Toxic Relationships: 2nd in the You Deserve More! Series
www.jillhartzog.com
Copyright 2020 Jill Hartzog
ISBN: 978-1-77277-335-4
eISBN: 978-1-7727735-4-5
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without permission of the publisher or author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission from the publisher or author.
Limits of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty
The author and publisher shall not be liable for your misuse of the enclosed material. This book is strictly for informational and educational purposes only.
Warning Disclaimer
The purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and/or publisher do not guarantee that anyone following these techniques, suggestions, tips, ideas, or strategies will become successful. The author and/or publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to anyone with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
All the stories within this book have been altered to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. All the names have been changed.
Medical Disclaimer
The medical or health information in this book is provided as an information resource only, and is not to be used or relied on for any diagnostic or treatment purposes. This information is not intended to be patient education, does not create any patient-physician relationship, and should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment.
Publisher
10-10-10 Publishing
Markham, ON
Canada
Printed in Canada and the United States of America
Dedication
To those who want the freedom to breathe.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Throughout your lifetime, you will have countless relationships and encounters with others. While you can have healthy relationships, the challenge is identifying when a relationship is no longer healthy, and how to address it. In How to Identify & Navigate TOXIC Relationships: You Deserve More, Jill Hartzog dives into a variety of unhealthy relationships and gives you tools that can help you manage them successfully.
One of the first relationships Jill focuses on is the sandwich generation, where you have to care for your parents, while still caring for your own children. Her knowledge and experience helps you to understand how to better navigate the challenges of this time of life. However, Jill also addresses unhealthy romantic relationships, giving tips to help you identify toxic elements within your romantic relationship.
How to Identify & Navigate TOXIC Relationships, as part of the You Deserve More series, also breaks down the toxic elements that can become part of your relationship with yourself. Jill gets into how you talk to yourself, how you care for yourself physically, and how you care for yourself mentally, thus helping you to understand how you care for yourself directly impacts the other relationships in your life.
Finally, Jill talks about how you process those random negative encounters which happen on a daily basis. Her focus is on stopping the negative energy from these events before it permeates your entire day.
Each of the chapters also includes activities and ideas that allow you to take action in your relationships right away.
If you are looking for a guide to understanding toxic relationships and what you can do to create change, then How to Identify & Navigate TOXIC Relationships: You Deserve More is a powerful resource for you!
Loral Langemeier
The Millionaire Maker
Acknowledgements
I am truly awed and inspired by the many amazing people I have met throughout my personal and professional life, who go out of their way to make the world a better place for others. My goal is to continue to energize those that want to achieve and accomplish more for themselves and others!
Introduction
Are you, or anyone you know, facing particularly challenging relationship dynamics, ones that are creating additional problems to other aspects of your life? Are you dealing with relationship issues with your parents, siblings, partner, or your own children? Other relationships related to your professional career could also be creating an obstacle for your professional growth. With all this in mind, you might be asking yourself how you can tackle the challenge of a toxic relationship, and what you can do to help yourself. Why is it holding you back from achieving other desired goals in your life?
This book is designed to reach out and share with you the knowledge and tools I have used in my personal and professional life to help people meet the challenges related to toxic relationships. One thing that has become evident throughout the years is that dysfunctional relationships are rarely one-sided, and that there are two or perhaps several people that contribute to these relationship issues, with multiple aspects from their upbringing and life events, which contribute to a persons personality, opinion, and desires.
My goal for you, in writing this book, is to empower you to identify what toxic relationships are, see that you are not alone, and start the process of healing and resolution. Often, individuals may counsel you to end the relationship, telling you to safeguard your emotional well-being. That may be well-intentioned and true, but there are lots of reasons why we continue to put up with harmful relationshipsfinancial dependency, love, expectations, loneliness, guilt, and loyalty, just to name a few. What happens when quickly ending a toxic relationship is not something you can do, or something you want to do?
Many of us wont want to end a relationship with a family member; we cant just stop talking to our parents, children, or siblings. What if the toxicity is at work? We cant easily quit our jobs without a plan in place for income replacement. However, when it comes to our health and long-term happiness, there is a point where we need to walk away; but first, we want to see if we can work through it. Can we reach a point where the relationship is tolerable? None of this is an easy process, especially when we start to self-advocate and speak up through words or actions. People wont be used to the evolving youthe you who now pushes back and stands up for themselves! Expect some resistance.
Each of the chapters in this book are devoted to the various types of toxic relationships I have seen throughout my life. I want you to realize that you are not alone, and that there are always worse or better situations that others deal with daily.
You will be given skills that you can use to diffuse toxic dynamics within various types of relationships. Remember, my goal is to help you navigate toxic connections in your life, prevent other relationships from becoming toxic, and provide you with the ability to successfully manage them all. Again, Im not a therapist, and I am unable to provide additional counseling to fix these relationships. When this is required, I do advise seeking out professional counseling! I am, however, skilled at empowering and energizing others to be motivated, to make changes, and to move forward.
For more information on how to move forward with personal goals and strategies, please read my book,
