How to Deal With Toxic People

Toxic people can be found everywhere in society. Sometimes we find toxic people among our friends, our neighbors, or even our family.  So, in one way or another, we have no choice but to deal with these people. While doing so, we also must have the intention to not hurt others, and to not get hurt ourselves. I will tell you a wonderful story that shows us how Buddha dealt with a toxic person:

One day, a man came to the Buddha, and he started yelling, insulting, and cursing Buddha. Do you know how Buddha faced that situation?

He was smiling.

He didn’t have any reaction throughout the conversation. He put a positive smile on his face, looking at the person who was yelling at him very kindly. Now, after some time, the man stopped yelling. Everything that he had packed down inside him was out. He was finished.

Then Buddha asked him a wonderful question. It did not quite suit the situation; it was out of the blue. The Buddha asked, “Do you get visitors to your home?”

The man was astonished. Taken aback, he replied, “Yes, I get many visitors to my home.”

The Buddha kindly asked him, “Do you treat them with food and drink?”

The man replied, “Yes, I do treat them.”

Then the Buddha said, “What if they do not accept what you have given them? What if they do not accept your food and drink?”

Then the man laughed at the Buddha and said, “If they do not accept my treats, then the treats belong to me. I will eat and drink them.”

With a great and wonderful smile on his face, the Buddha said, “The same goes with this situation. You treated me with rude and harsh words. You treated me with anger. But I do not accept what you have tried to give to me. I will never accept those rude and harsh words that you treated me with. So, since I do not accept anything that you have given, then everything that you tried to give me belongs to you. You must eat it yourself.”

The man was amazed, but his anger cooled down. The Buddha preached the dhamma to him, and after that, the man became a follower.

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Now, see how positively and how successfully our great Buddha dealt with that toxic person? If we were in that situation, what would our reaction be? Normally, when people are yelling at us, we try to talk back to them. We try to prove them wrong. We try to control them with our rude and harsh words. But Buddha said, “If you react with anger to the person who is treating you with anger, that means you are accepting their food and eating it with them.”

Whenever you are in such situations, whenever you face toxic people, whenever people around you are angry, what do you have to do instead?

The first thing that you must do is put a positive smile on your face. Never show them your sad or angry face. If you do, that means you are providing what they want, since they are coming to you expecting to hurt you. If you show them that you are hurt, then they are successful. You provide them with what they wanted.

Put on a smile. Be a positive person. Be a bigger person, because when you get angry, you become mentally weak. Remember that mentally weak people express their anger easily. The reason they are expressing their anger to another person so openly is that they don’t have a strong mentality.

To be the bigger guy, you have to be positive, you have to smile, and you have to be motivated with virtues and morals. Don’t try to talk back to them. Instead, listen to what they say. Set apart the person speaking and focus on what they are saying. Sometimes they may be yelling at you because of a mistake that they think you have made, but sometimes you haven’t made it.

If you have made some mistake and that is the reason that they are yelling at you, then you have to correct your mistake. But never show the face of anger or sadness. Just correct the mistake.

If you haven’t made any mistake and still they are complaining, don’t try to prove them wrong. When our mind gets deluded, or when our mind is covered by anger, we shut our eyes and ears and open our mouths. We cannot see anything, we cannot hear anything. So what is best is to stay silent. Silence can give answers to many problems.

If you need to prove them wrong, prove them wrong with your success, not with your words. That is how we do it. The best practice that you can do to generate skill is to practice the mind of loving-kindness. If you love yourself, you will never enjoy making yourself angry. If you love yourself, you will have the opportunity to love others. And if you love others, you will never try to hurt those people with rude and angry words. Practice loving-kindness, practice compassion. Love, compassion, care—these things can provide many answers to the problems that pop up in our life. You always need to be kind. You always need to be humble. And, most importantly, remember being humble is not being weak.

These situations require mental skill. Now, this can be built by visualizing to yourself how you’re going to face such a situation. Try to visualize a situation like that now, if you can. If you can see that you have a good smile on your face, and you are fearless in listening to those people, then you are handling that situation very successfully. This visualization will help you to deal in a real situation like that. Practice that.

This is how we deal with toxic people: Never provide what they want. When they come to you, they need anger from you. They need to hurt you. Do not provide that. If you do not provide it, you will handle it successfully. Namo Buddhaya.

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Adapted from a dharma talk titled “How to Deal With Toxic People,” originally uploaded by the @BuddhismInEnglish YouTube channel.