People can be hard. It can be difficult to work out who to trust and who has lost the right of trust. Some people need special care in handling, some people are just toxic and should be avoided. Here we explore a series of ideas that helps you to get from meeting someone, with the assumption that they are decent, to a potential recognition that this person may need to be treated with lots of caution. The Toxic People Mind Toolset helps you navigate a way through seeing someone for whom they are really showing you.
The “Toxic People – Mind Toolset”
The basic Toxic People Mind Toolset is here in pictorial form. The explanation for each step is below.
Please feel free to print or distribute, but please don’t modify it or claim it as your own.
Feel free to let us know if you have questions, would like help, or have a suggestion of how we can improve it.
Assume the Good
Most people are mostly good, most of the time. When you do meet a new person, you should assume that they are going to be mostly good, most of the time.
Assume the Good
When you meet someone, assume they are a decent person.
In the Trust Zones, a new person starts in the Amber Trust Zone, we don’t know if they are trust worthy or not. We begin by giving people a chance to prove themselves to us, but giving them a bit of trust in something that we can afford to go wrong and see how they do.
If there are clear signs that you should be cautious (such as warnings from other people, something feels off about them, who they prefer to associate with etc), then the burden of proof may be a bit higher and the opportunity for them to make mistakes should be given in areas that are more safe and controlled. It is important to protect yourself. Sometimes, a person does not come into our lives in the Amber Zone of caution, they arrive straight in to the Red Zone of Concern.
Principle of Charity
No one is perfect. We are learning, growing and maturing. When we do make a mistake, it is nice to be given a chance to apologise, fix it and where needed, make amends. If we learn from out mistakes, we can become better people.
Let us apply that to another person.
When you meet a person, or are not aware of all of the facts, assume they are trying to do the right thing with the information and abilities they have, that they are trying to say the right thing and don’t know how to say things better, and any ill consequence is hopefully ignorance.
We give to them the Principle of Charity, where we try to see the good intentions they likely meant, even if what they did was a mistake. Additionally, even when mistakes aren’t made per se, we try to see any person’s actions as being of good intent first, and then check for problems only when problems occur.
Principle of Charity: “Interpreting a speaker’s statements/actions in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.”
[Wikipedia on Principle of Charity]
In the Principle of Charity, we are trying to give the person a bias towards them being good and just making an honest mistake, like how we would like people to assume our mistakes.
However, this does have limits.
Hanlon’s Razor
Robert J. Hanlon proposed this philosophical razor in his book “Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Things Go Wrong! (1980)“. While Hanlon has the attribution for this wording, similar statements have been recorded since at least the 18th century.
The idea of this is to prioritise the likely reason someone did something wrong as a simple mistake rather than an act of malice. Even if you think that the action and intent seems malicious, try to see if it was more of a gross error than a malicious goal. Most of the time really bad actions are just mistakes.
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” attributed to Robert J. Hanlon
[Wikipedia Hanlon’s Razor]
Malice is actually quite rare. When you are confronted by an anomalous (rare) situation that seems malicious, in the absence of concrete evidence, this is likely to be a stupid error.
When someone’s action seems malicious, with this razor in mind, it is time to start to investigate. That generally means, look for evidence over opinion and assumption, and go and talk to the person.
Ignorance vs Incapable
If you’ve talked to the person about what went wrong and why that was a problem, then ignorant people will learn and not repeat the rationally explained and reasonably evidenced error. You shouldn’t have to explain too much or go into too much detail to be able to tell the difference between someone trying to learn what went wrong and someone refusing to engage (likely malice), or incapable of engaging (limited capacity aka stupid) in the process.
Margaret Atwood ‘…the difference between stupid and ignorant was that ignorant could learn.”
Alias Grace Quotes by Margaret Atwood
The point of this step is to separate out someone who:
- made an ignorant error,
- someone who can’t understand the error, and
- someone who doesn’t care that their action was harmful
- A caution does need to be put in for those who are short on resources (Spoon Theory]) and need some time to think about the situation
Once you know the kind of person you are dealing with, you can make some decisions about how to handle them. If the person is incapable, then you can try to manage their behaviours. That can be by giving them less opportunity to be harmful, stop trying to educate them on the thing they can’t learn, and limit how much time you are around them.
Grey’s Law
Grey’s Law points out that it at certain levels of harmfulness, it is no longer important to differentiate between someone who is harmful because they can’t understand that their action is harmful (and thus they won’t adjust) and someone who’s goal was to be harmful. What is more important is that they are harmful.
Grey’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”, unknown author
[Gooden, Philip (2015). Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule: Life’s Hidden Laws, Rules and Theories. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-47291503-0.]
While this is a useful idea, the original author is not known. It borrows both Clarke's Three Laws regarding sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic, and Hanlon's Razor from above.
Far too many people get stuck on trying to work out if the person is aware or not of their harmful behaviours, while standing in the place that they are being harmed. Once you have determined that the person is not ignorant of their actions and their consequences, since you’ve told them, the priority shifts from being charitable and trying to help; to getting safe from harm even if they think it is mean and unfair.
At some point, it doesn’t matter if the person is malicious or stupid, if they keep hurting you, they are toxic to you.
Get away from them.
Assumption of Malice
At this point they have lost the presumption of good will. They are harmful.
Once a person has shown an inability to stop hurting you, they are toxic to you.
Get Out.
Waiting until you can prove that they are specifically malicious traps you in being harmed by them, and those who are good at violence will take advantage of your uncertainty to continue to harm you for their benefit. Don’t give them that opportunity.
If you do get proof that they know they are hurting you and don’t care, or even enjoy it, then you can adjust your method to become safe.
In the meanwhile, if you have got to Grey’s Law or below, it is now important to shift your assumption of someone’s behaviour from Mostly Good Most of the Time, to Likely to be either be Harmful Most of the Time, or Harmful When You Can’t Afford It.
Toxic People can do occasional acts that seem nice. Often they do this when they can get Hero Points for it – where someone else will think they are a Good Person for Doing The Thing (toxic people are almost always the Hero or Victim in their stories of themselves, never the perpetrator of harm), or they will use the Good Action as a method to push you to do something for them (transactional behaviour). This often plays on our charity, trying to give a person extra benefits of the doubt and additional chances to prove they can do better than is safe for you. I re-iterate, keeping you confused is part of a toxic person’s tactics. The stopped watch is right twice a day, but that doesn’t make it a good time piece.
Take a look at the Three Pillars to understand how many chances to give a person to do better.
Getting Out
Getting out/away sounds easy when we just say those words, but the reality can be very hard. The malicious person may be your employer, or a partner, or a dependent.
If you need some help to navigate if a situation is toxic or not, speak to a trusted friend, or see a therapist to help get a reality check. Therapists are also generally good at helping you find a way out of messy situations with toxic people, even families. [Book with us now]
We have a series of information on dealing with toxic people under our Domestic Violence page, or take a look at our guide for Escaping Abuse and the fallacy of DV Perpetrator Reform.