It’s easy to feel helpless being around toxic people, especially when they are part of your family. Today we are going to dive into what’s going on and how you can find your balance. Press the play icon above.

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Show Notes

Here is a brief outline

Maintaining Balance Around Toxic People

• Welcome to the Think Blissful blog and podcast, where we simplify the law of attraction!
• Today we have a listener who wrote in regarding toxic relationships after listening to episode #45 (TB 45: Toxic Relationships and the Law of Attraction)
• Let’s review the letter and get right to it.

Thank you for this podcast. I found it by googling Law of Attraction + toxic relationships. I am in a different situation than Jill, my ‘toxic’ situation has more to do with my family of origin (elderly Dad, bullying older sister).

As I have been grappling with my own situation, I have realised that part of my confusion has been around the messaging of some spiritual teachers, including some LoA ideas that by counteracting ‘negative thoughts’ about others with positive affirmations, we can literally change the energy of our situation. I have had some success with this. At one point, my father was being very critical and rude about the meals I was cooking for him. One day I practised regularly affirming, ‘My father is appreciative and grateful,’ and, to my amazement, that evening he expressed gratitude and appreciation for the meal I had cooked, unprompted.

At the time, I was delighted, because the experience validated my growing belief about how we can influence our reality. Since that time, he has continued to be appreciative and grateful 😊.

However, a few days ago my sister started bullying me (again – this has gone on for many years). I recognised that my mind was running away with negative thoughts/scenarios about her, and decided to set myself the task of praying for her/sending her love for 2 minutes every time I caught myself indulging in negative thoughts. My intention was to train my mind to divert itself from the flow of negative thoughts.

This seemed a great idea at the time… however… I spent almost the entire day praying (!) because there was so much negativity… I wonder if you could comment more on the idea found in certain LoA circles about affirming positive things about people when we find ourselves disliking them?

Increasingly, I feel that the best next step for me is to internally affirm a big fat ‘NO,’ like saying: I am no longer willing to tolerate abuse. I probably should rephrase that to say, ‘I now welcome loving, supportive relationships into my life.’

But, what I am not hearing from spiritual teachers/LoA teachers, is anything about actually taking ACTION in terms of walking away from abusive situations, and really saying NO to something?

There can be a subtle implication that all we need do is change our vibration and our lives will change, and while I fully believe that, don’t we also need to make an actual choice to walk away, to take that actual physical action (and not just ‘act’ in the mind?)

(Sorry this is so long…)

Many thanks!

…

Right after posting my question below, I thought of another. What are your thoughts on when we have ‘history’ with another person? And therefore, we may not really be able to objectively discern the truth of what is going on?

With regards to the situation I describe below, my sister and brother-in-law have done some truly awful things to me in the past. To be fair, things are much better than they used to be… but I still think they are horrible people, and I need to always be on my guard.

Without going into the details of the latest incident, if I were to describe it, many people would, I think, say, ‘it’s not that bad.’ And in all honesty.. maybe it isn’t ‘that bad,’ but to me, it feels terrible because it is like a triggering reminder that they are still continuing with the same fundamental bullying dynamic, even if it isn’t as dramatic as it used to be.

The point is, one thing that stops me from really saying no to them, from really walking away (whether literally or mentally), is the fear of being accused of exaggerating. Maybe they are just very flawed, insecure people who are not intending to be abusive, but who don’t know any different? I get very confused when people advocate being loving, or querying whether I am influenced too much by the past.

Again, I suspect the standard answer to this would be for me to ‘speak my truth in love,’ which is obviously very important. However, I always feel that this approach implies that the ‘loving’ thing to do is to stay in the situation and – again – ‘change your vibration.’ Whereas actually, this nasty behaviour has been going on now for many years….

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