‘Toxic people’: The science-free tagline we use to detonate our interpersonal links

Pop psychology gurus love talking about toxicity. Specifically, the harm that toxic people can cause, which run from radioactive residue to minor petrochemical spills. Their message is always the same: there are certain individuals who inherently emanate toxicity. Guides to recognizing these folks abound, how-to’s that serve us in our escape from such terrible influences. These resources enumerate traits that serve as a rundown of evil in its most twisted form: energetic vampirism and chronic envy, subtle manipulation and seamless egotism, systematic negativity and cynical Machiavellianism. “Toxic” is casually lobbed at partners, bosses, parents and so-called friends, their diagnosis discovered by their victims themselves. Apparently, we can all fall prey to toxic people. Not to mention, we can all be labelled as such.

But despite its popularity, toxicity has no basis in science. A definition of its characteristics is impossible, given that it is not an empirically researched phenomenon. Its vagueness is more akin to medieval accusations of witchcraft than any rigorous study of the human mind and behavior. No matter: even without analytical observation or stable criteria, warnings about toxic humans have spread by word of mouth to the point in which they have become a societal mantra.

“We live in an era of pop psychology that gives rise to vapid and dangerous tropes,” says Oriol Lugo, a clinical psychologist and author of ¡Corta por lo sano! (Cut it out for your health’s sake!), a book in which he argues that toxic people don’t exist. He goes on to examine what actually underlies harmful relationships, whose existence he does not dispute. Fabián Ortiz, a psychoanalyst who works at the Barcelona office of mental health organization Vida Plena, points out that, “we are label-sick and this is yet another label that we throw around indiscriminately.” However, if one searches the term online, such dissenting opinions are drowned out by dozens of others — many of them penned by actual mental health professionals — expressing their faith in the fact that toxic people live among us, that they are all but waiting around every corner to drain our self-esteem and corrupt our peace of mind.

Though it is difficult to say with any certainty when the phrase was first used, it’s like that the “toxic” tag was coined by U.S. author Lillian Glass, who published her book Toxic People in 1995. Her work became a worldwide best-seller and the irresistibly evocative term began to spread. On her website, Glass, who has no psychological training, calls herself “the first lady of communication.” Another one of her books goes one step further in the detection of these threatening subjects, and offers a guide to identifying the emotional terrorists by sight by using body language analysis. Elsewhere, other authors have made toxic people their brand, like Spain’s Bernardo Stamatea. His countrywoman Marian Rojas Estapé even coined a term for the antithesis of toxic folk: “vitamin people.” “These are labels that work very well as a marketing strategy to sell books,” says Lugo.

According to Buenaventura del Charco, a psychologist and author of the book Hasta los cojones del pensamiento positivo (politely translated as I’ve had it with positive thinking), this kind of discretionary labeling responds “to the logic of the consumer society in personal relationships: that each one gives or takes away, that one type gives you good things and another gives you bad things, with no gray areas.” Aside from this being a Manichean simplism, Del Charco sees labeling someone as toxic as an implication of moral authority that “inhibits self-criticism.” Lugo adds that “blaming others is very convenient.” And Ortiz places emphasis on the idea of relationships being a field of personal growth. “When I don’t like something about someone, perhaps I could question what is happening to me with that other person. Perhaps, that other person questions me, unsettles me,” Ortiz says.

Instead of helping us to look within, Ortiz continues, the toxicity metaphor pushes us to attack or flee, logical reactions to perceived danger. There are doubtlessly relationships — both romantic and otherwise — that are so treacherous that a participant’s best course of action is to take a step back. But the psychologist warns that it’s important to not “forget that the problem is taking place in the space of the relationship and does not stem from some ontological aspect that is inherent to certain people.” The infinite diversity of human interactions, collisions and couplings — not to mention the harms and benefits such encounters bring to us — will forever be contextual. “There will always be behaviors that are harmful to someone and not to others,” says Del Charco.

Narcissism and other personality disorders

Toxic traits are often confused with the symptoms of actual personality disorders. Two manuals published by Cambridge and Oxford Universities include in this category everything from paranoid thinking to antisocial patterns, and dramatic histrionics. Assuming these categories are valid, many descriptions of toxic people would point to them being pathological. But such an alarmist analysis might fail to note the differences between mental illness and that which is traditionally referred to as “having a bad temper.” Conflating a casually observed “toxicity” with such diagnoses, says Del Charco, does not encourage individuals who see themselves as victims “to understand why some people behave in certain ways.” The toxic conclusion is almost always protectionist, moralizing: run away, save yourself!

Irredeemable narcissism is a constant in the swirling layperson’s image of a toxic person so reinforced by internet experts. Once again — somewhat paradoxically — Ortiz sees in the label’s widespread use a tendency to look out exclusively for one’s own needs and to give up relationships with the slightest hiccup. “In order not to project, in order to not insist that everything is the other person’s fault, I’ve got to leave narcissism aside and work on myself, take responsibility for my own discomfort,” he says. Lugo notes that mass labeling of toxicity may be related to symptoms of our own infantilized society and a manifestation of the cultural pendulum. “We come from a past in which violence was normalized and now we are at the other extreme, where everything can be offensive.”

When accusatory fingers are pointed in all directions, Del Charco warns that fear of social stigma can lead to “emotional repression, to pretending to be better than we are so that others do not distance themselves from us.” On the flip side, he continues, fear of the corrosive power of toxic individuals can lead to excessive feelings of fragility, “as if we were made out of porcelain.” Del Charco suggests that confidence is key when it comes to moving through the world, and particularly when dealing with people who are not always to our liking — as well as defending ourselves when the situation calls for it. “There are people who are a pain in the ass or who are bitter, but except in extreme situations, that’s not such a big deal. We can bear it, we don’t have to eradicate them from our lives, but rather, we can learn to set limits when necessary.”

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