maybe do some journalling and again, don’t allow yourself to get sucked into this too much. We are trying to flip the situation on its head and see what you learned, so I learned a whole lot of things from this person, this situation, this relationship, and I won’t go into them now, but there have been positive things that I got out from them. More than anything I realised that I am super-strong, I don’t want ever to get myself in a situation like that again or get into a relationship of any kind with a person like that again, but I know how strong I am. I can feel my strength.

So acknowledge what you have learned, no matter how crappy the situation was, or the person or how toxic they were there is something that you have learned even if it is just: damn I am strong, I survived that.

The next step, this isn’t linear, do this in whatever order feels right for you, take what serves you and leave what doesn’t serve you. I think forgiveness is a really important. So, forgiveness can be something that we resist, forgiveness can be really hard. I have said this in the past, but you are not forgiving them, for them, you don’t even have to tell them that you are forgiving them, you are forgiving them to create peace within yourself. There is a process or technique that you can use called: Ho’oponopono which I will link to in the show notes which I find really useful. I have done this on multiple occasions with this person in the past and I feel like it has helped me to get this person out of my mind more. And I think more importantly even than forgiving this other person or people is to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for co-creating this relationship with this person, forgive yourself for co-creating this situation with them, forgive yourself for getting involved with a person that was so toxic and painful. Life is about learning and sometimes lessons are shitty. Forgive yourself for getting involved with these toxic people. Again, you can use Ho’oponopono or you can use whatever forgiveness technique that works for you. So, the important thing is to forgive yourself, I think it is really, really, important and I think this is something that I think we forget when we think about forgiveness exercises. So forgive them if you can and forgive yourself and if you find it really hard to forgive the other person start with forgiving yourself and then maybe forgiving them will be easier.

Next, and again this is not linear, I think it is really important to recognise that you can recognise your behaviour, your thoughts and your feelings. So that when you are looking to distance yourself from toxic people in your life, toxic people in your mind, it is important to recognise this because that is taking back your power, it is controlling the things that you can control and conversely you need to accept the things that you cannot control or change and that is pretty much everything to do with the other person. You can’t control their behaviour, you can’t control their thoughts, you can’t control their feelings, so don’t try to.

Think about what do you want instead. So you have got this toxic person in your life that you are working on letting go of, what do you want instead? Focus on that. So, how do you want to feel? Is it peace of mind? Do you want to attract more health relationships into your life? What do you want instead of this relationship with this toxic person or having these toxic people in your life, what do you want instead? Focus on that.

And focus on you, take care of yourself as you are distancing yourself from these toxic people, focus on self-care, focus on self-love, I have done episodes on these things. But I think it is really important to, as you are distancing yourself, move your focus away from that person and onto you and caring for yourself and making yourself a priority. Also, it can help to focus on the healthy relationships in your life, the healthy people you have in your life and get support from them, call a friend, tell a friend, talk to someone. You can also get professional support, if you have a coach, if you have a therapist of some kind, get support from healthy people.

I hope that you have found this useful, again this was something that was a little difficult to talk about, because I really feel like after ten years I should have moved on more by now. I should be more distanced from this person. I should be disconnected. That is a lot of “shoulds”! So if you are feeling shoulds, like you should be further along in your disconnection from this person, or these people, just give yourself permission to be where you are. Stop being so hard on yourself and draw a line in the sand and start today with the things that you can change today.

Think about, always, when you are in a situation that you are not happy with and you don’t like, think about what you would rather have instead. Visualise that and then start taking the steps that you need to take to make that happen.

So that is all for today, please let me know if you have any questions, you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch.

Please let me know if you have any questions about, I don’t know, how to get out of this situation, it is hard in 20 to 30 minutes to give you a fully comprehensive plan, but I think this is a good way to get started. And I certainly, it has certainly given me ideas for things that I can do to further distance myself from this person. So let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe if you haven’t already and remember to visit http://HollyWorton.com/334 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you so much.