If the 2020s had a buzzword, it would be “toxic”. Once reserved for chemicals or contaminated bodies of water, toxic is now the go-to adjective when we encounter a negative person or environment.
“It’s a toxic workplace,” we might suggest, normally denoting a culture of bullying. “He’sa toxic guy,” we might say about a person who gaslights their partner.
Both observations can be fair and an accurate use of words to describe toxicity; the kind we’re all striving to remove from our lives. But what happens when toxic becomes the default way to describe anything we simply don’t like?
Toxic, to me, means poisonous. It’s something that makes you sick, something that can be fatal.
A toxic workplace can definitely make you mentally sick. Whether it’s a passive-aggressive boss or inappropriate comments from your colleagues, micro-aggressions or perpetual mansplaining, these are the kind of things that – over time – can give you situational depression and anxiety.
So, too, can a genuinely toxic person, and there are a few of them around. They are usually manipulative, judgemental and controlling. They are self-centred, lack empathy and make you feel worthless.
Yet these are my personal definitions of toxic. How do you really measure behavioural toxicity, something gauged in science by the effect it has on an organism, a tissue or a cell? Well, you can’t.
Everyone’s tolerance for toxicity is different. And on some level, because social media and the internet in general has eroded a lot of personal boundaries in society, it has been easy for all of us to embrace “toxic” as a definition.
This has also meant we have applied the word toxic to people with a range of human flaws. Maybe they’re terrible communicators, and they’re not actually being pass-agg. Perhaps they’re not manipulative or gaslighting you, they lack emotional intelligence and aren’t as smart as you think they should be.
The issue with using toxic as a catch-all for stuff you don’t like, whether it’s a boyfriend, girlfriend, office, friend group or something else, is that it removes objectivity from the situation. Then it leads us into an echo chamber. By that I mean, we seek confirmation bias about someone or something’s purported toxicity, tell our friends about it purely so they can back us up, and they reinforce our experience as true.
To call everything toxic is to add an unhelpful level of severity to daily occurrences.
The issue with using the term 'toxic' as a catch-all for stuff you don’t like, whether it’s a boyfriend, girlfriend, office, friend group or something else, is that it removes objectivity from the situation. Photo / Getty Images
I had a friend once who I continually referred to as toxic. Drama followed him everywhere he went, and he treated people the same way again and again. His friendships lasted just three months before he had to move on to someone new.
Looking back now, he was an emotionally unstable guy who needed therapy. He kept making the same mistakes because he was in a cycle of self-destruction. He wasn’t toxic; he needed help and support. He didn’t know how to deal with his own emotions. I’ve since reached out, reconnected, and we have a decent friendship now.
Likewise, a toxic workplace might not really be toxic. It could be full of bored and unmotivated workers with wandering minds and a tendency towards gossip and clique-y behaviour. It could be a place with no growth potential, or high turnover because of the nature of the work. Or it could just have inept or antiquated leadership.
If these sorts of things are making you unhappy, you’re right not to like them and to want to make changes. Especially if they negatively affect you, follow you home, affect your sleep or generally cause you stress.
However, we must step back now before labelling anything we dislike as toxic. That word should be reserved for people and places so unmanageable they might as well be infected. The true villains in your life – such as those who repeatedly lie and cheat – will be toxic, and so are physically and mentally dangerous places and spaces. Toxicity is truly traumatising to live with.
When a person or situation falls short of that, calling it toxic does one thing only: it puts them in the bin, creates a shield around you, and removes your own empathy. It paints a picture of a ‘bad guy’ and a ‘good guy’, to which you are always the latter.
This takes away the opportunity for self-reflection and to consider if you are part of the pattern.
When you use the word toxic to dismiss things you don’t like, you’re missing out on fully realising you’re just hurt, embarrassed, challenged or feel disrespected.
This isn’t to say you are the problem. You mightn’t be. But sometimes, acknowledging those internal emotions will help you heal more easily than running away from something you’ve decided to label as poisonous, and then simply discarded.
