Vachon Imagined

“Toxic” has become one of those popular words, much like “narcissist.” These days, almost everyone seems to know a narcissist, and almost everyone considers themselves an expert on toxicity—just not their own.

How often do you hear someone sincerely wonder whether their behavior has become toxic? Whether their habits, fears, or reactions are harming the people around them? I don’t hear it very often.

What I do hear is a steady stream of conversations about how toxic everyone else is, usually without the honest admission that the person pointing the finger may have just as much to examine within themselves.

Why is that?

Because toxicity is first built in the dark. It grows where insecurity is hidden, where fear is protected, and where vulnerability feels too dangerous to expose. It often reveals itself as the need to control the conversation, dominate the room, or always be right. These behaviors are attempts to avoid feeling exposed.

But this isn’t simply a “toxic” thing. It’s a human thing.

Every one of us has moments when fear speaks louder than wisdom. Every one of us has been triggered, become defensive, interrupted someone, or tried to protect an identity that felt under attack. The difference isn’t whether we have these moments; it’s whether we’re willing to recognize them.

Ironically, it often takes living with someone who behaves this way—working with them, being married to them, raising a child with them, or simply encountering enough of it—to awaken something within us. The thoughtful person eventually reaches a quiet conclusion: I don’t want to carry this forward. I don’t want to become what wounded me. I don’t want to do this to someone else.

That is often how the cycle ends. It ends with the person who has experienced toxicity choosing not to reproduce it. Pain becomes awareness instead of permission.

When we become honest about our fears, something unexpected happens: we become quieter. We no longer feel compelled to defend every opinion, win every disagreement, or react to every perceived offense. We learn to let our triggers pass through us instead of speaking from them.

Toxicity depends on attention. It feeds on reaction, defensiveness, and the constant need to prove ourselves. It grows louder every time fear is given the microphone.

But self-awareness interrupts that cycle.

The people who have made peace with their own insecurities don’t become perfect; they become accountable. They recognize their triggers before those triggers begin speaking for them. And in doing so, they stop toxicity where it begins—not in someone else, but within themselves.

Perhaps the healthiest question isn’t, “Who in my life is toxic?”

Perhaps it’s, “Where does toxicity still find a home in me?”