We all carry within us a level of red flags towards other people and they for us. No one person that you encounter will not give off a level of what one may consider toxicity. What one person’s version of danger will be different per individual based on the individual’s experience. When you speak to your friends about who you have met, and they automatically give you their thoughts on how the relationship may be will come from their experience. Everyone has their own biases towards relationships. What one person is willing to accept, another person will not therefore the conversation based on actions that are deemed toxic may not resonate with you.
We are so caught up in putting a label on ourselves. We search for a reason as to why things are happening to us, and we look for reasons in order to justify or work through our individual problem. However, if you search the internet about different issues, everyone can be categorized through attachment style, love language, narcissistic traits, and different levels of autism and so on. You can analyze your personality, your horoscope, or other methods to identify yourself which will then skew your perception of how you self-identify.
In going through the many different options out there, I can see how a person can get lost in the rabbit hole of identifying or labeling themselves a certain way. If you go through this process for self-discovery, that may help identify your shortcomings that you see about yourself. I have found that if you look around at the different people that you surround yourself with in your life, they have a story to tell about who you are if you are willing to see it and listen. Take a hard look at your relationships, good or bad and find out the unifying theme with them. There is a correlation between who you perceive yourself to be and how others treat you.
I’ve had interesting people come through my life to teach me different things about myself. Some of these lessons I enjoyed and others not so much. However, I was not afraid at looking at the negative aspects. This taught me valuable lessons about how I no longer wanted to be. The habits and personality traits that we all possess are interchangeable if we choose to make a different choice. Therefore, someone’s red flag may in actuality teach you something about yourself and how you decide to present yourself to the world. Before you judge someone else for their toxic traits, look inward and ask yourself what you are presenting.
Joanne Robinson
