Getting rid of toxic people.

Some people in your life continually cause you stress, but for some reason you hold on to them. Maybe they are people you've been friends with since the second grade. Maybe they are your parents. Maybe they are your bosses. Maybe they are your lovers or spouses.

If they are any of the above you will have a conflict about eliminating them from your life. You will tell yourself, “I can't throw my mother out of my life! I can't throw my oldest friend out of my life! I can't throw my husband out of my life!”

I have had patients who endured abusive relationships for years and were reluctant to end them. In fact, sometimes the more abusive the relationships are, the more reluctant people are to end them and the more they hold on to the hope that the abuser will change.

Mothers are the hardest to eliminate, even when they are monsters. A female patient told of being sexually abused by her alcoholic mother beginning at age three. The mother would molest her daughter with beer bottles and proclaim, “This is what men do to you.” The mother was totally deranged. The mother continued to be abusive in one way or another up to the time the woman came to see me. Yet she still went home to visit her mother, and each time she would come back to the city in a deep depression, sometimes suicidal.

She would say, “Maybe I shouldn't see her anymore.”

And I would immediately reply, “Maybe you shouldn't.”

But she would then answer, “I can't. I can't. She's my mother.”

Old friends are also hard to get rid of, especially if they've been around since the second grade. When a friendship has been around this long, a harmful relationship can take on a semblance of normality. During the course of therapy a patient began to realize how one-sided one friendship was and how it left him in a rotten mood.

This friend was narcissistic and was only interested in what my patient could to for him. He would call the patient up to vent about things, and it was the patient's job to listen. But if the patient tried to give any advice the friend would abruptly reject the advice as if it were stupid. And God forbid that my patient would ever call this friend to vent about anything. The friend would interrupt after a sentence and say, “I have to go.”

After discussing the relationship with me for a time, the patient decided to confront the friend. During one of his conversations with the friend, my patient said, “You know, I've noticed that you're always calling me to vent, but if I ever want to vent you don't have time for me.” The friend said he found that interesting and promised to think about it. The “friend” never called again.

Sometimes we hold on to relationships because we have self-esteem issues. This is often the case when somebody clings to an abusive spouse. We are convinced that somehow we deserve to be treated with disrespect and that if we lose this person we won't be able to get anybody else. These are long-standing attitudes that we have developed in childhood, due to the way we were treated by parents, siblings or other relatives. Because these attitudes are so deeply ingrained, they are difficult to overcome. Often it takes a lot of therapy to uncover the roots of the problem

But once people take that first step of eliminating a harmful person, they begin to open up. After he had eliminated his oppressive friend, my patient exclaimed, “I felt as if I could take a deep breath for the first time!”