It’s not an easy job to see that someone is dragging you down, especially if that person is close to you. Many of toxic people have the ability to make you feel that whatever they are doing, they are doing for your own benefit. They will make you believe that they have nothing out of helping you, that they are doing it just for you.

This kind of people will usually start with friendly advices and telling you how good, special and perfect you are. In the beginning of your relationship, no matter what that relationship is, they will tell you tons of good things about you and they will make you feel like you are the best person in the world. But soon they will start slowly with criticising and killing your self respect.

Slowly, but surely this kind of people start with trying to change small parts of you. First they will give a small criticism about you, which they will support with some kind of evidence that you will fall for and then they will offer you a solution for it. Solution, which they will make you think you need and that is for your own benefit.

After you succeed to fulfil their advice, they small request, they will not stop here. They will go one step further and trying to change you further. One step after another, they will always try to emphasise that this kind of change is needed for your own benefit and growth, no matter what that growth is, personal or business one. And you will believe them, because you followed their first advice and achieved something that might be good for you or better said, something that you think it’s good for you. And not only that, usually toxic people already managed to achieve something in life (from their perspective), something that makes them superior to you. Toxic people have the tendency to persuade you that you need that change in your life, otherwise you will not be “good” in their eyes. This will be done implicitly, they will never be direct and tell you that you are not good enough for them. And as they are superior to you, they know the best what is good for you.

Along the way, toxic person will always remind you that they have helped you to get to the current step and that you wouldn’t be able to reach that important step without them. They will emphasise their great role in your life quite a lot, in every chance that they will get. Of course, they will always talk about their sacrifice to get you where you should be, so that you will feel grateful for the sacrifice they have made for you and that you will feel like you own them something.

Here is where all the fun begins. As you will start moving towards the path that they have drawn for you, they will become more and more upset. The more that you will try to please them, the more unsatisfied they will become. So, they will try to push you into a greater pain and they will convince you that you need that pain to become someone good in their eyes. The more you will try to follow them, the more exhausted you will become. You will start to feel lost and in need of help. Of course of their help. They will again try to “help” you in order to get back on the right track. They will highlight that you need them, as they are the only ones who can really help you, because they know you now so good. And you will believe them. You will start to feel dependent on them and you will begin loosing yourself.

Before you know it, you will feel completely helpless and fully dependent on them. But, don’t think that they will stop here. They will continue until you are done. Until they have completely drained you out. With every drop of independency that you have lost, they will feel more and more power. This is the power that they need in their life to cover up their insecurity and there is no other way to get this power than getting it with feeling superior to other people.

There are great chances that after they have demolished you in some not recognisable form, where you will not know who you are anymore, they will abandon you like you never even existed in their life. In some cases, toxic person will still try to use you even when you will be in very bad shape. Some toxic people will still leave their victims somewhere close around, so that they will still be able occasionally to charge on them. In this case they will not give you much attention for most of the time, because you are not important to them, you are nobody in this stage, you are some poor lost sheep for which there is no help. They will only give you attention when they will feel that they need to re-charge and there is no other victim in their life then you.

In this phase you will already feel completely lost, you will loose all your self-respect because you weren’t able to please the toxic person. You will not know anymore who you are and not even who you used to be.

Getting out from here is a hell and not many people can do it alone, without a real help from truly good people. There is another tricky part here. In time when you get to this phase you will not be able to tell anymore who is good and who is really trying to help you for you, not for themselves. However, there is still many good people in the world and the chances to get help from a person with right intentions are not that small.

While sometimes in life, we all need an extra push, no one should drive us towards our destruction. There can be just small moment of weakness and you can find yourself easily in such bad situation. The best way to avoid this is to stay true to yourself and to not sweat too much about what others think about you. Do your own thing, do what makes YOU happy, not others and most importantly what ever you do, do it from pure love that comes from you, not because someone is expecting you to do something.