Toxic Isn’t the Same as Difficult

When cut-off looks like self-care

“I realized she was toxic for me, so I ghosted her.”

“He’s been really negative lately and I don’t need that energy in my life.”

“I need to protect my energy. I don’t have time for drama.”

If you’re like me, you’ve likely heard statements like these often, conversationally or across social media. It’s billed as self-care, boundaries, choosing oneself. It’s seen as strength and applauded.

I’ve written about boundaries before, so you might expect I’d endorse this, and yet, I’m concerned that in these patterns we’re losing a layer of social nuance, causing profound hurt within friendships and families while reinforcing the burden of loneliness – on both sides of these walls.

When Boundaries Become Walls

On the surface, these statements sound like a healthy, self-aware, strong individual reinforcing the framework of their “best life.”

Increasingly, advice spaces such as social media, self-help culture, even AI tools offer simplified answers to complicated relational problems. Protect your peace. Cut them off. Choose yourself. But clear answers can bypass harder questions. These clean answers don’t dig deeper, don’t explore your own role, don’t weigh layered history and the value of loyal yet imperfect friendships against the apparent simplicity of ending it all.

If we look closer, some behaviors wrapped in the language of “boundaries” are manifestations of an avoidant attachment style.

To be clear, not everyone who needs solitude is avoidant, and not every friendship ending or family estrangement reflects unresolved attachment wounds or dysfunctional choice. Sometimes distance is healthy. Sometimes relationships truly are harmful. But I’m noticing that, at times, we’re leaning toward pathologizing ordinary relational complexity, and responding with a blunt tool that leaves as much damage as it attempts to solve.

Photo by Sam Badmaeva on Unsplash

When a Child Learns Closeness is Costly

Many people, under stress, lean on family and friends. This is congruent with how mammals innately and most healthfully function: as interdependent, communal beings.

Others, when under stress, pull back. They’ve carried the weight of others’ mental or physical illnesses or even ordinary childhood needs for far too long. Often oldest daughters who grew up with the unfair responsibility of raising younger children, their own emotional needs were not adequately met. Developmentally unprepared, still needing the lighthearted innocence and room to grow as children themselves, they stepped into the gaps of absent, overburdened, distracted, or mentally ill mothers, both loving and resenting their relationships with siblings. Implicitly, they learned that close relationships smother and consume and leave no room for their own needs.

When life gets hard, these stolen-childhood adults push others away. Rather than lean on friends for the social support offered, they fear that intimacy will demand more of them than they have capacity for. Solitude feels easier. Manageable.

Sometimes this pattern emerges not from parentification, but from experiences of engulfment, unpredictability, or learning early that closeness required self-erasure.

The Competent Manager

Managing – focusing on competence – feels more comfortable. Avoidant individuals are often outwardly successful, their wounds masked by their legitimate competence. They sublimate the discomfort of relational energy by pouring it into busyness and doing and performing.

And no one suspects the hurt they carry because they look so perfectly held together.

Which protects them from the discomfort of vulnerability – and locks them in self-built prisons, alone.

In the therapy approach of Internal Family Systems (IFS), we understand people as carrying different protective parts that emerge under stress. There’s the wounded inner child, carrying burdens and raw anguish from earlier experiences. There’s a firefighter who reacts quickly to extinguish pain, often with anger or addiction to dispel emotion. And there’s a manager part who gets down to business and handles things, organizing and controlling, getting busy to avoid emotion.

Avoidant adults protect the hurt inner child through excessive channeling of the manager part when under stress.

We like the manager part. It feels good to get stuff done, rewarding us with dopamine, protecting us from pain, impressing others.

But managers don’t go out with the rest of the team after work. Managers remain alone.

When Friends Become “Problems”

When life gets hard, the highly competent avoidant person channels their inner manager and treats friendships as a problem to be managed. Rather than leaning into the value of interpersonal support, they see the complexities of relationship not as a source of value, but a problem to be solved or dispensed with.

“Too much drama.”

“Toxic.”

“Too negative.”

Do you resonate with this pattern? If so, I want to send you so much love. You don’t have to be alone. You don’t have to lose connection to find peace.

Relationships shouldn’t be scary or stressful – but you have real reasons for your fear. The child whose youth was stolen by excessive relationship responsibility wasn’t ready for the complexities foisted upon them then – but perhaps, today, you are. And maybe, if you soften and open just a little, you may find it is deeply rewarding, too.

What Healthy Boundaries Actually Look Like

So what is the healthy middle ground between rigid boundaries that become estrangement and healthy, grounded, self-respecting boundaries that allow for the support of mutual friendships in times of stress?

Perhaps it looks like this:

If your friend is “too negative” lately, rather than label or judge their personality, explore what’s going on at a deeper level. Are they struggling with depression? Hopelessness? Discouragement? Transition? Grief? These are exactly the times that friendships are for.

And what does “toxic” mean? Some friendships are corrosive, without a doubt. If your friend puts you down, ignores expressed boundaries, takes and never gives, the dynamic is undoubtedly unhealthy. But be careful of assigning this label as an excuse to back away from complexity. Occasional misunderstandings, hurt feelings, or mis-attunement to your needs aren’t toxic, just messy. And messes can be cleared.

All relationships are complex because humans are complex. You probably are, sometimes, too. And that’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. The real question isn’t: is this friendship always free of friction or challenge, but: are we both capable of taking responsibility and doing the work of repair?

I’m not here to take away your boundaries. You have every right – and need – to maintain them. It’s so good that you recognize when your emotional container is full and you can’t take on more, not even from your closest friends.

Many of us need stronger boundaries. Others may need more tolerance for imperfection and repair. Wisdom lies in discerning the difference.

Here’s where the nuance lies: when you are at capacity, go ahead and communicate that. You might say, “I’m completely overwhelmed. I could really use a listening ear, but I have to be honest, I just don’t have the capacity to hold space for anyone else right now. I know that might feel unfair.” Or perhaps, simply, “I really need alone time to listen to my thoughts and de-stress.” Some people find strength and recharge in solitude – and that’s okay. Just be careful that you don’t burn the whole house down to avoid the dirty laundry. Be honest with yourself, rather than labeling and rejecting your friend as the problem.

Because here’s the part you’ve maybe always needed to hear: Your needs are valid. They matter. And it’s okay to tend to them.

The Courage to Stay Connected

There’s no shame in being at capacity, needing space, or temporarily being unable to show up for your friends in the ways you feel you should. This isn’t about you being bad, so it doesn’t necessitate devaluing your friend, instead, to shift blame. It’s okay simply to attend to what is happening within you.

You don’t have to break off support and connection to find personal space.

You don’t have to be alone to avoid feeling smothered.

You do not have to choose between disappearing into others and disappearing from them.

There is a middle space; one with honesty, repair, limits, and enough room for both closeness and breath.

It may cost something to inhabit that space.

But loneliness is costly, too.

🩵

from my heart to yours,

Deborah

I’m Deborah Vinall, PsyD, LMFT, a trauma therapist and author exploring trauma, relationships, belonging, and the complicated work of being human.

My books—including Gaslighting: A Step-by-Step Recovery Guide and Trauma Recovery Workbook for Teens—have helped readers around the world understand and heal from relational and other forms of trauma and find their way back to themselves.

Here on Mental Health Musings, I explore those themes more personally, blending clinical insight with reflection, and occasionally sharing guided meditations and resources for healing.

If this kind of work speaks to you, I invite you to subscribe to receive future reflections and guided resources.