In today’s episode of Embracing Your Season, Paige shares an interview from her recent trip to AACC (American Association of Christian Counselors) in Dallas, TX with Dr. Gregory Jantz. Dr. Jantz is a nationally certified psychologist, a licensed mental health counselor, the author of over 45 books, and the founder of The Center, a Top 10 Facility for Depression Treatment. Together, Paige and Dr. Jantz discuss how to identify a toxic individual and the steps we can take to instill boundaries, have compassion and gentleness in confrontation, and know when it’s time to walk away.

Paige’s Takeaways

If you’ve been in a negative relationship with someone for many years, you may brush off their treatment of you or make excuses for their behavior. Depending on how you grew up, you may accept this treatment as normal or suitable because you believe you aren’t worthy of anything different. In these instances, it’s important to find a trusted voice who can give you an objective opinion of this person.

• How do you determine the toxic person?
  • Ask yourself (and your kids): how do you feel when you’re around this person? Do you feel relaxed, happy, and at peace? Or are you on edge or tense, does your head or stomach hurt? Pay attention to your body to help identify the people in your life who may create a more negative environment.
  • If you start feeling like the person is speaking criticism, invalidating you, rationalizing their behavior or comments despite you bringing it up and asking them to stop, that may be a good indicator that they are an unhealthy person.
• When we want to see a change in a toxic person, we can’t just demand that they change their behavior! We instead can model gentleness and compassion in our request, it produces a greater chance of them listening to us as well as leading to positive behavior changes.
• Once you identify a toxic person:
  • You still have power over how you interact with them. You can choose not to engage in a conversation by telling them a boundary, ie. ‘I don’t want to talk about this issue’ or you can walk away, if needed.

Paige Clingenpeel

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HomeWord

Connecting with Dr. Gregg Jantz

Dr. Gregory Jantz

The Center: A Place of Hope

Books Mentioned:

How to Deal with Toxic People

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