Thou Shalt Not Tolerate Shitty People.

Adultery, stealing... bearing false witness – yeah – things we should probably consider as rules to live by but where was Moses at with the shitty people?

If I was to etch rules on a stone for the good of mankind– this would be the numero uno on my list. It’s taken me 36 years, 10 months, and eleven days to write this article, a few years post my realization, and not a year too soon.

For 36 years I have tolerated ‘shitty people’ for the good of keeping the peace, to appease and to avoid conflict, through fear of being reprimanded, losing mutual friends, losing face, being isolated, rejected, and letting people down. In my desire to tolerate I have become intolerant of myself. The peace I have sought by ignoring these willful aresholes has waged a war inside me – that has manifested in many ways – none of them serve to make me happy or healthy.

We can identify shitty people by looking at ourselves deeply. How do you feel when you are in their company? What does your gut scream at you when you talk with them? How is your nervous system responding when you are around them?

White knuckles gritted teeth and clenched jaws are not the tell-tale signs of a healthy relationship. Gut churning, zoning out, hearing your conscience call you out for selling out each time you smile and agree. That’s not a sign of a healthy relationship.

Harboring resentment, internalizing, silently wishing you were anywhere but with them. That’s not the hallmark of a healthy relationship – that’s a clear and loud sign you are tolerating shitty people – and you need to ask yourself why!

Inauthentic acquaintances, friendships, or relationships do not serve anyone, and they graze away at our authentic selves until we are left questioning the reality of everything around us.

Humans are predisposed toward connection. We need it, it's essential. But forced connection – only leaves us with a short fuse and a defunct engine.

Shitty people don’t always come with a label, shitty people probably don’t even know they are shitty. I am not talking about ‘in your face’ disagreements or people that you clearly have beef with. I am talking about the subtle shitty friendships and traits in our relationships that we tolerate because we believe it is for the greater good.

The rude relative that we dread seeing at the family gathering because their low-key sarcasm and muted aggression make us feel deeply uncomfortable. The person in our friendship group consistently gossips about others but smiles sweetly to their faces. Incivility in the workplace hidden behind plastic values or the parent in the playground that thinks it's ok to berate a five-year-old or shame another struggling parent for their refusal to join the club!

Shitty people will come at you in all sorts of guises and sizes – but what they will all have in common is the ability to trigger a response within you that makes you feel like something is off. Shitty people sweep in and deliver an unwanted gift directly to your nervous system – that gift is wrapped in inauthentic intentions and tied with a bow of ‘put up and shut up’.

Shitty people can be sat around our dinner table, can be entwined in our closest circles, and tied to us by blood. We often see these are solid reasons to tolerate – the threads that bind may be so strong that we don’t just believe we have to tolerate it – we become accustomed to it as if it is our duty.

So why do we tolerate this? And how do these shitty people create this path into our lives which we repeatedly allow them to tread?

Psychology gives us a few insights into why we tolerate toxicity, accept the bad in people because of the good or the familial ties, and continue in this cycle for years and years even though these interactions sit on every nerve in our bodies. Here are three reasons why:

The lure of the slot machine – chasing the high.

Intermittent reinforcement is the most used behavioral weapon in the shitty person's arsenal. This article explains the basis and theory behind this concept, it states: Intermittent Reinforcement is a term that originated from B.F. Skinner’s theories on Operant Conditioning and Behaviourism. Skinner carried out studies with rats. When the rats pressed a lever, they were rewarded with food each time (Continuous Reinforcement). After a while, the researchers changed the parameters of the experiment. The rats were rewarded with food in an unpredictable pattern. Sometimes pressing the lever would reward them with food, and other times it would not. The pattern was completely random, so the rats could not predict whether they would receive the reward or not. The result of this was that the rats became obsessed with pressing the lever! After a while, the researchers changed the set up again so that there was no reward at any time when the rats pressed the lever. They were expecting that the rats would give up pressing the lever. However, the opposite occurred. The rats continued to press the lever obsessively, even neglecting their own hygiene and other needs.

So, rats aside – one of the key reasons we don’t walk away from shitty people is because we are addicted to the cycle. Every time we think they are bad; they do something good. I like to call this slap and soothe. It's also the reason many people stay in abusive relationships.

Slot machines/casinos also use this as a tactic to keep you spending money. You get little snippets of reward, and this feels great so you keep adding more and more money to the hungry machine in desperate desire to replicate that feeling – knowing it's possible and in blind faith that you will be victorious. We do the same with shitty people that use this tactic. We let the lows become overshadowed by the highs and keep going around on this carousel of punishment and reward.

Your return on Investment

“Yeah, she makes me feel like crap, but we have known each other since High School” sound familiar? So often we associate the value of a friendship or a relationship with the time we have invested in them.

Time spent does not always equate to good intentions.

That also goes for family too. Blood is thicker than water, yeah, but that’s just viscosity. It doesn’t always mean virtue or is it a predeterminer of our need to ignore toxic behavior.

Yet somewhere in our psyches, we tolerate shitty behavior most of all from those closest to us or those that share our DNA. In my book, and what I’ve come to realise is that this brand of shitty person is not only the worst variety – but also the hardest to confront and shake.

We are invested, we are conditioned, and we instinctively offer this shitty person a get out of jail free card. When in reality – we should root this line of shitty person out first as it can be the one that offers us the longest-term losses. Sometimes it's our family tree that needs the most pruning.

You are afraid of the Collateral Damage

I know from experience when I have tolerated a shitty person it's usually for the good of someone else and not myself. Not wanting to cause someone else deep pain by exposing a shitty mutual friend or cutting off a tie in the fear of people you do care about being collateral damage - this is not a fix, it’s a plaster on a wound. What this then builds is resentment and distance between you and that person.

You will inadvertently start resenting the person you care for in the process. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In your desire to apply distance between you and the shitty one – you put distance between you and that person and all they associate with. Sometimes the thought of that can be enough to make us stay. The fear of isolating yourself, being ostracized, or dealing with FOMO can often be too much to bear – we would rather smile through clenched teeth and deal with the nervous system disruption that will create – than upset the apple cart.

Let’s be real and clear here – any friendship that can’t withstand your personal and emotional boundaries is not a friendship worth pursuing. Getting honest, real fast will test a friendship but it will also highlight that which are worth keeping.

From my experience tolerating shitty people and going back for seconds, thirds and fourths will only ever result in stress and self-loathing. Our bodies are receptive little vessels and our internal alarm bells are there for a very good reason. We need to not only learn how to listen to our nervous system responses but also act on them. Boundaries are our friends. So, go forth and snippety snip, prune those trees, unclench the jaw, loosen the grip, and let them go.

The more we tolerate, the more we are teaching people how to treat us.

Image Credit: Photo by Dziana Hasanbekava from Pexels