Dealing with Toxic People
You cannot argue with a poison. You can only decide the dose.
Before today’s post:
STOIC CONFIDENCE is out. My ebook on how confidence is built, drawing on the Stoics and modern research on how the mind performs under pressure.
Annual and patron subscribers can download it here, it’s included in your subscription.
Not a paid subscriber yet? Upgrading to annual gets you the ebook plus full access to 100+ essays on discipline, emotional control, resilience, anxiety, self-respect, and the practical application of Stoic philosophy.
You can also get the ebook on its own on Gumroad.
Some people function in your life like poison.
Rivals can be beaten, puzzles can be solved, and misunderstandings can dissolve through one honest conversation. Poison responds to none of these.
Poison is also expensive. Add up the cost of the difficult person in your life, and the numbers quickly become uncomfortable. The minutes spent in their presence are the smallest expense. The larger costs arrive afterward. The conversation replayed, the response rehearsed, the story retold until your pulse rises again a full day later.
They occupy a corner of your week and an entire wing of your mind. Whatever they take from you in person, you surrender several times over in private, and no one has ever been reimbursed for those hours.
Nearly every mistake we make with toxic people begins when we use the word but refuse to act as though it is true.
We call them toxic, then treat them as though they are merely misunderstood. We approach them as a moral problem that can be solved through the right argument, the right confrontation, or an explanation of our feelings delivered so clearly that they finally understand and change. Years can disappear into this project.
It has roughly the success rate of explaining ethics to arsenic.
Over 300,000 people now read Stoic Wisdoms. If you haven’t upgraded yet, you can unlock this full post and all 100+ premium posts. Go annual or patron to get my ebook STOIC CONFIDENCE.
A chemist handles poisons daily and hates none of them. He does not argue with the mercury or take the acid personally. He does not lie awake composing the speech that will finally make the fumes see reason. He knows what the substance is, and all of his conduct follows from the knowing.
Limit exposure.
Handle with protection.
Never carry it home.
His calm comes from method rather than moral superiority, and the same method applies to people.