8 Traits The Most Toxic People Have In Common

I’m sure you’ve already met this negative, draining person who cares only about themselves and uses all sorts of manipulation tactics to reach their goals. After you spend time with them, you feel energetically and emotionally drained. They’re frustrating, exhausting, and damaging. They’re toxic.

Toxic people are self-absorbed and they’ll keep you around as long as you’re useful to them. They expect you to give them your attention, respect, sympathy, and support while they don’t give you anything in return. Unfortunately, you can be surrounded by a toxic person even now without being aware of it. Relationships, romantic or otherwise, with such a person, can have a detrimental effect on your mental and emotional health. That’s why you need to be able to recognize the signs that you’re dealing with this kind of people.

These are the 8 traits the most toxic people have in common:

1. They don’t support you.

The only person toxic people care about is themselves. They never show interest in or respect for the things that matter to you or your emotions and needs. If you’re feeling down in the dumps or going through a rough time, they’ll never be there to support you. Moreover, they never bother to praise you for your personal and professional achievements because this removes them from the center of attention.

2. They are highly manipulative.

A toxic person will stop at nothing to accomplish their goals. They’ll play with your mind and emotions in wicked ways, discover and then use your insecurities and failures to get the things they want from you. If you don’t pay close attention to their behavior, they can easily trick you into believing that they want the best for you and that you should be grateful for having them in your life.

3. They negatively criticize your every move.

Although they may appear highly confident and independent, in fact, these difficult people have many insecurities and low self-esteem. Their inability to accept and deal with failure makes them downplay the importance of your achievements and criticize you for things you have and haven’t done. They can go to the point of making sarcastic and/or vile comments about you, your partner, family, and friends. Don’t let this discourage you. They’ll do anything to make them appear smarter and more important than you.

4. They never apologize.

Never expect someone whose behavior is toxic to apologize to you because in their view it’s never their fault. They’ll twist the story and shift the blame onto you. They’ll lie to you and unintentionally or deliberately hurt you (the latter is more common), but they’ll never admit it or feel remorse and say “I’m sorry.” Moreover, to get your attention and sympathy they’ll often play the victim role.

5. They are inconsistent.

Toxic people change their behavior so often that it’s difficult for you to know which version of them you’re seeing at a given time. They can be inconsiderate, hostile, and difficult to handle one moment and loving and kind the next if they want to get something from you. They can change their attitudes and mood from optimistic to bad before you can blink and they’ll never tell you why they’re behaving like that.

6. They project their feelings onto you.

They don’t want to take responsibility for their feelings and actions. Instead of admitting their feelings, they’ll behave as if the feelings are yours. For example, they can be angry about something and if you try to point that out to them, they’ll say that you’re the one who feels angry or even suggest that you’re mad at them without any reason. Or if you reproach them for their frequent pangs of jealousy, they’ll immediately accuse you of making things up again because you have insecurities and say that you’re the one who’s jealous, not the other way round.

7. They often make you prove yourself to them.

A toxic person wants to be your only choice. They’ll urge you to choose them over somebody else. They can also put you in a position in which you’ll have to choose the things they want over what you want.  They won’t be ashamed to tell you to distance yourself from or break off any relationship with people who are important and close to you. It’s always them or nobody else.

8. They make you defend yourself.

If you get into an argument with a toxic person, you need to be aware that they are neither interested in your opinions nor are they willing to make a compromise or resolve the issue. To stay in control of the situation and you, they won’t express their opinions clearly and they’ll try to redirect the focus of the argument from the issue you’re discussing to your words or body movements.

They can even go to the point where they’ll accuse you of shouting or acting unreasonably. Don’t be surprised if they start mentioning and reminding you of things that happened a long time ago and are totally unimportant. So, instead of reaching a reasonable solution, you’ll end up defending and justifying yourself for things you haven’t done.