How to deal with mean people?

 Some people make us lose our temper instantly. They lie, cheat, show malice, and believe that others are always the problem. Such toxic behavior not only hurts us and causes stress, but also makes us start to doubt ourselves. How to recognize toxic people and how to deal with them?

Christine Porath was a great athlete. When she graduated from a renowned university, she got her dream job - she was to help a well-known sports company launch a sports academy. However, the dream quickly faded away.

Her boss turned out to be, as she described, a self-absorbed despot whose rudeness was coupled with harmful behavior and intimidation. His "venom" quickly permeated the staff. “Many people took out their frustrations on others, yelling at and bossing around colleagues, making snide remarks at customers, and not rushing to help like good teammates do,” he recalls. Some began to deliberately sabotage the company by stealing materials and equipment, filling out time sheets with hours they did not work, and including personal items in expense reports.

Porath quickly felt exhausted by her malicious surroundings. “Soon there was little left of the old us,” he recalls. She eventually left her job and took a job with a competitor, but that experience left an indelible mark on her. She earned a doctorate in organizational management and business administration and has devoted the last two decades to researching undesirable behavior in the workplace. As a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, he continues to catalog the activities that pollute the workplace and beyond, explore the high costs of toxic behavior to individuals and organizations, and explore how to create an organizational culture that allows everyone to thrive. its members.

There are people who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. What it come from? Delroy Paulhus and his colleagues identify personality traits that may contribute to cruel behavior.

People with narcissistic traits are vain, tend to overestimate themselves, and have a strong need for attention and admiration from others. A narcissist treats those around him with disrespect, is haughty, and does not tolerate even the most constructive criticism.

Machiavellians are cold, selfish, and power-hungry. They manipulate and use others to achieve their goals at all costs. They pay no attention to the law or moral principles, even though they know and understand them well. They can present themselves very well in the eyes of others, maintaining an appearance of calm and kindness.

People with psychopathic traits, like Machiavellians, tend to cross boundaries, regardless of generally accepted socio-moral principles, but they act more impulsively. They do not think about the consequences of what they do, they are more likely to behave aggressively and do not care about their image.

Everyday sadists not only enjoy human misery but also take deliberate actions to contribute to or increase it.

Source: "Three-headed dragon", "Charaktery" 10/2015

According to prof. Porath toxic behavior is common in the workplace. They partly result from selfishness and callousness, and in their extreme form, they may have their source in personality disorders, which do not magically disappear after leaving work and are particularly destructive in close relationships.

However, toxic behaviors, from taunting to gaslighting, are also the product of a certain type of environment, especially one in which the only measure of success is performance, or the atmosphere is permeated with distrust and uncertainty, or there are high levels of anxiety and insecurity. This last feature especially applies to close relationships.

The times we live in also matter. Periods of cultural turmoil, instability, and uncertainty generally trigger hostile behaviors that strike at others' fears. Toxic behavior, whether it occurs in the boardroom or the living room, can be recognized by the effect it has on people. It upsets the balance and its negative emotional impact is out of proportion to any apparent cause. The first blows cause consternation, then we lose self-confidence and feel worthless. “Venom” takes away our energy. The hallmark of a toxic person is that they repeatedly - and repetition is important because anyone can have a bad day - make the person who is the target of the malice feel anxious and not really know why.

Toxic behavior doesn't just cause personal harm. It attacks the well-being of the entire system. It causes stress and frustration due to the devastating diminishment of our worth. This is very disturbing because the debilitating, oozing venom makes us believe – even if only for a moment – that how a toxic person sees us reflects how everyone else sees us.

Prof. Porath points out that contact with an environment in which toxic behavior takes place, not to mention situations when we ourselves are its target, can affect our health. Experiencing chronic stress is associated with cardiovascular diseases, insomnia, decreased immunity, and a tendency to overeat. Toxic people not only hurt others emotionally, but also pose a threat to their health.

The problem is that toxicity is generally contagious. Like all negative phenomena, it has a huge impact on the mind, even if we only witness toxic behavior. As soon as an employee sees his boss berating a subordinate, he begins to repeat this behavior himself. In families, such behavior can be repeated from generation to generation. And in personal relationships, bonds of attachment can insidiously permeate.

Over the past two decades, toxic behavior has become more common, driven by cultural changes. This is accompanied by a more general increase in levels of unfriendliness and rudeness. In the McKinsey Quarterly magazine, prof. Porath reveals that almost half of the employees who responded to her 1998 survey reported being treated rudely at least once a month. In 2016, this figure was 62 percent.

A toxic person can court the victim.

As soon as you speak up, your boss starts scrolling through Twitter. Or he appreciates your competences, at the same time belittling your merits and directing attention to himself: "I would like you to lead an important meeting.

You will have the opportunity to show off everything I have taught you.”

A friend explains himself to you, but the apology contains a hidden insult: "I'm sorry I'm late, but I know you don't do anything in the afternoon anyway."

In the company of other people, your partner points out your flaws, and when you point out that it is degrading, he or she says that you are too sensitive.

Or the parent's disregard makes the child feel unnoticed and worthless.

One thing is certain about toxic people: no matter what embarrassment they caused, what harm they caused, what insult you heard from them - they will always say that it is either your fault or you are using the needle for a fork. They never take responsibility for their actions. Moreover, they may even believe that they are trying to help you.

Such encounters imperceptibly attack our self-esteem. Eventually, we begin to look for ways to avoid malice and its authors. If only it were possible… Too often, toxicity is a permanent part of our environment.

As noted by prof. Theo Veldsman from the University of Johannesburg, the term toxic comes from the Greek word toxikón, meaning poison used on arrows. “Literally, the word means to kill or poison, in a targeted way,” he explains.

Toxicity may manifest itself in specific behavior. The most visible example is intimidation or abuse. The humiliation associated with them can be painful, especially if it occurs in front of witnesses. And it also hurts to emphasize the difference in position, which is thus further strengthened. Bullying in any form hurts when it is experienced, but it also leaves a legacy of fear. Likewise, undisguised insults can leave a lasting impression on our psyche.

More "subtle" actions may also be tainted with venom, especially if they occur regularly. Spreading rumors can be particularly harmful: you never know what lies are being told about you, who is hearing them and who is behind them. Another "subtle" action is shifting the blame onto others - the victim is put in such a situation that he or she has no way of defending himself.

Not only actions can be toxic, but also the omission of a specific action, e.g. excluding someone from your circle of friends or omitting a cousin when sending out invitations to a family meeting. Ignoring a person, whether in a meeting or at a social gathering, can be a toxic way of humiliating them and cutting them off from important information.

Whether toxic behavior takes the form of outright cruelty or passive-aggressive behavior, and whether someone engages in it for no reason at all, nasty people put their own interests first. They are unwilling or unable to take into account the other person's perspective or their feelings. They do not care about how their behavior affects others, they disregard their personal boundaries, they do not admit when they are wrong and they are not willing to change their behavior.

In research on the impact of toxic people in the workplace, Prof. Veldsman focuses on leaders. He noticed that in some way they were excellent psychologists. They have a great ability to notice and use opportunities for themselves, but also the weaknesses of others. They know how to steal oxygen from their colleagues and undermine their position. This is one of the skills they have improved as they climbed the career ladder. 

Prof. Veldsman believes that there are more and more toxic leaders. This is facilitated by unrestrained individualism and a work environment in which competences are defined as technical skills, without taking into account human values.

Much of toxic behavior is situational. Yes, there are people who have personality traits - such as aggression, narcissism, psychopathic traits, everyday sadism, paranoia - that make them more inclined to attack others with their venom. These people wreak havoc wherever they are and with whomever they come in contact with. At the opposite extreme are kind and compassionate people who cannot behave wickedly. Most people, however, fall somewhere in between - they are susceptible to the influence of their surroundings. For them, toxic behavior is not automatic - they engage in it when the situation encourages them to do so.

A toxic leader threatens not only the people who report to him, but the entire organization, warns Theo Veldsman, a researcher from the University of Johannesburg.

A toxic leader deliberately takes actions that harm the other person's sense of confidence and effectiveness. Its destructive actions can be physical, psychosocial, and even spiritual. Theo Veldsman distinguishes 5 types of toxic leaders.

Cold fish - recognizes that the end justifies the means, and therefore all decisions and actions are justified as long as they lead to the designated goal.

Snake - assumes that the world serves him in his quest to satisfy personal needs such as money, power and position.

Glory seeker - strives for personal glory and being noticed at all costs, it does not matter whether he has actually achieved something.

Puppet Master - wants to maintain absolute control over everyone and everything, regardless of the circumstances.

Monarch – rules the organization as if it were his kingdom, uses its resources for private purposes.

Toxic leadership makes an organization toxic. This is manifested, among others, by: negative moods, decreased employee morale, decreased efficiency and commitment to work, decreased sense of well-being and overall life satisfaction. Unethical behavior may also occur in the organization, e.g. theft, sabotage, embezzlement.

Prepared by ACh based on: University of Johannesburg, www.uj.ac.za

Prof. Porath points out that today work has a special ability to bring out the venom in people. Over the last two decades, the nature of work has transformed. Where people once worked individually, permanent teams and project groups are now the norm. As a result, toxic employees have more opportunities to wreak havoc. The damage is often tangible - reduced morale and productivity. Therefore, toxicity research generally focuses on the work environment, but toxic behaviors are similar regardless of where they occur.

Prof. Porath explains that the source of toxic behavior is primarily excessive stress, which many people struggle with. Of the thousands of participants in her survey of various organizations, "over 60 percent say they are rude because they are overloaded and stressed." The researcher links stress to increased global competition, which forces organizations to place greater emphasis on efficiency, as well as a decrease in free time and an over-reliance on technology that allows work to spill into our rest time.

Technology also encourages toxic behavior in another way - it creates many opportunities for misunderstanding and malice in written communication. “It's easier to humiliate if it's not face-to-face contact,” notes Prof. Porath. Moreover, catching up on e-mail correspondence during a one-on-one or large group meeting, like any other activity during this time, can make employees, colleagues - let alone your wife, husband or children - feel unheard and unappreciated and want to to return good things to the beautiful.

Low sensitivity to the suffering of others opens the door to harmful behavior.

Toxic people often do well in a company if they are very proficient in a specific field, says Dr. Dylan Minor of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. However, they tend to be overconfident and may feel that they will go unpunished despite their bad behavior. And indeed, the research of Dr. Minora showed that toxicity is associated with excessive self-confidence and putting oneself above others.

The effects of toxic behavior in the workplace are not limited to the person targeted - everyone suffers. Dr. Minor distinguishes between difficult and toxic employees. Both cause harm, but the behavior of toxic people spreads to others. It spreads quickly through emotional contagion. "People can get infected without even realizing it," says Prof. Porath. This seems to be a fundamental feature of rude behavior.

Toxic behavior – whether initiated by clearly toxic people or rather triggered by circumstances – can quickly become a permanent way of acting, argues Prof. Veldsman. In an environment where people regularly witness or are targeted by hostility, rudeness, intimidation, and other forms of nasty behavior, they engage in similar actions to survive.

They either come to the conclusion that this is the only way to move forward, or they receive the message that this way of relating to others is the norm in a company or family.

Survey conducted by prof. Porath survey of 800 employees, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that 80 percent waste time at work worrying about hostility in the workplace, and 63 percent - trying to avoid the perpetrator. “The emotional impact on others was so great that productivity – not to mention employee well-being and satisfaction – was significantly disrupted,” the researcher describes. Toxic behavior also takes a cognitive toll. “People forget things. They are less attentive. Creativity and innovation are declining.” As a result, job satisfaction decreases, morale decreases and work engagement decreases.

A side effect of toxicity is employee turnover. Because malicious colleagues are difficult to deal with, their behavior often causes other people - sometimes the best people in the company - to leave. No matter how talented toxic employees are, their actions ultimately have a negative impact on the company's finances, as there are additional costs of recruiting and training new people. Dr. Minor calculated that one toxic employee generates approximately 12.5 thousand. dollars in costs related to turnover - this is more than the company gains from hiring a super talent.

Psychological toolbox

The surest way to protect yourself against toxic behavior is to limit or completely cut off contact with people who regularly practice it. However, this is rarely possible. It is therefore worth equipping yourself with skills that will help you deal with toxicity.

Control the amount of contact. The most important thing you can do is minimize contact. If you work desk-to-desk with a toxic person, try moving or changing your desk. If you work on a team with a toxic person, ask to be transferred to another project. If your supervisor is a toxic person, limit – as much as possible – the time you spend with him or her and look for people in the organization who will listen to you. If nothing can be done, start looking for another job. However, if you are involved in the recruitment of employees, pay special attention to the candidates' emotional competences and, as Christine Porath advises, clearly define behavioral standards from the very beginning.

If your partner is a toxic person, it is worth seeking the support of a specialist who will help you properly manage the relationship, advises Rhonda Freeman.

Control your reactions. First of all, define your boundaries clearly, emphasizes Robin Stern.

Be assertive and do not agree to ridiculous demands and do not make excuses. Prepare some responses to use when a toxic person wants to blame you or intimidate you, such as: "I'd be happy to talk to you about it when you calm down." Stern also advises documenting toxic events: how you felt before, during, and after, and what others did and said. The notes will be useful if intervention by superiors is necessary.

Strengthen relationships with people you trust and who treat you with respect. They can help you cope with stress and gain a more balanced perspective.

Look for activities that will allow you to break away from a toxic person or environment, such as joining a book club or taking a cooking class. This way you will better understand who you are in relation to the world.

Do not make excuses. Don't even try to explain yourself. A toxic person, by definition, is not interested in your perspective. Any attempts will only frustrate you.

Just say, "I'm sorry, I'm busy" or "I can't do it right now."

Turn on the radar. Recognize toxic people and avoid them before they break out. Pay attention to personality traits that promote toxicity. Beware of people who react in an exaggerated and theatrical way; who are suspicious and aggressive; and who do not take into account the feelings of others.

Katherine Schreiber

While we try to avoid toxic people at work, in our private lives we often invite them to our homes. Most often, this can happen when we are looking for love. Toxic people often have attractive qualities, such as self-confidence. Those most prone to manipulation never immediately reveal their true nature, instead they deceive with charm, shower them with flattery and publicly show their feelings - for example, they send a bouquet of flowers to the office to impress not only the recipient, but also their colleagues - to gain a potential partner's admiration and trust.

They work fast. Before they start displaying questionable behavior (e.g., making ridiculous demands), we are already emotionally attached to them, explains neuropsychologist Rhonda Freeman, who created the Neuroinstincts educational platform to help people heal the wounds suffered in toxic relationships. When toxic people sneak into our lives unnoticed, we view them through image-distorting lenses. We react to their offenses (various attacks on us, blaming us for the problems they experience, ignoring our needs and requests) by trying to justify their bad behavior: "He's experiencing a lot of stress" or "He's a really good person." We may even take the blame on ourselves: “I want too much” or “He's right. I'm lucky to be with her. Who else would put up with me?” As Dr. Freeman explains, people who experienced emotional or physical violence during adolescence are particularly vulnerable to falling into such a trap.

The closer we get to a toxic person - the more he knows about us, the more attached we are to him, the more we let him into our lives - the more damage he can do to us. Because he simply has more information with which he can manipulate us. Moreover, as Dr. Freeman points out, when we become attached to someone, we make a great effort to avoid the pain of separation.

In close relationships, partners always work out the boundary between care and control. One of the most damaging behaviors in a relationship is when one person intentionally and repeatedly abuses the other's trust in order to cross that line and control their partner. Manipulation is always abuse, but the clash of one person's bad intentions with the other person's belief that the partner has good intentions can particularly weaken a relationship.

Love bombing and the light fading

Not only actions can be toxic, but also inaction.

A common form of manipulation in romantic relationships is love bombing, a dark variant of "stroking someone to death." The term was first used in the 1970s by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, which used the technique to unite believers. Dr. Margaret Singer, a researcher of influence methods used by sects, explained what this technique is. “Love bombing – or the offer of instant friendship – is a deceptive trick that explains the effectiveness of many recruiting campaigns," he writes in Cults in Our Midst. It includes "showering new members with flattery, seducing them with words," tender touch, "paying attention to their every word."

Love bombing is an intense, attention-filled courtship that suddenly gives way to extreme demands. The bomber - whether because of his own insecurity or his typical tendency to take advantage of others - wants a partner only for himself. She tries to separate him from friends or family and make him dependent on himself, so as to be the only object of attention. And when the "target" finally resists or the controlling partner gets bored with the game, devaluation begins - from the bomber's point of view, the partner is always to blame.

Many times these cycles of courting and devaluation must occur before the "victim" understands the situation and decides to end the relationship. Some may be particularly susceptible to the influence of love bombers - people who lack self-confidence, who are not sure who they are or where they are going in life, or who are not sure they can express themselves. And just as bullies and intimidators specialize in picking out people who can't stand up for themselves, love bombers are great at spotting those who doubt themselves.

The most insidious form of manipulation seems to be gaslighting. As Dr. Robin Stern of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, author of The Gaslight Effect, explains, it is "systematic attempts by one person to undermine another person's sense of reality - by convincing him that what he is experiencing is not real. Gradually the other person gives up.” Gaslighting is by no means exclusive to romantic relationships, but the intimate information partners have about each other makes such activities particularly toxic in this case. They weaken the person who is the target of manipulation and undermine his or her sense of reality.

The term gaslighting comes from the title of Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gaslight, later adapted for the screen by George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman. In this story, the husband convinces his wife that the sounds of footsteps she hears at night (actually his footsteps) and the dimming light (the effect of his secret activities) are a product of her imagination.

People whose partners distort reality in accordance with their own goals - e.g. they say "You are too sensitive", "You don't know what I know" - begin to doubt their own beliefs and ideas and perceive themselves as a bad husband or a bad wife who dared to question partner's wisdom.

Like toxic bosses, gaslighters project enormous self-confidence, Dr. Stern points out, and this gives them even greater power to undermine their partner's judgments. By its very nature, gaslighting somehow invalidates premonitions and intuitions that something is wrong. In addition, manipulators - or the effects of their actions - generally prevent the partner from having contact with people who could help him expose the cruelty or check the facts.

Why are they doing this?

It's not clear whether toxic people fully realize what they are doing. As Dr. Freeman says, they may have flashes of awareness that their behavior is maladaptive. Most often, however, they see others as the problem. Some people may suffer from personality disorders. In the less developed form of toxicity, they have one or more personality traits - for example, traces of paranoia, narcissism or psychopathy - that would be more likely to meet the criteria for the disorder.

Dr. Freeman states that toxic people lack the ability to regulate emotions. They cannot adjust the intensity of their expression to different situations. Meanwhile, by regulating our emotions, we refrain from outbursts when a colleague disagrees with us and we accept criticism from our partner without reacting sharply or breaking down. We learn this in childhood through exposure to various strategies for regulating arousal, especially negative arousal. As Dr. Freeman says, “Emotion regulation allows us to take responsibility for our behavior, feel compassion, and be mature.”

Empathy deficits also play a role. Low sensitivity to the suffering of others opens the door to both harmful behaviors, such as abuse, and manipulation, such as gaslighting.

Research shows that in people who meet the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality - their emotional instability is often revealed in the form of angry outbursts and self-inflicted suffering - abnormalities are observed in the brain networks related to empathy. These same irregularities make it difficult for them to take into account the consequences of their own actions.

However, as with most behaviors, the cerebral aspect only partially explains the problem. Upbringing is also important here. Much research suggests that parenting strategies contribute to someone being very violent and short-tempered. How parents help young children cope with strong negative emotions directly affects their ability to regulate emotions throughout their lives.

Take care of yourself and others

Toxic behavior, whether resulting from simple thoughtlessness or pure malice, has always been part of the human behavioral repertoire. It is, therefore, worth knowing how to recognize malice and how to resist it. Dealing with toxic people may not be easy, but this skill is crucial if we want to look after our own well-being and the well-being of others.

Time will tell whether the observed increase in toxicity will continue. Either way, there are already people around whom it is better to be on guard.