What Is the Best Way to Deal With Your Toxic Family?

Trapped in a cycle of harm with your toxic family? Radical honesty is the first step in dealing with them in a healthy way.

Are you dealing with family members who are toxic to your mental health and emotional clarity? We don’t all get lucky enough to be surrounded by parents and siblings who treat us the way they should. Sometimes, our families are the pain points in our lives.

How do you deal when the people who are supposed to love you the most are the ones who harm you the most? If you’re tired of being put down, manipulated, controlled, or diminished then finding the right techniques could make all the difference to your happiness and sanity.

What does a toxic family look like?

Are you trapped in a cycle with toxic family? This experience is different for everyone, but there’s a few key traits in every toxic family. Once we see these traits, we can take action to resolve them and keep ourselvese safe. That can’t happen, though, without some radical honesty about who you are and how you’re being affected by your (potentially) toxic family.

An absolute drain

Spending a lot of time with anyone can leave you feeling drained or needing some alone time, but toxic family members will leave you feeling especially zapped. Feelings of dread, or absolute mental and emotional exhaustion, are indications that something toxic is stirring between you and the other party. These feelings can be especially magnified if you’re an introvert or someone who is struggling with their mental and emotional health.

Overthinking and avoidance

If every interaction with a specific family member leaves you overthinking, or if you find yourself avoiding them at every available opportunity — it might be a sign that they are toxic (to you). When it comes to family, we should feel a sense of connection, and a sense of ease and belonging. Our brains send us powerful signals when something’s amiss or something isn’t good for us, and this includes interactions with our closest family members. If someone gives you an “icky” feeling, embrace that feeling and analyze it for what it is.

Never apologizing

Screwing up happens, no matter who you are and no matter how hard you try not to. Life moves fast, and there’s a lot of ups and downs and obstacles to overcome, and it’s never possible to see things entirely for what they are. When we make a mistake, it’s important to embrace it and learn from it, but the toxic family member can’t do this. They are unable to apologize, and they are unable to take responsibility for the wrongs they have committed. Just because they’re family doesn’t mean they get a free pass on being a decent human.

Can’t be yourself

We should be comfortable around the people that make up our social circles, and that’s especially true for our family. You should never feel as though you can’t completely be yourself around your family. Though you might not share every intimate experience with them, it’s important that you don’t feel cornered into pretending you’re someone you’re not. This includes engaging in behaviors and activities that go against your personal values, or taking on beliefs or mannerisms that aren’t like you.

Inability to learn

Everyone makes mistakes, but good people are those who learn from their mistakes in order to better themselves across the experiences of their future. Toxic family members don’t do that. They repeat, repeat, repeat. If you’ve found yourself in the company of a family member who continues to make the same mistakes (from laziness more than anything else), you’re dealing with someone who will always prioritize their own self-interests over those of the people around them.

Danger, danger, danger

Some family members are, quite frankly, dangerous. Though we all have pain in our pasts, inflicting pain on others is a conscious choice. Family members with explosive anger issues, as well as family that continues to maliciously backbite, undermine or otherwise seek to destroy your happiness — is family that is dangerous to your safety and authentic sense of self.

The best techniques to deal with toxic family.

We can’t afford to let toxic families hold us back from seeking mental health and emotional peace. We can still draw the line, protect ourselves, and get the love and acceptance we deserve.

Getting there, though, requires hard choices and brave action. Ready to leap? Take the path of knowledge, boundaries, and healing inner child work.

Invest in self-education

Knowledge is one of the most empowering things we can do for ourselves as survivors of toxic families and parents.

You cannot act when you don’t have the knowledge to act, and that includes your healing and self-fulfillment journeys.

The more you know, the more you can see. As reality expands around you, you become equipped to navigate it better.

Invest in self-education and learn everything you can about childhood development, your experiences, and how they shaped you.
Be honest about who your family is, who they are not, and who you want to be within (or without) that structure.
Read the books. Take the classes. Expand your understanding of your experiences so you can set boundaries and protect yourself.

Give yourself enough knowledge to protect yourself, and enough knowledge to understand why you have to break the cycle and do things differently.

Surround yourself with support

It’s hard navigating the world when your base of support is corrupt. Our families are meant to protect us, to lift us up — to love us when the world feels too tough to survive. But that’s not the family that everyone gets.

Some get families who harm more than love. So you find better people, and you surround yourself with them.

Seek quality people who want you to be happy as badly as they want to be happy themselves. Find a support network of loving individuals who have been through what you’ve been through.

Forge connections with empathetic people who can see your struggle. People who can honor it, and honor you too for all the brightness and potential you bring to the world.

Set iron-clad boundaries

As much as you may love your family, their toxic behaviors are taking a serious toll on your health and your happiness. That’s why boundaries have to become a bedrock of your approach to dealing with them.

You need to draw lines around the way you want to be treated to, the way you want to be spoken to, and how you want to feel around your parents, your siblings, and anyone else in your family. Someone who can’t respect those boundaries needs to know that they will lose access to you and your life.

Master the grey rock method

The “grey rock method” is a tool that should be in every survivor’s back pocket. When you’re dealing with toxic or narcissistic people, it’s a blessing. It allows you to detach, and to move away from them in a way that minimizes your role in the conflict (or their sabotage).

In short, the grey rock method is simply detaching emotionally from the toxic people around you. You remain civil, friendly, even. But you don’t give them any private or personal information on yourself, and you don’t react to their goading or provocation.

You imagine yourself to be a grey rock around them. You weather their storms, you may take the beating of their chaos, but you never react. You give them nothing, because the reaction is what toxic people seek to manipulate and control you.

Cuddle your inner child

A lot of the healing and dealing we do around toxic families involves our inner children. It’s true. The inner child gets badly damaged growing up in a toxic home.

No matter how old they get, their self-esteem and their joy takes continual hit that destroys their optimism, their excitement, and their sense of magic in the world.

For you to get through the tempest of the toxic family, you need to give this inner child the love and adoration that has been denied to them at home. Be gentle with yourself. Remember to take time away to plug into life, and don’t forget to have fun again with the world that’s out there waiting for you.

Cut ties if you need to

At the end of the day, some of us have to make the hard decision to cut ties with the most toxic members of our families. It becomes too much to deal with the daily diminishment and fighting.

No one wants to go home for Christmas just to fight, be made fun of, or to walk on eggshells.

If your heart and your spirit can’t take any more beatings, then consider cutting ties. When push comes to shove, you have to choose the only thing you can realistically control — your happiness. If it is impossible to be happy within yourself with your family, you may need to consider setting the ultimate boundaries and walking away entirely.

Knowing when enough’s enough…

Family dynamics are nuanced. Sometimes we just don’t click with the people we’re supposed to love. When you find yourself confronted with a family member who undermines your happiness, attacks you, or otherwise makes you feel insecure and unworthy — it’s time to consider confronting them and calling them up on their behavior.

Maintain respect (no matter what) and don’t allow yourself to be sucked down into a low-blow battle of blame and belittlement that gets either party nowhere. Focus on remaining cool, calm and honest, and keep your expectations to a minimum so you don’t get whipped around by their last-minute manipulations.

Avoid the guilt and shame dance, but hold confidently to your boundaries and know that they’re justified simply because you exist. You have a right to be who you are and you have a right to be as you are.

I am an author, coach, and podcaster who helps survivors create their ideal lives after trauma and relationship upset. Join my recovery mailing list for free weekly advice, or click the link below to learn more about me.