How Do You Deal With the Toxic/Negative People in Your Live?

My heart goes out to you. I've had somewhat similar experiences. Please consider going to therapy, perhaps someone who specializes in childhood trauma. I know that sounds funny and overly dramatic but even if your dad never laid a hand on you abusively, I don't think your Dad suddenly turned into the person he is now after giving you a lovely childhood. People with that level of damage almost always traumatize their children (and anyone else they're close to) on an emotional level. But for kids it's worse because they don't have a logical filter, so they often take it all in, and make it part of their world view. It may be that one of the reasons you're having so much trouble setting boundaries now is because of some really nasty messages you got from him as a kid, and internalized.

Here are a few rules that my therapist taught me:

-- A competent (meaning not demented) adult is always responsible for his or her own behavior. They may not want to be, and they may well want others to enable them to behave badly, but *they* are always ultimately responsible, whether they admit it or not;

-- Corollary: Other people's behavior is always about them, not about you. They may try to throw their stuff at you, but that doesn't mean you have to accept delivery. Don't take responsibility for their stuff, just work on yours;

-- Corollary: If someone else tells you that their bad behavior is your fault, they're lying to you (and possibly to themselves) and that still doesn't make it your problem. Even if (and in this situation that is a big if) your behavior was also not good in a given situation, you are just a catalyst. They have a choice as to how to respond, just as you have a choice about how you respond to them;

-- Corollary: The only person you can "fix" is yourself, you can't change anyone else;

-- Just because you feel sorry for someone is no reason to put up with their bad behavior.

-- Finally: These rules are true for *everyone* you aren't an exception because you're related to the person, because you think you're horrible, because you think you're responsible, because you have accepted it up to this point, or for any other reason. You are a good person with the same right to be happy, and the same responsibility for your own behavior that every other competent adult has. Until you believe this, the other rules will sound like they apply to everyone but you.

My problem was that I had internalized so much of what I had been told, I really believed that I was the problem -- I just wasn't good enough, kind enough, compassionate enough, and that if I just worked a little harder, my toxic person (people) would be happy. It took a lot of time and therapy to realize that this is just bunkum. My toxic person had saddled me with an impossible task--one that I could never do right, and one that was making me feel like an absolute failure as a human being. I'm not, and you aren't either. The fact that you care at all is pretty good evidence that you are a very kind person, but that doesn't mean you have to keep taking *kitten* from your dad. Your Dad's behavior has nothing to do with you, it's a product of his own trauma, his own issues, and his own choices. He is the *only* person who can fix it, and sad to say, he probably won't. But just because he's older or ill doesn't mean that he is entitled to poison any more of your life. He really isn't. Your dad isn't a helpless victim of anything but his own choices, he can make better ones, but he will keep making bad ones as long as you enable him (and probably after you stop, if you stop). That isn't your responsibility.

lucypstacy wrote: »

The best way to describe Dad is someone that lacks the empathy of a small child. He can't see someone else's point of view at all. If I say I'm hurt, either he's hurt more or it's my fault I'm hurt. Saying no to Dad is tricky.

Ignoring the fact I'm too passive (been working on that), he tries to 'punish' you if you don't do what he wants you do when he wants you to do it. Last December, I was very sick. I had a kidney transplant 2 years ago and I'm on a lot of immune suppressants. I somehow caught viral pneumonia, and I was in the hospital. I had just gotten out when Dad called. He had dropped a pizza in the floor and wanted me to come and clean up his house. I told him I didn't feel like it, and he pouted. That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. The next evening he calls and says he's in the hospital. When he cleaned the floor he had a hernia pop out. Now, this is really ironic considering I have to have hernia surgery (see the surgeon again on the 27th), but I didn't say much. He also said he was turning off his phone because he had forgotten his charger. All of this was fine.

The next evening he calls to say he had been discharged and had tried to drive home, but he had gotten sick. He made it sound like he had passed out on the road, but had woke up enough to drive to a rest stop. He asked if I would come and drive him home.

I got Mom to go with me. We drove down there and he did look as if he had passed out, but when I checked on him, he was only asleep. I drove him home in his car and Mom followed in my car. While we were driving, he asked about the bruises on my arm, and I explained that they were from I.V.'s. He had no such bruises. He also let it slip he had eaten a big breakfast at Denny's, which I thought was odd after getting out of the hospital. Anyway, we get to his house and he asked us to find a receipt in the car because he had bought a pair of pants he wanted us to return to the store.

While looking for the receipt, we found the one from Denny's which showed he had purchased two meals. We also found a receipt from K-Mart one hour after he had called and said he was in the hospital. It was clear he had never been in the hospital. I didn't say anything though. He wanted me to fix his phone, so I did a quick look. There was a number he kept calling while in Lexington. A quick search revealed it was the number for an escort service.

My father had been upset that I wouldn't come and clean up a pizza he had dropped that he had gone to Lexington to meet an escort while giving me a story about the hospital so I would worry. When he was done, he had gotten tired and had basically tricked me into giving him a ride home.

I never confronted him. Either he would yell at me for mistrusting him or get mad that I was snooping. However, that's classic Dad right there.

He was able to drive out of town and go to multiple stores restaurants ect. It is possible that he is manipulating OP into doing ALL the errands she is doing. Does he really even need rides to his appointments? It looks like this is all a scam that he's able to pull off somehow by taking advantage of OP's guilt and sense of duty.