Monday, October 8, 2012

Toxic Avenger

     They stand there, in the middle of the kitchen, drinking your wine, telling you how your cooking it wrong. You didn't invite them, they knew you would be cooking dinner and decided you could feed them too. They will tell you how life isn't fair to them, but yet how they are perfect and successful while making subtle ( or not so subtle ) little insults implying that you are not. They are Toxic Joybreakers.
     "You know you look like you've gained a little weight", they say while digging through your fridge looking for food to fill up on before dinner. Everywhere you need to go in the kitchen they somehow magically appear in front of it, refusing to move, wielding their personal problems like kryptonite, keeping you at bay.
     "I'm a good person, maybe I can help", you tell yourself. Of course any advice you might give them is either completely ignored or they launch into a conversation on how completely wrong your advice is.
     While they are sidetracked, looking for more of your wine to drink and telling you about your shortcomings, you finally manage to get your family's dinner ready.
     About this time the Toxic Joybreaker will serve themselves first, taking 2 portions of everything, making sure there is only enough left to feed three out of the four people in the house. So you decide to go without dinner so one of your children doesn't have to. By the time you finally get to sit down, the Toxic Joybreaker has taken about four bites of their double sized dinner and announced that they are full ( having filled up on your kid's lunch earlier in the evening ). Mercifully the Toxic Joybreaker looks at their phone, say they have plans, and walk out the door, leaving their barely touched dinner on the table for you to clean up.
     Everybody has one of these people in their life. They thrive on drama and love to involve as many people as possible. If they are unhappy, then they will go out of their way to make sure you are just as unhappy. So what do you do?
     You have two choices you can submit or you can stand up for yourself. That's it, those are your only choices. Anything in between will inevitably lead to submitting. The Toxic Joybreaker is a bully, and like most bullies, the only cure is to stand up them. Once stood up too they will realize that it is to much work to try and bully you and move on to someone else. The problem is once you stand up to them, you have to keep them on a short leash to prevent them from sliding back into old habits.
     So how do you stand up to them?  It's a fairly simple thing. When a bear attacks you in the wild, you are supposed to wave your hands around ( to make yourself look like angry, dangerous prey ) and yell loudly, to frighten the bear. So pretty much the same concept. Be firm, wave your hands around if you have to, and yell loudly ( drop the F-bomb for effect if needed ). Then tell them to leave, this is to give yourself time to cool down and give the Toxic Joybreaker time to reconsider. Most importantly do not apologize for standing up for yourself.

Statement:
"Have you put on weight, maybe you should use the fat free salad dressing"

Proper Response:
"GET the F!@# out of my kitchen!"  

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