How to Handle Anxiety When You’re Around Toxic People | Ep. 458

In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan shares compassionate, practical tools to help you manage anxiety around “toxic” or triggering people—without losing your peace, your confidence, or your values. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why your anxiety skyrockets around certain people—and how to calm your nervous system in the moment.
• A powerful metaphor that helps you “stay in your lane” when others try to pull you into chaos.
• The difference between healthy boundaries and trying to control someone else’s behavior.
• How to stop ruminating and start responding from your values instead of your emotions.
• Why letting people misunderstand or dislike you can be one of the kindest gifts you give yourself.
• Simple, self-compassionate steps to protect your peace without cutting yourself off from the world.

How to Handle Anxiety Around Toxic People (Without Losing Yourself)

Have you ever walked away from a conversation and felt completely dysregulated — like your mind is spinning, your heart is racing, and your anxiety is through the roof? Maybe you find yourself replaying every word, feeling like you somehow “absorbed” the other person’s negative energy.

You’re not alone — and there’s a way to care for yourself without losing hours to rumination or self-blame.

In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, Kimberley Quinlan shares a compassionate, skills-based approach to managing anxiety around “toxic” or triggering people — while staying grounded, kind, and true to yourself.

 

Why Anxiety Skyrockets Around Certain People

Our brains are wired to detect danger. So when you’re around someone who feels unsafe, unpredictable, or critical, your brain naturally sounds the alarm.

This anxiety might arise for a few reasons:

• Past hurt or fear of future harm. Your brain recognizes the person as someone who could hurt you again — so it tries to protect you.
• Insecure thoughts or core beliefs. Sometimes, we feel triggered because a person has hit on something we already feel insecure about.
• Conflict or boundary struggles. Maybe you have difficulty saying no, or you tend to people-please, which can make interactions feel especially overwhelming.

Kimberley reminds us: some people truly aren’t healthy for us, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t to label or judge, but to care for your own mental and emotional well-being.

 

Rethinking the Word “Toxic”

While the episode title includes “toxic people,” Kimberley encourages us to rethink that language.

The word toxic literally means “poisonous” — something life-threatening. When we label someone this way, our brains may interpret it as a real, immediate danger, which only fuels more anxiety.

Instead, try softer, more mindful language:

• “That person really triggers me.”
• “I’m having a hard time being around them.”
• “They tend to hit on my insecurities.”

Language matters. By choosing words that reduce alarm, you’re already taking a compassionate step toward calming your nervous system.

 

The “Stay in Your Lane” Metaphor

One of Kimberley’s most powerful metaphors is that your life is like driving your own car.

You get to choose:

• The music you play
• The route you take
• The speed you go
• The thoughts you think about yourself

Meanwhile, everyone else is driving their own car beside you. Some drivers may be kind and courteous. Others might honk, criticize, or even try to swerve into your lane.

Your job?
Stay in your lane.

You can’t control how others drive — but you can control how you respond, how you think, and where you place your attention.

Four Options for Dealing with Difficult People

When faced with someone who triggers your anxiety, Kimberley outlines four options — one unhelpful and three healthy.

1. The Unhelpful Option: Engaging in the Chaos

You might find yourself replaying their words, doubting yourself, and ruminating for hours. This is completely human — but it’s also the option that drains your energy and worsens anxiety.

2. Healthy Option #1: Setting a Boundary

Boundaries are not about controlling others — they’re about deciding how you will respond.

Instead of saying:

“You have to stop talking to me that way!”

Try:

“If you speak to me unkindly, I’ll need to step away from this conversation.”

Boundaries define your behavior in response to theirs — and that’s where your power lies.

3. Healthy Option #2: Choosing a New Route

If someone consistently disrespects your boundaries, you may need to change your route — meaning limit or remove contact when possible. This isn’t punishment; it’s self-respect.

4. Healthy Option #3: Staying in Your Lane (When You Can’t Avoid Them)

Sometimes you can’t avoid the person — maybe it’s a coworker or family member. In that case, your focus shifts to self-regulation:

• Stay present.
• Focus on your values.
• Use mindfulness to ground yourself when you’re triggered.

You can let them have their opinions while remembering: opinions are not facts.

Mindfulness: Your Anchor in Chaos

When anxiety spikes in the presence of a difficult person, grounding yourself in the present moment is key. Try noticing:

• What you can see, hear, smell, and feel
• The sensation of your hands on the steering wheel (literally or metaphorically)
• The fact that this feeling — like all feelings — will pass

Staying mindful allows you to feel your emotions without being ruled by them.

 

How to Set (and Hold) Boundaries with Kindness

Healthy boundaries are compassionate acts — both for you and others. Kimberley suggests practicing:

• Clarity: Know what behavior feels okay and what doesn’t.
• Consistency: Follow through with what you’ve said you’ll do.
• Self-kindness: Expect discomfort. Setting limits can feel scary at first, but it’s a sign of growth.

And remember: you can also set internal boundaries — for example, promising yourself not to ruminate after every difficult interaction.

 

Let People Misunderstand You

One of the kindest things you can do for yourself?
Let people misunderstand you.

Not everyone will like you, agree with you, or get you — and that’s okay. Just like not everyone likes the same food or music, not everyone will align with who you are. Releasing the need for approval frees up your energy for the people who truly see and value you.

 

Don’t Argue with A-Holes 

Kimberley puts it bluntly: Don’t argue with a-holes.
You will not win an argument with someone who’s intent on misunderstanding you.

Instead, she suggests:

• Step back.
• Reaffirm your values.
• Set a self-boundary: “I will not spend my energy trying to convince them.”

You’re not the “jackass whisperer.” You don’t need to fix people who aren’t interested in being kind.

 

Feel Your Feelings — But Don’t Act from Them

It’s normal to feel angry, hurt, or ashamed after being triggered.
Give yourself permission to feel those emotions — but resist acting from them.

When you’re flooded with emotion:

• Slow down
• Take care of yourself (breathe, walk, journal, call a friend)
• Remind yourself of what’s in your control

Strong emotions are valid, but they don’t have to dictate your next move.

 

Staying Aligned with Your Values

When someone criticizes you or tries to pull you off course, your best defense is to stay anchored in your values.

If someone says:

“You’ll never be good at that.”
You can respond internally:
“That’s your opinion. My job is to stay true to what I love.”

Values act as your compass — helping you stay centered no matter what chaos surrounds you.

 

Key Takeaways

• You can’t control others — only yourself.
• Stay in your lane. Focus on your own car, your own journey, and your own peace.
• Set boundaries with kindness. Boundaries protect your well-being without demanding others change.
• Let go of the need for everyone to like or understand you.
• Practice mindfulness. It’s your best tool for staying present when anxiety flares.
• Act from values, not emotions.

 

Final Thoughts

You deserve to be treated with respect and kindness — always.
But when life brings difficult people your way, remember this: you still hold the keys to your car.

You get to decide how you respond, what direction you drive, and what thoughts you bring along for the ride.

Be gentle with yourself. Take small steps. And above all, practice compassion — for yourself first. 

 

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

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Transcription: How to Handle Anxiety When You’re Around Toxic People

Welcome everybody. We are going to talk about how to handle anxiety around toxic people, and this is specifically for those. We want to focus on doing this without ruminating for hours and without completely losing ourselves in the process. So here is the big question. Have you ever walked away from a conversation with someone and felt completely.

 

Dysregulated, you feel so bad about yourself. You feel like you’re going completely crazy all of a sudden, and you can’t help but overthink the entire interaction. A lot of my clients will say to me, it feels like I absorb people’s negative energy. They might say, when she acts this way, I get so triggered, I just cannot control myself.

 

They lose control completely. Or maybe they say, my anxiety goes through the roof, and I overthink. Everything as soon as I’m around this person. So today we are gonna talk about how we can care for you and your anxiety when you’re dealing with these quote unquote toxic people. Whether it’s your coworker, it’s your friend, your family member, doesn’t matter.

 

We are going to give you, I’m gonna give you a really, really good metaphor that I use with my clients. All the time. Now, here is what we’re doing on the agenda today. Number one, we are gonna talk about why anxiety skyrockets around certain people. Number two, how to set boundaries that you can actually help reduce your anxiety even if it feels terrifying in that moment.

 

We’re also gonna talk about the skill of staying. Quote, unquote, in your lane even when someone is trying to pull you back into that chaos. And lastly, we’re gonna talk about how to radically take care of yourself instead of spiraling four hours. So welcome. My name is Kimberly Quinlan. This is your Anxiety toolkit.

 

This is a podcast where I teach. Everything you need to know about anxiety so you can go and live your biggest, most beautiful life. I’m an anxiety specialist and my mission is to offer you tools that you can use every single day in your anxiety recovery, self-compassion. First, always in every one of our online courses at CBT score, we start the course by saying, let’s put the objective, the agenda, the priority to start with self-compassion first, always.

 

Now, the other thing I want you to remember is we are going to take small baby steps here. As you can imagine, it is much easier to take a small step than to try and climb up a huge step. Climbing up a huge step is gonna feel unbearable and too hard, and you probably won’t even try. But if you put it in the way of making small baby steps, you’re much more likely to be successful.

 

So let’s get going. So why does your anxiety skyrocket when you’re around? Certain people, the most important thing to remember here is our brain is wired to detect danger. If it perceives there to be danger, it’s going to send anxiety out. And so if there is somebody who doesn’t feel safe to you, your brain is going to create anxiety.

 

Now another thing to remember here is maybe your brain has identified them as somebody who has hurt you in the past or could hurt you in the future. And for that reason, your brain’s naturally going to create a lot of anxiety to try and warn you against this person. Now, the other reason you might be having a lot of anxiety is maybe your brain has identified them as dangerous because of faulty thoughts you have about them.

 

For yourself. Sometimes when people come to me, they’ll be like, this person is toxic. I don’t know what to do. They’re so bad. They’re so mean. In many cases, that is true. They’re around someone who isn’t safe for them, isn’t healthy for them, but in some cases someone might come to me and say, this person said this and that, and it really upset me and it make freaked me out.

 

And we identified it was because of a deep core belief they had about themselves. Maybe they had some social anxiety, maybe they were already beating themselves up for something and somebody. Brought it up and it triggered them. So it could be one, both, either. Again, I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong.

 

I definitely don’t want people to feel like I’m blaming you instead of the person, but I really enjoy and find it very beneficial to first always check in on like, is this actually because I’m insecure about something? Or am I struggling with boundaries or am I struggling with communication or conflict or something like that, or people pleasing am am I having a hard time?

 

Feeling my feelings around being embarrassed or having shame and so forth. Just something to think about as we move forward. The main thing we need to remember is that we all get triggered sometimes, and some people are just not our people. That’s totally okay. There will be people who are not. Our cup of tea are not good for us, not healthy for us, and that’s okay.

 

And I’m here to teach you how to manage those people. So how are we going to do this? We are going to learn how to set boundaries with people. We’re going to learn how you can be keeping your focus on what is. Actually really important and we’re going to be working on getting really clear on what is yours to work on and what is theirs to work on.

 

And once we get really clear on that, we go back and we set those boundaries and we stay focused on this main agenda. The main thing to remember is you have more control than you think. Now you. Notice something I’m going to be mentioning throughout this whole episode. Now, while it’s called How to Manage Toxic People, I wanna discourage you from calling people toxic, and the reason for that is toxic.

 

The actual underlying. Meaning of toxic is that it will kill you. Like if something is toxic, it is so unhealthy for you that it could cause your death. And if you use that word toxic to describe a person, you are actually encouraging your brain to set off that fire alarm to say there’s danger. So unless somebody is actually a threat to you actually and your wellbeing, I would encourage you not to call them toxic.

 

Instead, what I’m going to encourage you to do is say, that is someone who triggers me, or someone who doesn’t treat me the way I would like. To be treated or they hit me right where my insecurities are. The reason that I prefer this phrasing is again, we’re in the business here of trying to not make anxiety worse.

 

That is the most compassionate thing we can do for ourselves in this situation. And so we don’t wanna use language that actually worsens your anxiety. So again, while this episode is called. Has toxic people in the title. I’m going to encourage you to say, that person triggers me, or I’m having the thought that they’re toxic.

 

That’s fine too. If you wanna use more of a diffusion mindfulness model. Now, of course, if you wanna call them toxic. That’s fine. Go ahead. Absolutely give you permission. You know what’s best for you. But that would be just a piece of advice I would give you. Now, again, let me reinforce, you have more control over this situation with this person that triggers you than you think.

 

I want to give you a lot of reminders that you actually have more control than you could ever give yourself credit. So I want to give you a metaphor that I use with my clients all. Okay, so I want you to imagine that you get to have the car of your dreams. You get to pick it. Just stay with me for this exercise.

 

It’s going to make sense. I want you to imagine that you’re in a car that you choose. It doesn’t mean it has to be like a Lamborghini, just a car that feels like a really. Functional good car that will keep you safe and you’ll feel good about, and it won’t blow your bank account out and it’s just a good, solid, good car for you and you like it.

 

So I want you to imagine you picking that car. What car do you, you pick? Okay. Now, once you’ve picked that car, we’re going to then let you design it. My husband was actually telling me the other day that if you buy a Porsche, a fancy Porsche, I guess, uh, we do not own fancy Porsches, but you pick every single detail, the color of the leather, the color of this, which package, which tires, which.

 

Breaks all the things, and you spend a, a huge amount of money. And then apparently, um, you get flown to Germany or whatever country it is, and they let you drive it off the Porsche, uh, like grounds into the, uh, container shipping. Um, you drive it onto that and then you, they fly you home. So you are the one who sort of like.

 

Delivered to the, the shopping situation. Um, and this was very fancy. He thought this was a very cool story. Um, but I want you to sort of imagine you’re designing this car, right? In this car. You pick the music, you pick the car, you pick how clean and dirty your car is. You get to pick how fast or slow you drive.

 

You get to pick what route you take. You get to pick the temperature. Do you have it on hot or cold? Do you have the music up loud? Do you have jazz music? Do you put the roof up or the roof down? If you have a convertible, do you have the windows up or the windows down? Do you have the seat reclined? Like you get to pick everything that goes on in this car.

 

You also get to pick the thoughts you have about yourself in this car, and you also get to pick the thoughts you have about the drive that you’re taking. So what I’m saying here is you could be driving and being like, I hate my car. I hate the temperature, I hate the music, I hate the route. Or you could say, this is the route I’ve chosen.

 

This route is hard, but I’m gonna choose it anyway. You might say, I love my car, I love myself. I’m a really good person. I appreciate myself. Thank you, Kimberly. Putting my hand on my chest. Thank you for being here. You get to choose all of that stuff in this metaphor. Now, this is an actual metaphor. For your life.

 

I know I don’t get to choose the car of my dreams. I’m not rich enough to be able to do that, but I actually do have control over all these things. I get to control the music, how clean it is, how fast I drive, the route I take the temperature. My thoughts about myself, my thoughts about my car. This is a real true, very.

 

Accurate metaphor that you, you can use for your life. Now, here’s the thing to remember here, is that these are just a reflection of our values, our beliefs, our hopes and wishes, our characteristics, and you who you want to be. Now the thing to remember is you get all of this autonomy over your car, but next to you on the highway will be other cars and they get to act how they want to act in their car.

 

Their job is to stay in their lane and we all get to have autonomy, and they get to drive as fast as they want. You get to drive as fast as you want, and we can all exist. However, what often happens in this situation is there’s always someone in the car next to us who’s got their window down and they’re screaming at us, telling us we are doing things wrong and that we aren’t dressed right and we’re not.

 

Acting right and we should be doing this and you idiot. And why are you this way? And sometimes people don’t behave very well and they’re, in some cases they’re getting out of their car and they’re trying to get into your car and tell you how you are supposed to act in your car. They’re gonna tell you you need to go slower or faster or your window should be up or your window should be down, or your music should be jazz.

 

If you have hip hop on right. People may also just sit in the car next to you and criticize you nonstop and try to get you to veer off into the route they want you to take. And that’s okay. That’s what they’re doing. We’re here to learn how to manage those people. Now it is our responsibility as human beings.

 

To take control, to take responsibility for our car and learn to set boundaries with those people. Now when you are around, and I get it, when you are around people who are yelling at you from every angle or being unkind or manipulating you, it can feel pretty devastating. You can feel incredibly anxious.

 

Incredibly overwhelmed, stressed, depressed. It’s not fun, and your nervous system is gonna get it right. It’s going to absolutely feel the weight of this situation. So what we are going to look at here is we are going to look at your options. Now what we have here is we have one terrible option. We have three healthy options, and these are the options I’m going to give you.

 

So technically you have four options. I’m sure you have more than four, but for the sake of just me being clear, we’re gonna go through the four options. Now, let’s take a look at option number one. Option number one would be you engage in their toxicity, you buy into their trash stories, you question and you doubt yourself.

 

You ruminate about. All the things that they’ve said and done to you, they’ve criticized you and you feel hopeless about this situation. That is a choice. We can choose that option. It’s not the one I want you to make, and it’s probably the one that you’ve taken in the past, as have I. But that is an option.

 

We’re gonna give time to every single one of the options from that place. We now have the opportunity to look at the other three options. Here they are. So option number one would be, while you have full autonomy of your car, you are going to arrange a time to talk to the person in the car next to you calmly, and you are going to learn how to set a.

 

Boundary with them. Now, a boundary is not me saying You have to stop screaming at me in my car. This is my car and I’m in charge of my car. And you have to change because boundaries are not telling other people how they knew to act. Boundaries are saying how you will act if they maintain their behavior.

 

So instead of saying, you need to stop screaming at me. You’ll say, if you cannot talk to me kindly, I’m going to need to A, B, and C, whatever you choose. So it might be the case of metaphorically. If you keep saying unkind things to me, I’m going to put the window up and I’m not going to give you my attention anymore.

 

Or I’ll give you other examples of this, but it’s ultimately saying what you will do if they can abide by t, treating you with the respect that you deserve. Now there will be some people who cannot hold that boundary and the second. Of the healthy options would be, there will be times where you need to change your route if someone cannot respect healthy interactions with you.

 

Now we can talk about what that looks like because there are situations like the third situation where you don’t have a choice. You have to work with this person, or you’ve been assigned this person in your class study group. They’re a family member. You can’t divorce a family member. They are in your life for many different unfortunate reasons.

 

So in the third option, so we have option number one, you set a boundary, option number two. In some cases, if you’re able and they’re unable to hold that boundary, we may need to choose a different route and we need to take responsibility. We don’t hold resent for that. We say, okay, I’m choosing a different route because it’s what’s kind for me.

 

And then the third option is you have to stay in communication with them and they’re relentless. They will not stop. You are going to have to learn how to let them act like a complete butt head, and you are going to have to be in charge and in control of how you respond to that. So let’s talk about what that looks like.

 

You have. Control of your actions and your thoughts about yourself and your thoughts about your actions, that is going to be what you do. A lot of the time when I’m with clients, I am coaching them on how to tolerate toxic people in their lives while also staying in line with their values, their actions, and how they talk to themselves.

 

As you are driving, whether they’re screaming at you or not, as long as they’re not physically harming you, your job is to look ahead, focus on the things that you value, focus on the things that you love. Focus on where you’re going, what music you’ve chosen, the temperature, and how you are reacting to this situation.

 

We’re going to also be practicing a lot of mindfulness because when we are triggered, when someone has said something that. Perfectly hits our insecurities. We are gonna have some very strong emotions, and so we’re going to need to be very in tune with our mindfulness. Where are we? What are we doing?

 

What do we see? What do we smell? What do we taste? What does the steering wheel feel like underneath my fingers? We’re gonna be needing to be as present as we can as we ride these waves of emotions. Now, your homework for this episode is to make a list. Of rules of how you’re going to show up. Are you gonna set a boundary?

 

Are you going to find a new route if there are people that aren’t healthy for you, or are you going to learn how to stay in relation with that person? And what rules are you going to set for yourself while you interact with them? Because we can’t control other people. We can only control. Ourselves. So that’s really, really important.

 

We wanna do this as kindly as we can. So as always, in your anxiety toolkit, I wanna give you some tools and skills. The first skill I want to give you is the actual act of setting a boundary. Remember, boundary setting is not telling them what to do because you are not in charge of what they do in their car.

 

You are in charge of what you do in your car. So it’s saying, if you act this way, I’m going to respond with this action and this response. The second skill is going to be the art and repetition. Let me say that again. The art and repetition, ’cause it’s important of staying present and kind and mindful.

 

Now, what this means is, let’s say the person next to you. It tells you you are an idiot. Your job when you’re being mindful is to say, oh, I’m noticing they have an opinion, not a fact about who I am and what I am. But then your job is to either say, I know that’s not true, or I don’t agree. Let’s agree to disagree, or you might say that is an opinion, not a fact, or that’s unhelpful and doesn’t help in any way, and so I’m not engaging in that.

 

It’s your ability to observe and hear what they said, but not. Personalize what they said. Now even, I’ll tell you a story, a good friend of mine, a darling friend of mine the other day, we were driving together and she and I were talking about something very personal and she said, I wanted to discuss with you that I noticed that you, and she reflected to me something that she had observed me doing.

 

Um, and she said, I do notice that you do this thing. And it, and it does sometimes make me a little bit uncomfortable. Now my job. Is to listen to what she has to say and inquire. Tell me more about that. Okay. Of course, my instinct is to go, no, I would never, I did not, I would never say or do that. How? How dare you think that about me.

 

But me staying present is also me staying curious about an opinion she had. It doesn’t mean she’s right. But I can be curious and go, tell me more. Let me understand what you’re hearing. Because me understanding their experience of me doesn’t mean I’m bad or wrong, and it doesn’t mean they’re 100% true, but it allows me to understand their experience of me, their interpretation of me, maybe even their projection on me, and it allows us to be really close.

 

It’s not about me saying, you’re absolutely wrong. How dare you say one critical thing about me. I do worry about us these days and that we are completely unable to take critical feedback. A huge part of being a good friend or a good wife or a good mom for me is listening to negative feedback and going.

 

Tell me more. I wanna know. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna beat myself up, it’s just data. ’cause I already knew I wasn’t perfect. I already knew I was faulty. Help me to understand that is what staying present is and how you can build a really healthy relationship. And then the last thing here, so this is something we do talk about a lot in your anxiety toolkit, how to be present.

 

We have a whole module in your anxiety and panic toolkit. It’s an online course that you can get@cbtschool.com, and we talk and we go into depth of getting to know your triggers and your anxiety and panic. We also identify what are your safe. D behaviors, what are the things that you do to try and run away or avoid your anxiety?

 

We also talk about tremendous degrees of skills like we’re talking about here, so that you can have a different reaction to your anxiety. Again, instead of saying, no, that’s impossible, you’re gonna change that by going, Hmm, let me lean in. Let me be willing to feel this feeling and let me explore what’s going on for me.

 

And then your anxiety and panic toolkit make a specific. Plan for your recovery, what you wanna change, what’s important to you. Now, the third of these strategies is to make sure you stay aligned with your values. The main quote, unquote rule that you set for yourself is to not veer off in. Any other direction or route because they have said something to you about you.

 

So if they said, well, you’re never gonna be a good photographer, why? Even what try your job is to not veer away from your love and passion photography. If they say to you like, you know your ugly, don’t wear that, your job is to go, that’s an opinion and I’m gonna stay in line with my values of what. I think looks good.

 

So the other things here to remember is a part of your anxiety toolkit. The tools you’re gonna use is you have to remind yourself to let this be messy. When you are in interactions with other human beings, it is going to be messy. It’s not going to go perfectly. You will make mistakes as will they, and our job is to be less perfectionistic about this.

 

Process. Now, the next thing I want to stress to you is we must let people misunderstand us. Let them misunderstand you. Let them not get who you are. That is probably the biggest gift, the kindest gift you can give yourself when you’re in relationship with someone who triggers you, creates a lot of anxiety.

 

You must let them misunderstand you. You must let. Stem, not like you. It’s okay. Not everyone likes me. That’s okay. Please. I would never expect everyone to like me because I don’t like everybody. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. It doesn’t mean I’m bad if they don’t like me. It’s no different to like, not everyone likes Mexican food.

 

Not everyone likes Taylor Swift. Not everybody like, that’s just the way the world go, and please give yourself permission to be misunderstood and not liked by everybody. The next thing is. This is sort of like a point I had to make, which is please do not argue with an a-hole. That is going to be the biggest tip I give you, especially if you are working with someone who can be condescending, disrespectful, mean, do not argue with a-holes, right?

 

You will not win against an argument or a conflict with an a-hole. Please just let it be what it is. Let it be. But instead, set gentle and firm boundaries with them, with yourself and say maybe you’ve enough to set a boundary with yourself and say, listen, Kimberly, every time they do that, you totally unravel and you ruminate for hours.

 

The boundary is if. That happens again, you are going to commit to not ruminating about this anymore. You’re not gonna try and solve something that you can’t solve. You know, I always love the saying, don’t, oh gosh, I’m gonna ruin this saying like it says, you’re not the jackass whisperer. Like, don’t try and change people’s minds.

 

You’re not the jackass whisperer. I always thought that was so funny and so true. All right. Another important tool and skill you’re going to need to practice is let yourself have strong emotion because this is triggering work, but do not act. From those strong emotions. If you are angry and rageful and you’re in a shame pit, do not act from those places.

 

Those strong emotions are valid. You get to feel them. I encourage you to feel them, but do not act from those places because when you are in those emotions, you are roar, you’re vulnerable, you’re emotional. That is where you. Double down on being as kind as you can. Don’t act, don’t make any impulsive decisions.

 

Slow down and take care of yourself. Run a bar. Have a cup of tea. Talk to a loving friend journal. Remind yourself of your rules. Sit down and go through the metaphorical car. Okay, what do I have control over? What don’t I have? What? What in this car will make me feel good right now that is helpful and productive and not compulsive that will help me manage this strong wave of emotions.

 

Until it passes. Okay, so here is the conclusion. You deserve to be treated with respect and loving kindness. You never let someone tell you anything otherwise. However, there will be a holes on the planet. It’s going to happen, but you have control of your car. What happens in your car and how you act in that car, how mindful you are and whether you engage in all of their.

 

Trash, right? Your job is to set strong boundaries with them, strong boundaries with you, and practice the art of repetitive presence, bringing it back to what’s important to you, what matters, and the absolute loving kindness of you. Thank you everyone for being here. I am so, so grateful. Your time is so valuable to me.

 

I hope that today was helpful. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I will see you next week.