Not many, I'm usually considered the toxic one to be perfectly honest. (Which doesn't mean that I am but it gives you a good enough idea). I can think of this one girl who abused me for a few years and warped my perception of myself and others. Honestly, I'm fun to abuse so I don't blame her.
There was once this guy I knew who was toxic af to everyone who knew him. He was also gay, but I want to stress that that isn't what made him toxic at all. What made him annoying was that coincidentally, he was like a walking example of everything stereotypically annoying about gay people. His constant complaints, desperate attempts to offend anyone he could talk to just for more attention, and overall just being a complete faggot wound up inadvertently making everyone around him more homophobic, including me. The way I've always seen it is that its pretty much normal for straight people to be put off by the thought of gay people, its natural to find the concept somewhat disgusting and alien. But for this one moron to cement that feeling in the minds of everyone around him... well it didn't exactly help. In retrospect he may have had either had aspergers or a deep seated desire to ruin any occasion he could get himself invited to, I don't know at this point, in the end he wound up being expelled from the school that I went to in my 2nd year, his 1st, for sexually harassing a group of girls in his grade(indeed, why he went for girls is beyond me).
"Who have been the most toxic people in your life, and why?"
This is just an example off-hand. A person who was a friend of mine for approximately a decade. He was part of an inner-part of a circle of about 6-7 close friends. We all started to drift apart around when I was 22, but he remained close to me.
"In what ways were/are they toxic?"
He was as a manipulative back-stabber. At first I perceived his behavior as personal confidence about things that were bothering him about our other friends. That slowly grew into an awareness that he would attempt to play friends against each other to be the most important; to raise himself up in the eyes of others.
I once shared an apartment with him and another friend. He would complain about us to one-another, and violate personal space behind the backs of my friend and I. His pretext would be trumped-up arguments about behaviors and rumors to do so. I was unfortunately a willing participant in this, because the other roommate was slightly unstable, and displayed outlandish and obnoxious behaviors. I had not known the person well for too long to have accurate background context on what that person was doing.
He was seeing a girl but refused commitment, despite conveying every sign it was inevitable. They were tacitly partners. He would lead her out of our apartment in a charming manner. Then he would shut the door, and proceed to complain about how annoying she had been. He would rotate through women while seeing her, and compartmentalize them all from one-another.
One time, he had the main girl he was seeing and a side-girl come to the same party. I guess he was curious how skilled he was at deception. I presume he wondered if he could have them both in the same place without either knowing his relations with them. He did manage to pull off the act. Following that, there were numerous instances where he would try seducing the girlfriends of his friends.
"Were they sociopaths?"
I imagine so.
"Something else?"
A bit of a coward when it came to confrontation.
"How long did it take you to acknowledge their toxicity and make the decision to either remove them from your life or create a firm boundary?"
It was difficult for me to reconcile a somewhat self-conscious person I had known in my early teens with the blossoming of their Machiavellian desire to be the center of social circles. After I split from my apartment with him, I frequently spent time with him. We would go out and party, or just spend time at his place with his roommates, and do whatever entertained us.
It was when he began talking behind the backs of both of his roommates that I started putting everything together. He would talk behind his one roommate's back to turn him against the other they lived with. Everything became so obvious at once. I was bothered that it took me so long to piece it together. But then I seen the full picture—he talked behind everyone's back. So, I had a couple conversations with some members within the new circle of friends we had at university, and it all confirmed what I thought. It should have been apparent, but I was fooled by the appearance of confidentiality and years of camaraderie.
I stopped speaking to him any longer, and I warned my friends about how he was. Suddenly everyone started seeing things from a new perspective, sharing anecdotes of their own, etc. It must have gotten back around to him that I was doing this. I ran into him by coincidence twice in public, and he avoided me (pretended like he did not see me, started walking another direction). He's dead now, so I don't think about him much anymore.
Who have been the most toxic people in your life?
Fam- excluding some sibs
In what ways were/are they toxic?
Emotional, mental(or is that psychological?) and physical shenanigans that were not bueno.
Were they sociopaths? Something else?
One, maybe. The other was just less dependable.
How long did it take you to acknowledge their toxicity and make the decision to either remove them from your life or create a firm boundary?
College, its rather hard to remove them. There's a guilt, I owe them something. There's a boundary, the only thing is she's constantly trying to cross it and when she can't, she retreats and throws a fit.
Dad I think, the moment he started seeing me standing up for myself and taking decisions of my own he started the name calling and tantrums. He's been playing the mild nice parent all this time and I guess he doesn't see an use for it anymore since he doesn't always get what he wants and I'm not the pushover he's hoping me to be
I'm no exception to the reoccurring theme of having a toxic family. Usually I'm clear of toxic people because I disassociate when I see any form of belittling behavior towards others. The issue is when I have people in my immediate family that don't at all mean to be toxic, but are due their condition/diagnosis. I've got a parent that I've made aware of the toxicity they bring and it spun that parent into a problem with self guilt because of it, while they couldn't do anything about it. I wish I just would've let them believe they were doing good job
The most toxic people were definitely my parents. They're part of the reason I am the way I am today. Self centred alcoholics that beat their little boys isn't exactly a person you would want to be friends with, am I right? So, when I was locked up in the psych ward, I never saw them again. But now, my brother wants us to at least visit them, to at least see if they're alive, but that would probably bring more negativity into my life.
I was very toxic to myself as a teen and throughout my very early twenties. My friends pre- psych ward, introduced me to new drugs and new alcoholic beverages. But, I was the main culprit in that area.
After a bunch of shit, I realized I needed to ground myself before I became worse than my parents. I got my shit together and distract myself at anytime I feel like I need to do something stupid. It's like putting a boundary between my "bad" side and my "good" side.