Telling It Like It Is

Telling It Like It Is is one of my favorite blogs because Lin Bur­ress does just that: She writes about top­ics that do or have impacted her on a per­sonal level. And she is not afraid to tackle dif­fi­cult sub­jects such as “friend­ship, mar­riage, divorce, chil­dren & teenagers, in-laws, elderly par­ents, blended fam­i­lies, abuse, abu­sive rela­tion­ships, blog­ging, research­ing and learn­ing more effi­cient ways of writ­ing, jour­nal­ing, the best ways of increas­ing read­er­ship, etc.” She puts a great deal of thought and effort into the arti­cles she pub­lishes, fre­quently pro­vid­ing links that afford read­ers an oppor­tu­nity to per­form fur­ther research themselves.

Lin Bur­ress tells it like it is.

On August 11, 2008, she delved into a sub­ject that struck a chord with me, as well as many other read­ers: Toxic Rela­tion­ships — Toxic Fam­ily Mem­bers. And it is that post that has earned Lin the Post of the Day Award.

Every fam­ily has at least one mem­ber who is toxic because he/she drags other fam­ily mem­bers down and leaves them feel­ing “angry, worn out, deflated, belit­tled, ridiculed or con­fused.” But few peo­ple are will­ing to speak out about the man­ner in which that indi­vid­ual impacts fam­ily dynam­ics. Still fewer blog­gers have writ­ten about the very real phenomenon.

Lin defines toxic peo­ple as “extremely neg­a­tive, mis­er­able, whiny, jeal­ous, incon­sid­er­ate, finan­cially irre­spon­si­ble and enti­tled, manip­u­la­tive, nar­cis­sis­tic, self­ish, dis­re­spect­ful, gos­sip mon­gers, men­tally and emo­tion­ally abu­sive bul­lies who have no bound­aries.” Toxic peo­ple usu­ally suf­fer from extremely low self-confidence or self-esteem. There­fore, as Lin reminders her audi­ence, their “tox­i­c­ity has every­thing to do with them and noth­ing to do with you.” Still, that can be small com­fort when you are being manip­u­lated by some­one with toxic characteristics.

Lin offers sug­gested cop­ing mech­a­nisms, acknowl­edg­ing that, in extreme cases, it can become nec­es­sary to “phys­i­cally and men­tally dis­tance your­self from the neg­a­tive and toxic peo­ple in your life, which may or may not include cut­ting the per­son out of your life entirely.”

Lin asked her read­ers to share a per­sonal story or ask a ques­tion about their own sit­u­a­tion. The result is that the com­ments are as enlight­en­ing as the arti­cle itself, so make sure that you read them, along with Lin’s excel­lent article.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Lin, for your will­ing­ness to tackle “squirm-worthy” top­ics head-on, speak­ing the truth as you under­stand and per­ceive it. As you aptly point out, a cyber­space dia­logue can often “touch the heart of some­one hav­ing sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences or dif­fi­cul­ties, [and reaf­firm] how much eas­ier it is when you know you are not alone.”

And con­grat­u­la­tions on receiv­ing the Post of the Day Award!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Post of the Day Award, Telling It Like It Is, The Ris­ing Blogger

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• Vent … a Series of Takes
• Tricia’s Musings