Can You Offer Grace and Mercy to Toxic People?
When I was at the hair salon the other day, my new stylist and I had entered into the part of a complex color visit that requires her attention and my silence. Right next to us, another stylist greeted her return client, and the conversation that they had made me continue into deep thought about something that seems to be an increasing trend: the client was confirming that her family had cut off some extended family. They were toxic, and she and her husband and determined that continuing to engage with them was not good for their marriage or their children.
Now, I am living both sides of this story, and it still makes me uncomfortable. My questions are:
- How do they know for sure that they aren’t just being disagreeable and selfish?
- Do they have genuine concern for these relatives and wish them well, or are they bitter about something temporal?
- What happened to grace and mercy?
- Why in the world does it seem like there are so very many people who are genuinely narcissistic?
- What have we done as a society to create so many toxic people who cause emotional harm to their family and friends by smashing healthy boundaries and making everything about themselves?
Hearing stories from friends about similar issues in their families, I know that we’re not alone. It’s heartbreaking nonetheless to know that so many families will have these fractures for exquisitely real and painful reasons. There are fractured families from divorce, infidelity, and abuse of all kinds. Largely, it seems that much of it is incredible selfishness.
Why Does Television Glorify Toxic Relationships?
Watching “Gilmore Girls” with my older girls, I’m struggling to see how this fixes itself. It hurts to watch the show, because Lorelai is treated so horribly by her mother. I know she gets some potshots in from time to time, but her mother is cruel. Knowing how it ends is fairly disappointing, because Lorelai forgives her mother who moves on to caring deeply for an entire family in a way that she can never seem to manage for her own child. Maybe it hits a little too close to home, but it is incredibly unsatisfying having forgiveness without actual love and compassion.
It’s so incredibly difficult to communicate with people who show little to no compassion or empathy for others. Perhaps it’s even harder when those same people manage to eek it out just for a “golden” few. Where did all of this psychological trauma come from? What can we do? Nothing. We can only do what we can do; we can’t change other people.
What Can We Do?
So, how do we live with this? We raise our kids to be compassionate. We forgive wrongs against us. We protect our kids from extreme cruelty and dangerous relationships. It shouldn’t be a given that when you forgive someone for wronging you they are immediately brought back into your circle of trust. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting, and it is reckless sometimes to expect change from someone who has asked for forgiveness when they may well just be in the habit of continued transgressions.
Forgiveness is for you, not the person who has wronged you. If forgiveness doesn’t seem like enough, finding a really good therapist may be especially helpful moving forward to work through the residual feelings and interactions. Most especially if you have children, they are the legacy of their interactions. Do what you can to safeguard them and prepare them for spreading light and love wherever they can. I prayed for the lady at the hair salon and for her family, because there was absolutely nothing else I could do in that moment. It sounded like they were in therapy already, so they may very well have considered quite a bit to come to such a drastic decision.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? I definitely feel like I have more questions than answers to this problem. Have you struggled with people like this in your life? How have you and your family handled the situation? Share your thoughts in the comments.