The UnScripted Mind
Join your host Professional Counselor, Jim Cunningham, as he dives into the complex world of mental wellness. From anxiety and depression to resilience and recovery, "The Unscripted Mind" offers candid conversations and expert insights, encouraging listeners to confront their own journeys while gaining tools and perspectives that promote healing and understanding—one unscripted conversation at a time.
The UnScripted Mind
Toxic Relationships Part 2: Mastering the Chaos
Are you tired of being trapped in toxic relationships and enduring their emotional toll? Discover the secrets to reclaiming your mental health and confidence as we explore the underlying personality disorders often at play. From the pervasive patterns of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder to the destructive roles in the drama triangle, we uncover the complexities of these dynamics with real-world examples. Learn to identify and navigate these tumultuous relationships, while mastering techniques like the 'gray rock' method to maintain your emotional neutrality amidst the chaos.
Unravel the drama triangle's victim, rescuer, and persecutor roles and witness how quickly they can shift, causing confusion and distress. We emphasize the power of strategic thinking and the necessity of staying calm to avoid getting ensnared in toxic exchanges. With guidance on embracing life's unpredictability and the humorous recognition of these cycles, we underscore the value of seeking professional help and sharing valuable insights with those who could benefit. Subscribe, follow, and share this enlightening episode, and let's embark on a journey toward healthier relationships and more fulfilling lives.
The goal of The UnScripted Mind Podcast is to give you fresh perspectives, practical insights and tools you can use to give you more choices, self-awareness and control of your feelings, reactions and behaviors.
Welcome to today's episode, where we dive into the emotional rollercoaster that is toxic relationships. This is part two in a series that I started last episode, and you know whether you feel guilt, fear, sadness or like you're losing your mind, whether you're feeling anxious, insecure or overwhelmed. This episode's for you because toxic people come in many forms, or overwhelmed. This episode's for you because toxic people come in many forms, whether you label them narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, abusive, mean, manipulative whatever term you want to use it doesn't really matter what you call them, because the impact is so real. Today we'll uncover the emotional toll these relationships take on you and, more importantly, how can you break free from their grip. Stay tuned as we explore effective strategies to protect your mental health, to regain control and to rebuild your confidence on this episode of the Unscripted Mind. Welcome to the Unscripted Mind, where our goal is to give you fresh perspectives, practical insights and tools you can use to give you more choices, increase your awareness and have better control of your feelings, reactions and behaviors.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:My name is Jim Cunningham and I'm a licensed professional counselor, and today we're discussing what do you do if you find yourself in a toxic relationship. Before we get started, if you missed our last episode on how to recognize signs that you might be in a toxic relationship. I would encourage you to go back and check that out. I'll include a link here to make that simple for you. So let's jump in. First of all, how do we understand toxicity? As I said in the last episode, people use a lot of terms to describe toxic people narcissist, sociopath, psychopath, abusive, mean, manipulative Again, the list goes on. It doesn't really matter what you call them. And while these terms can be helpful to help us describe the behavior, it's important to understand that this isn't about diagnosing somebody. It doesn't really matter what you call it. What matters is recognizing the patterns and the behaviors that make up a toxic relationship and, more importantly, what these patterns do to you.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:I do believe a lot, if not most, of these toxic people possibly suffer from personality disorders. So there's a lot of confusion about the difference between a mental illness and a personality disorder. So there's a lot of confusion about the difference between a mental illness and a personality disorder. I'll give you a quick differentiation to kind of help you understand that. Think of a mental illness like a regular illness, like a cold. You can kind of feel it coming on, you get a scratchy throat. You kind of bottom out for a couple of days, maybe a week, and then you kind of feel back to yourself. That's an illness. It comes and it goes. It's not part of you and it doesn't feel like you, right, you just like I, don't feel like myself today.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Personality disorders, on the other hand, do not come and go. They are characterized by pervasive and enduring patterns of behavior. Now there are 10 personality disorders in the DSM-5. And each one of those has a fundamental trait or characteristic and that kind of makes them a one trick pony. So, for example, obsessive compulsive personality disorder which, by the way, has nothing to do with obsessive compulsive disorder OCD is about managing anxiety. So repetitive behaviors, things to reduce anxiety by creating a perception of more control, hand washing, those types of things.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Obsessive compulsive personality disorder, on the other hand, is about control. That is their fundamental characteristic. So, as a one-trick pony, I have this hammer and I have this tool, and when you give somebody a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, of course. Mental characteristics so, as a one trick pony, I have this hammer and I have this tool, and when you give somebody a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, of course. So I've got this tool that's called control, and when I apply that to relationships or work or whatever, a lot of times it works really good, but at some point it starts to break relationships because people don't like being controlled. So what is the person with OCPD end up doing? Well, they have to double down because this is the only tool that they have in the toolbox. So if you're going to treat a mental illness, a lot of times you are tweaking things that are already there. Dr Greg Lester used the analogy of if you have a mental illness, you open the hood of a car to fix it and you change the spark plugs. If you have a personality disorder, you open the hood, there's no motor. So this is more of an installation rather than a repair. So think of it that way.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Some of the other characteristics of a personality disorder are people who are really unable to accept ownership for their part in things. So it can't be me, it must be everybody else. They lack what they call either an observing ego or this ability to see themselves objectively. So most of us, when we go through life, we try something and when it doesn't work, we course correct. We apply a different trait humility, gratitude or any other trait that's out there to adapt to the situation. But if you're a one trick pony, you've got one tool and you just keep applying it to one thing and when that one thing breaks, you double down on it and it causes more problems for them.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:So for this reason, a lot of people with personality disorders they don't suffer from symptoms like most people do with a mental illness anxiety, depression, those types of things. They tend to suffer from the consequences of their pervasive patterns of behavior. The things that they do make their lives hard for them. So if you're an over controlling person, your life is going to be complicated in a lot of ways because it's going to create problems for you in relationships and work and a lot of other areas. So that's what makes life hard for them. They do have symptoms and they will present with anxiety or depression or a variety of other symptoms, but those are secondary to what the actual problem is.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:The other thing to note is that, for example so if you have a mood disorder and you feel depressed, most people bottom out. You know, depression turns people into cats. They sleep a lot, they have low energy, they can't get themselves out of bed. They can't get themselves moving and motivated. Conversely, borderline personality disorder can feel depressed, but what that presents as they can still have a ton of energy. They don't bottom out like that. They don't go to sleep for days, they just are frustrated and they feel sad, but they still have a high degree of energy. So that's one big distinction that you might notice.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:The other thing about personality disorders is that, again, these are a disorder of the person. They're not something people catch or get, which is also why medications don't usually work very well for them. Most of our psychotropic medications for mental health deal exclusively with minimizing symptoms antidepressant, antipsychotic, anti-anxiety medications. We don't have medications that give you more traits to make you more adaptable to a very complex world. So what you would find is a lot of personality disorders can be diagnosed by age five. This is not something people develop. It's something they have very early on, and a lot of research suggests that there's a genetic component to this that accounts for up to as much as 80% of the variants.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:So, knowing that if you've dealt with somebody for 20 years who's been one way, all of a sudden now they're another, I would not ascribe that to a personality disorder. Something may have happened, a traumatic event or something else, but if it's something that's like, wow, this person's kind of always been that way, it's kind of the way they are. And some people have described personality disordered people as they tend to be inappropriate. So there's a lot of symptoms that go with this and things that you can kind of recognize with personality disorders. But I need to say this also sometimes the symptoms will actually disappear in the right environment.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:As I said, each personality disorder has its own fundamental characteristic, whether that's control, whether that's grandiosity, when you refer to a narcissist. So the symptoms disappear in the right environment. So, for example, if you put a narcissist on stage or you make them the star of a movie, they're the life of the party, they're great, they're actually very, very good at what they do. You take that same person and you bring them into your house, where they're not getting all that attention and they're not feeling special. You're going to see a very different side of them than most people do. So when people are in toxic relationships with somebody who has a personality disorder, a lot of times they will say I'm the only person that sees this, which contributes to some of the crazy feelings that people have about themselves. Maybe it's just me and it's hard for a lot of people to distinguish. So toxic people tend to have a very pervasive and enduring pattern of behavior, and these behaviors can stay consistent over time and often seem immune to the negative consequences that they create.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Dr John Livesley is a leading expert in personality disorders and he describes it like this. He says a personality disorder is a human being who persists in a behavior in the face of clear evidence that it is inappropriate and despite the ongoing bad consequences it creates. See, toxic people can create an emotional environment that feels chaotic, confusing and downright exhausting to be around. It's like being stuck in a loop where they dish out the pain but rarely, if ever, take responsibility for it. Okay, so why is all of this so confusing? Well, here's the thing being in a toxic relationship can make you question everything about yourself. There are a ton of emotions and honestly, I think that's part of the point. If I can generate emotions in you and I can get you upset, if I can get you sad, if I can get you questioning things, I can manipulate you a lot easier. So you feel guilt, anxiety, maybe even a little crazy. Right? This is because toxic individuals are masters at deflecting responsibility and keeping you off balance. Dr John Gunderson from Harvard put it in an interesting way he calls it the emotional version of a tick they get under your skin, they latch onto you, they feed off your energy and they leave you feeling drained.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:One of the ways this plays out is through something called the drama triangle. Now, this is very important to be able to recognize what this is in the moment, because this is one of the ways that I help people the most is to create awareness of what the games look like and what the patterns look like. So when you start to recognize them, you realize all of a sudden it's not personal. You can be like the coach in the press box instead of the nose tackle on the field. You can see the game for what it is and then you can start making educated choices about how you're going to engage with that game.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:If you're not familiar with the drama triangle, this is a concept that was developed by Stephen Cartman probably back in the 40s, if I'm not mistaken and it involves three roles that all of us kind of play at one point or another. The first one is the victim, the second is the persecutor and the third is the rescuer or the helper. So I want you to think about it like this, or just picture in your mind a triangle and if you're watching this on YouTube, I'll put up a graphic for you but think of a triangle and at each point of that, triangle is one of these positions that people take and I say positions because there are true victims in the world, make no mistake about it. But these are not true victims. These are victim stances, a rescuer stance, and the goal of this dynamic is to create confusion and upset that leads to conflict. So it serves its own purpose, but, make no mistake, it's not about solving the problem. It's a great way to generate emotions, so that if I have negative emotions, I can pass them on to you. Honestly, one of the things about getting angry and having conflict with somebody is to give away some of your anger, right? So this is a great way to do that. We all have bad days and, to be perfectly honest, we all do this to a certain degree, right? But this is doing it more for a different purpose and serving different ends.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:So you think about starting as, say, the victim. I'm driving down the road. I have a flat tire and I don't know how to fix it. I'm a victim. I'm an actual victim. You come along as the rescuer and you offer to help me fix my tire and I show a lot of great traits and I say thank you and show gratitude and humility and I'm helpful and all these things. And you fix the tire and I say thank you and we go our separate ways. Problem is solved and there's no problems. There's no emotional event that's going on there. If halfway through, I take the tire, iron, and I club you over the head with it and take your money, I have just changed our relationship. I've switched from victim to persecutor. That's going to generate a lot of emotions. Similarly, if I come along as a rescuer and say, hey, I, you know, I'd like to help you, and as you start doing something, I start criticizing you about how you're doing it all wrong. So again switching from the rescuer to the persecutor. So you see these patterns a lot in these kinds of toxic relationships. I come home and say, oh, what was my? My life is terrible. And then, if you don't provide the requisite amount of attention, I started attacking you, you know, and you haven't done anything to help me either. And so, all of a sudden, I have a lot of emotion because you've just switched the game on me, and this triangle is all about creating drama.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:You know you're in a drama. When you find yourself repeating yourself over and over again, you feel like you need to apologize. You get angry, you get emotional, you say things you don't mean, and at the end of the conversation you're more confused than when you began. We started with what I thought was a problem, and then, over the course of this conversation that might last hours, things from a week ago, a month ago, all get thrown into the mix. It's like watching a political debate. There's too many points to even address. I don't even know where to begin. So I get confused and I get upset and I don't understand it. And this is this is part of the problem is because now you're off balance and usually you're emotional. Like I said, emotions keep us from thinking clearly, and so we have a real hard time engaging with something, especially when we don't know what the problem is.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Somebody once said that the drama triangle is usually based on a couple of things. Two of those are ambiguity and broken agreements. We don't know what we're trying to fix, so we don't know when it's fixed. Or somebody says I agree to do something and then they don't. Okay, those two things are going to generate a lot of emotion, particularly the ambiguity. And, like I said, things from the past get thrown in and other situations and you don't know exactly what you're trying to fix anymore and you find yourself trying to respond to all kinds of things that there's almost too many to respond to. So this dynamic can switch back and forth very quickly, keeping you very confused about what's really going on.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:And I tell a lot of people this you need to start playing chess and not checkers. You need to strategically think about what the conversation is while you're having the conversation so you can recognize this. And when you start feeling off, you need to start listening to your gut, because that's a red flag. Toxic relationships aren't simple, they're tactical and strategic. You've got to think about it that way, because if I get sucked into their arguments and buy into the presuppositions and their twisted logic, I'm going to get lost. I'm going to get emotional and then I'm hosed. As soon as those emotions come up, I've already lost the game. So the key here is don't play the wrong game. Stay strategic, and the way you do that is you try to problem solve. This is outside of the drama triangle.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Problem solving, like drama, is based on two things. It's based on simplicity and clarity. My flat tire that you helped me fix. We both knew what the problem was and we knew when it was fixed, because we both know what the problem was. It was very clear and it was very simple and it was not emotional. So when I start trying to problem solve, there's no emotion with that and I can stay calm. I find that this is a great litmus test for somebody who wants to do drama, because it'll tell you whether they're trying to solve something and they're trying to create the drama and the upset and the confusion.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:When I stay calm and somebody is truly trying to generate drama, I guarantee you it will exacerbate the problem. They will escalate right, because in the drama triangle I need you to participate in this and if you don't participate, I have to get meaner, nastier, say harsher things, make bolder accusations to generate emotion in you so that you jump in to the game. And this is the hard part staying true to being calm. You know some people call it going gray rock. I'm not going to give them anything. Um, no emotions, nothing to work with, and so this is simple, but it's not easy because, again, people who do drama are much better at it than you are and you're going to get lost. You'll be stepping on the court with LeBron, except there's no lines, there's no referee and no scoreboard, and you don't know what you're doing. But you know you're outmatched and outgunned. So the key is don't play the wrong game.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Think strategically, and once you're able to see this in real time where somebody is always the perpetual victim and then they turn on you and then they go back to being the victim, and then they turn on you and then they go back to being the victim and then they turn on you again, once you can recognize that in the moment, you can see it for what it is, and, honestly, I know people who begin to chuckle at that point because it is so obvious when you don't know what the game is, you get sucked into it and then you're lost. So where do we go from here? Knowing this is a big part of it, but you also have to learn to trust yourself and know what's true and what's not true when you're dealing with a toxic person, one of the most important things you can do is to separate what's real from what the manipulation is and what that presentation looks like. It's crucial to make a list of facts, and I found this very helpful in a lot of situations. What things do I know for certain? What do I know about this person In terms of gaslighting? Did I actually say that or am I being manipulated? Not how you feel, but what you know, and that's important. Not what you feel, but what you know. Write it down. This is a simple act that can anchor you when your emotions start getting the best of you and when you start feeling nostalgic about this person and you start forgetting all the bad stuff and why you feel so bad. This simple act can help you when the emotions get overwhelming and can also clarify what's happening versus what the toxic person is trying to make you believe.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Another critical part of navigating those relationships is to trust your gut. We've all been there where the red flags are there. Our gut is screaming and we're like ah, it's probably not that big a deal. Often, our instincts will alert us before your mind catches up. If something feels off, it probably is. Too many people in toxic relationships dismiss that gut feeling, but it's one of our strongest tools for survival. There's a great book by Gavin DeBecker called the Gift of Fear, and he addresses this where all these people have just kind of ignored the red flags that are out there, to the detriment of their own safety. So I recommend reading that. I'll put a link for that here as well.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Okay, so what are our options? What are we going to do about all of this, in addition to the things that I've already mentioned? Well, I think when you realize you're in a toxic relationships, you've kind of got three basic paths forward. First of all, you can try to fix the other person. Spoiler alert probably not going to work unless they're willing to engage in serious self-reflection, own their stuff and be able to make concessions, apologize. Only then can they make real changes. But you cannot fix them. That is the ultimate sin of the empath is to think that they can fix people. They cannot, and you know this because a lot of people in toxic relationships say their partner. They never apologize. They seem to have little empathy, and by that I mean when you're down and you're not fighting back anymore. They keep kicking, so they can be very mean.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Your second option, if you can't fix the person, is how do you manage the relationship? Now, this might involve setting up strong boundaries, limiting contact or finding ways to protect yourself emotionally while staying in the relationship, which is a very, very difficult thing to do and, I might add, a very exhausting thing to do. The third option is to create some space. Now, in many cases, the healthiest option is distance, and even if this is for a week, this doesn't necessarily mean leaving immediately forever, but it does mean reducing the influence that that person has on you, and this could also be just for a short period of time, like I say, for a week or two, if that person's out of town. It's also a good way to test the environment and say you know, when this person's not around, how do I feel? That's always a good way to kind of evaluate how much impact this other person's having on you.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:And here's a tip I found incredibly helpful for people struggling with the toxic relationships and I have a whole episode discussing this that I'll leave a link to, and it's called caring less. If everything you do seems to make them unhappy, then stop trying to please them. Start doing what you want to do If you're already going to lose anyway. Start doing what you want to do and what makes you happy. The more you care about their approval, the more power you give them. So as you start recognizing things like the drama triangle and caring less and knowing what you know, you start taking a lot of power back in the relationship.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:So, talking about leaving when is it actually time to leave the relationship? When do you know it's time? This can be a tough decision, but there are a few things to consider. Number one is the relationship abusive? If it is, that's your answer. Abuse is a hard line. Empaths struggle with creating boundaries because they don't know what they want. They actually don't know where these boundaries are. A lot of times they might be able to agree with yeah, if I get hit, if I get cheated on those kinds of things, but what other boundaries? Name calling, being yelled at, being humiliated in public what are the boundaries? So you know where those lines are and when they're crossed and when you establish those boundaries, then you have a pretty good, clear understanding of when you need to create some separation. So number one is the relationship abusive, and that's verbal as well as physical, and I will say the physical tends to be a lot easier to identify and justify leaving.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:A lot of people who are in emotionally abusive relationships make excuses and they say well, that was just a one-off and it's not that bad, it's not worth ending the relationship over, and in some cases I think the emotional has a lot more long-term damage than the physical abuse. The second thing to consider if it's time to leave is are you allowed to be yourself? If you feel like you have to be constantly changing who you are and if you're walking on eggshells all the time, I think that's a clear sign that things are off track and you need to consider that. The third thing I would say is who is your best relationship? That should be your litmus test against all other relationships. That person that you know that you can be yourself with. You don't. There's no pretenses there. You can be honest, you can be vulnerable and it's always going to be okay. When I compare that to the toxic relationship, usually you're going to see something that is very night and day and that is a huge red flag.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:But ultimately, leaving a toxic relationship is about gaining control of your life and protecting your mental health, and you're worth it. Most people again make concessions and they make excuses for the toxic person. It's about creating space for yourself to heal, to grow and to be free from the constant emotional drain that toxic people create. And again, I think I said this in the last episode, but getting out of a toxic relationship is a very difficult thing to do because there's that emotional tie and the addictive piece to that with the dopamine that you can go back in here in the previous episode and that again causes people to leave a relationship seven times before permanently staying out of it. It's a very difficult thing to do because there's so much tied up with that.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:So let me leave you with a few thoughts. First of all, if you're stuck in a toxic relationship, know that you have options. You always have options, the power that you want. You can get back whenever you're ready to have that Hard thing to do Simple but not easy. You you're ready to have that Hard thing to do, simple but not easy. You don't have to stay trapped and honestly, you deserve better. You know, don't minimize what you deserve at the expense of other people. It's not easy, but with the right tools, I think you can break free, you can protect your mental health and you can rebuild your own confidence and rebuild your self-esteem and all the things that these toxic relationships take away from you. Rebuild your self-esteem and all the things that these toxic relationships take away from you. So remember the game is always on, but you can play it smart by playing chess and not checkers.
JIM CUNNINGHAM:Thanks for tuning into this episode of the unscripted mind. If you found this episode resonated with you, be sure and share it with somebody who might need to hear it. And if you're struggling with a toxic relationship and need help navigating it, don't hesitate to reach out to a licensed therapist who might be able to guide you through that. So thanks again for checking us out. Also, please subscribe, follow this episode, leave a review and if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, please include that also. Until next time, remember life doesn't come with a script. So embrace the unexpected, cherish the unplanned, always stay curious and have an amazing day. We'll see you next time on the Unscripted Mind.
