The definition of "toxic" seems nebulous enough that the word gets thrown around as a thought-terminating cliché. Better to be more specific about the type of behavior such as "controlling", "dishonest", "passive aggressive " etc.
I googled it and came up with lists of everything under the sun. I agree people need to specify what is happening otherwise it is impossible to guess what they mean. I can say "My MIL is Toxic - what should I do?" Nobody can say, really, without more information.
Yes, because generally when people say that someone is toxic, what they are actually indicating is that they, themselves, or someone they love, has been damaged by another person's conduct.
It's often more an indicator of how the speaker is feeling than what the other person has done exactly.
For example, my mother has a lot of psychological damage herself and engages in behaviours that were highly toxic for me as a child/teen, to the point that I had to leave home.
She still does the exact same shit, but I am not vulnerable to her, I have excellent boundaries, and her behaviour is now experienced by me as "silly/ridiculous" not "toxic."
Her behaviours are extremely unhealthy, and if someone wanted to categorize her behaviours as "toxic" in general, I wouldn't agree because they actively cause damage to other people who remain vulnerable to them.
But it really helps to understand that the concept of "toxic" behaviour is about the impact it has on the people around them, especially their children.
So if you hear someone say that someone else is "toxic," the meaning is more that that person is saying that they, or someone else they care about has been harmed by that person's behaviour.
Whether it's important to know exactly what that behavior is entirely depends on
your motives with the person speaking.
Are you looking to make that person justify their claim or are you looking to understand the impact they've experienced? Both may involve an exploration of what the hell happened to them, but one will be more focused on you assessing the "facts" while the other is more focused on you understanding how the person perceived the experience.
So if you're looking for a nice and tidy definition of "what this person did is toxic" or "what that person did was uncool but not toxic" those definitions don't exist.
Toxicity is the complex interplay between unhealthy behaviours of one person and how those behaviours impact someone else.
If your goal is to understand the "toxic" person, then the focus should be on understanding what makes them emotionally unhealthy and how those behaviours manifest.
If your goal is to understand the person who used the word "toxic" then the focus should be on understanding how they were injured.
All toxic interactions exist because of a
combination of unhealthy behaviours impacting people who are vulnerable to damage from those specific behaviors. Toxicity is the
interaction, not the unhealthy behaviours themselves.
If you Google a list of toxic behaviours, you will find the common unhealthy interpersonal behaviours that are most likely to cause damage on average.
But the actual toxicity comes down to the combination of people involved.
It's similar to how you could Google a list of "romantic" behaviours, but they'll only actually be romantic if the receiver experiences them that way. Otherwise romantic behaviours could be experienced as, you guessed it, toxic, lol.
