Dealing with toxic family members

5 mins to read

Family is supposed to be your safe space, but sometimes it may cause stress. Learn how to deal with toxic family members for a stress-free life.

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Popular advice is to turn to your family if you need help or support. However, family members aren't always the people you can turn to, and in fact, they can be a source of stress in life. Sadly, sometimes, family relationships may not be as rosy as we would like them to be.

As the saying goes, 'We cannot choose our family,’ and there will be gatherings and situations involving family interaction with members we may not want to interact with. This could be because they may be challenging or unpleasant to deal with, or the interactions bring up feelings of resentment, tension, negative memories, fear, or sadness.

It's essential to have strategies and tools to help us deal with such challenging relationships as this can wreak havoc on our health in several ways:

Emotional health: There may be feelings of self-blame, fear, inadequacy, low self-esteem. You may lack a support system you have had otherwise from your family.
Physical health: Such tensions may lead to unhealthy coping behaviours such as over-eating or alcohol. Continuous stress can also affect your immune system and lead to fatigue.
Mental health: You may feel socially isolated as you avoid reaching out to the family as it's unpleasant, or even to other people in general because you fear the same response from others. There may be trouble sleeping or concentrating due to the stress of the conflict.

How do we recognise toxic behaviour?

The first step is to know how to spot toxic behaviour so you can determine whether something needs to be done and what can be done.

There are bound to be conflicts in any relationship, whether friendships, work or family. It is excellent when they are resolved constructively between parties. However, when a pattern of harmful and toxic behaviours persists, this is when conflicts can become chronic and significant enough to impact your health negatively. This is when creating peaceful interactions or taking another approach to preserve your health and well-being is essential.

Criticism: This could involve insulting another family member about their appearance, traits, and achievements, putting you down or making you feel humiliated.

Lack of boundaries: They may constantly make choices for you, forcing them onto you.

Negativity: They may turn almost every conversation or interaction into a fight or argument or display competitiveness or jealousy.

Self-centredness: They may show little consideration for your emotions, mainly prioritising their feelings while dismissing or minimising yours, give the silent treatment, show a lack of respect for you, and make you feel that you have to sacrifice your needs to make them happy.

Strategies to help you cope and deal with toxic family members

It is not healthy for you to continuously tolerate or accept such toxic behaviour. Practising self-care can help to protect your health. You should consider whether and how you want to try to preserve or improve the relationship between you and your family members.

It can be nerve-wracking, and it takes some courage to speak up, stand up for yourself, and put boundaries in place. However, this should pay off in the form of less stress and potentially even improved relationships.

Set boundaries

It's important to communicate what kind of behaviour you won't tolerate and that you won't interact with them if they cross that boundary. This could be telling them to stop bringing up a certain topic and telling them how it makes you feel when they do that. If they do bring it up, you can leave the room or not engage in discussions about the topic.

It could also mean telling the family member to ensure they knock on the door before just barging in.

Ideally, this is communicated to the other person directly, during a calm moment and repeated to ensure understanding.

As some toxic people often don't realise they are, Step Up For Mental Health, a peer-to-peer advocacy group for mental health in the US, suggests asking questions of the other person to point out how their actions or words impact others. Example questions include, "Have you thought about how what you've said could make me feel?" or "How do you think your criticism is helping the situation?"

Take care of yourself

This could mean ensuring you are in a peaceful, calm state before interacting with the family member by engaging in relaxing activities such as walking, yoga, meditation or something that helps foster positive energy and feelings within you.

Managing stressful moments could mean using your senses to ground yourself, such as taking deep breaths, imagining a serene memory or destination, or diverting your attention to something pleasant around you, such as music.

For those who may freeze under stress, Helpguide.org, an independent nonprofit that runs a mental health website, suggests that engaging in movement, such as dancing or walking, may help burn off tension.

The calmer you are, the better you can fully listen to the other person and be more in tune with how you and the other family members feel, including by observing their body language. This can also help you communicate more clearly to the other person and react in non-explosive, more constructive ways to prevent further tension and hostility.

Self-care also means turning to the people you can trust, support, and appreciate.

Cultivate emotional awareness

According to Helpguide.org, managing stress levels is important for ensuring emotional awareness. It explains that emotional awareness is the key to connecting with one's own feelings, understanding oneself and others, responding in healthy ways, and ultimately improving one's ability to handle conflict.

Focus on what you can control

Instead of trying to change someone else's viewpoints or actions, which can be a dead end, turning attention back to yourself through self-care can help you have enough energy to deal with challenging situations.

Also, try to focus on the present rather than what has happened in the past. Try to look at what can be done now to resolve the conflict.

Be open and transparent

If you know that you have certain information that will affect other family members, it may be best to be open and share it with the family.

Being open can also help family understand how you feel and how their actions or lack of action affect you. Sometimes, we assume that they should know how we feel just because they are family.

To assist with understanding your feelings, write down your feelings and what you would like to happen.

Foster empathy

Take a moment to understand the reasons behind the family member's challenging behaviour and whether it might be because they are having a rough time.

Try to focus on the positives

Though this may be difficult, thinking about some of the family member's positive traits may help diffuse some of your negative feelings about them.

Develop conflict-resolution skills

Spending some time reading about and developing skills in conflict resolution can help equip you with some tools to draw on if and when a difficult moment arises. This can help you become aware of both your emotions and the other person's and prioritise resolution over winning the argument.

Accept or let go

At some stage, you may need to accept that the other may not be willing to change their views or forgive; they will not meet you halfway, and the interactions may worsen. In this case, you may have to both agree to disagree and move on. It's about letting go of what you can't control.

You may need to cut ties

If you are dealing with someone who does not wish to change or meet you halfway with your efforts to reconcile or resolve a conflict, you may need to minimise interaction to protect your health.

In circumstances where there is abuse, physical or emotional, this also signals the need to limit contact with that person.

Although this may be difficult to accept, try to write down the reasons you are doing this to remind yourself. This also means you can now focus your energy on the people who care about you and make time for you.