You may have people in your life who are not helpful for your recovery. Sometimes, you may have a difficult time removing or avoiding these people. You may have family members or other people that can be toxic to you. However, they can be difficult to remove from your life. You may need to evaluate each toxic person and create a strategy to either remove the person or minimize your contact with them.
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Removing Altogether
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- If a person consistently triggers your addictions or other negative feelings, you may need to consider removing this person from your life.
- You may need to decide whether removing this person completely would negatively impact other relationships in your life. For example, you may share custody with a child from a toxic relationship or have one parent with an addiction that triggers you.
- Does this person deserve second chances or are they too triggering to attempt reconciliation? These are things you need to determine for yourself.
- Sometimes, you can gradually fade away from another person by not responding to messages or calls for attention. This may seem harsh; however, if this person is not respecting your boundaries for space, you may need to resort to this type of strategy.
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Minimizing Contact
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- You may need to just minimize your contact with a toxic person.
- This can work if you cannot avoid the person entirely.
- Be sure to have a strategy to deal with triggering feelings when you are around this person.
Some people can be negative influences on our lives and trigger bad feelings. We may need to be mindful of the people that we surround ourselves with during our recovery. You may need to remove toxic people from your life or minimize your contact with them. You need to make the best choices for yourself regarding the relationships in your life. Some people may enable your addictions and others may have hurt us in the past. They may be triggering your trauma response and you may need to find strategies to remove them from your life. While removing toxic people from your life may seem difficult, you may find that it will be easier with support from healthy individuals. Removing anyone from your life, good or bad, can make you feel lonely. However, you are not alone in your recovery. Call The Guest House today at (855) 483-7800 to connect with others like you.