The Mental Emotional Health Blog

In a previous post ( http://mentalemotionalhealth.com/2009/05/27/toxic-personalities/ ), I offered a couple brief thoughts and a link to an article about toxic personalities and I wanted to follow up on the subject today. 

One of my loyal readers is Cyndi, and she had a great comment on the post: “Ah, but what if they are unavoidable, like your spouse or your child? Learn to set good boundaries, I guess!” (It might also be a sibling, co-worker, or boss.)

That is exactly what to do when you deal with someone who is manipulative, overly dependent, or just emotionally draining and you can’t figure out why. Set boundaries. Be assertive. If someone is pushy and you set a polite boundary such as “Please don’t talk to me that way”, it might feel like you are being uncaring, rude, or maybe even mean. (Actually that would be another sign someone is having a toxic effect on you, if you ask politely and their reaction causes you to feel that you were wrong to set an appropriate boundary.)

Every person deserves to be treated respectfully, and it’s too bad some people don’t practice it often enough. But by setting good boundaries and drawing an appropriate emotional line, you can protect your feelings, energy, and relationships. Hey, it’s good to feel empowered!

Conduct Disorder is an interesting diagnosis for those of us that work with children and adolescents. Within the field of mental health, I have heard Conduct Disorder referred to as “the toughest diagnosis to work with for kids”, and “it’s just a catch-all diagnosis for misbehaving teens”. That’s quite a range. I am glad to be able to say the majority of colleagues I work with and worked with in the past emphasize the person over the diagnosis.

Destruction, aggressive speech and actions, frequent dishonesty, indifference to discipline, and breaking rules or laws are typical characteristics. As a clinician, I think the defining characteristic is lack of empathy and remorse. Most kids and teens get into a little trouble, or are defiant at some point. Those with Conduct Disorder go beyond isolated incidents and do these things often, and often ignore or minimize the emotional (or physical) pain caused to others.

When I work with kids and teens who have been diagnosed with Conduct Disorder, I try to speak in a matter-of-fact manner. I do that in order to remove my emotions from the conversation, since those that meet criteria of Conduct Disorder often tend to feed off of others’ feelings despite seeming to not care about them.

WebMD has a good summary of this difficult condition. Here is a link to info on Conduct Disorder at WebMD .

I would estimate in my practice that at least 50% of my overall time working with adults as therapist has been offering advice on how to deal with, or helping “clean up” the emotional messes inflicted on my clients by, toxic personalities. Some people are just chronically not nice.

So in my almost-daily skimming of a few sites for good articles, I ran across this one from Shine (Yahoo): 8 Toxic Personalities to Avoid by Brett Blumenthal (I also recommend her blog at Brett’s Blog ). She does a nice job of being specific and explaining why each personality is toxic.

Knowing what to avoid successfully in life is as important as finding your direction and purpose.

Have a great day everyone!

Devin

Enjoy and ponder these quotes from John Gray, Ph.D, who is the author of 16 best-selling books including Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus:

• We mistakenly assume that if our partners love us they will react and behave in certain ways - the ways we react and behave when we love someone.
  
• When men and women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom.
  
• To grow in our ability to love ourselves we need to receive love as well.
  
• A man’s sense of self is defined through his ability to achieve results.
  
• A woman’s sense of self is defined through her feelings and the quality of her relationships.
  
• Just as a man is fulfilled through working out the intricate details of solving a problem, a woman is fulfilled through talking about the details of her problems.
  
• When a man loves a woman, periodically he needs to pull away before he can get closer.
  

I thought of this idea for a blog entry a while ago. I’m not sure if it would even be interesting to any of you, but here it is.

It may be obvious, but a therapist experiences several emotions during each client session. Some therapists might deny that or not be aware of it, but it is definitely true for me. So I made some mental notes during a session with one of my regular clients, focusing on the different emotions I was experiencing during the conversation. After the session, I completed the list and it surprised me. These are all from one 50-minute session:

• pleased
• thankful
• curious
• confused
• confident
• tentative
• apprehensive
• anxious
• concerned
• content

With some of these feelings, I was mirroring the emotions I sensed from the client. Other times, they were just my emotional reactions to what was being discussed. In any case, it shows that therapists go through a range of emotions just like clients do.

An important perspective I learned in graduate school that I still hold to today is this: if showing your emotions will help the client then let them out; if not, keep them to yourself. (At least until later, when you do need to deal with your emotions wherever they came from.)  As a therapist, it is crucial to realize that the point of therapy is to experience and use emotions productively. The point is not to get to a “level of maturity” that is emotion-less.

By the way, the client felt better at the end of the session that day than when we started. I felt better later after I processed my own feelings.