Five years ago, I was fortunate to meet a man named Gasana at a clinic in Nairobi, Kenya. I had several conversations with him over the course of the month, and what I remember most is that his kindness was amazingly genuine.

The feeling for me was that he had done a lot of inner work to identify the life principles that he strove to live by.

One day, I asked him why he chose to eat his meals alone rather than with other people. After a bit of silence, he told me that he was getting some negative vibes from a new colleague, and that he felt that it was best for his resting experience to stay away from that energy.

I remember him using the word toxic to describe the other collegue’s energy not in a malicious way, but with a thoughtful and observational tone.

Gasana’s thoughts on avoiding unnecessary toxic energy have stayed with me over some time. I feel that this facet of living is a vastly underrated determinant of health and overall quality of life.

We know that our emotional health status has constant influence over the health of every organ system in our bodies, particularly our nervous and endocrine systems. And clearly, our emotional health is largely affected by our daily interactions with others.

So it stands to reason, that learning how to identify and effectively deal with toxic influences are important skills to develop when looking to experience optimal health.

From this perspective, it is important to understand how to identify and detect toxicity of the human being. I think it’s safe to say that a person is toxic to your health if his or her behaviour makes you feel bad on a regular basis.

Clearly, there are exceptions for example, if a close friend or family member shares a concern about certain behaviour with a spirit of wanting to improve the exisisting relationship, you may feel bad and your sense of emotional well-being may take a temporary hit. But it does not make sense to label such friends or family members as being toxic.

Some of the toxic instances may be an attempt to intimidate you by yelling or becoming violent in any manner that is not good for example slamming a door is a violent act.

Other toxic instances include slandering others behind their backs that is to say trying to engage you in gossip that is hurtful to others.

People need to preserve their health after they have identified a person as being toxic to their health. This depends on the role that the toxic person plays in a person’s life. Although it is virtually impossible to categorize all such people into neat boxes

The most important measure to protect yourself from toxic people is to first think carefully about your own behaviour to see if you may have done or said something to cause the other party’s behaviour.

If you can identify something that you did that likely offended the other party, if possible offer a sincere apology. If he or she accepts your apology, things work out well for both parties. If your apology is not accepted, you can at least walk away with some peace of mind, knowing that you owned up to your behaviour.

If you cannot think of a single thing that you did that could have offended the other party, give him or her peace and walk away. Confronting the other party about unkind behaviour is not likely to be fruitful, since you do not have to co-exist on a regular basis.

Ends