Oftentimes, we encounter a lot of toxic people that make us feel less about ourselves. As a result, we fall into the traps of self-depreciation. We end up manifesting negatives on ourselves as much as other people already do. Recovering self-depreciator and writer Gayle Katz tells us that we’re not as fat, ugly, and stupid as we think. She believes self-love is never shameful. She lays down the ways to eliminate the toxic people from your life and shares advice full of kindness and compassion.

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Loving Yourself And Dealing With Toxic People with Gayle Katz

I'm excited about this episode. I came across Gayle Katz and thought she's got to be here at Heartrepreneur Radio. Gayle Katz writes to help others discover they're not as fat, ugly, and stupid as they may think they are. Let me tell you why that resonates. I grew up with that story in my head. She is the recovering self-depreciator who works hard every day to not let her past dealings with toxic people interfere with your happy present life. If difficult people have put you through the ringer, chances are Gayle's been where you are now. You're not alone.

Gayle started blogging not too long ago. She's the author of two books designed to help you deal with toxic people both at home and at work. Both books and the blog draw from her experiences over the past 30 years. She's not a psychiatrist, she's not trained in psychology, but what she has done is develop real-life strategies and hacks to push those toxic people in her life aside, so she can live a great life and she shares that, so you can live a great life too. Gayle, welcome to Heartrepreneur Radio. I'm glad to have you.

It’s great to be here, Terri. Thanks for having me.

I'm so excited to have you and I'm being transparent with my audience like I always am. I did grow up being told I was fat, ugly, and stupid, even though I was underweight, so I came to believe I was fat and I got fat, which is interesting. I love when you say recovering self-depreciator. That is me, and I've had toxic people in my life and worked hard to get them out. Talk to us about what do we do? How do we even notice if we have toxic people and how do we push them out?

There are so many different ways that somebody can be toxic that it's much simpler to look at your reaction to them. If you're feeling sad or angry or upset or hating yourself after talking to someone, chances are the person you're talking to may be toxic to you. They're inherently making you feel bad and that's not a good thing. You want to live a great life, you want to be happy. If you have people in your life who were making you feel those not good feelings, that's not good. As for getting them out of your life, that's an interesting one. It took me 30 years to figure that out. I grew up in the same environment. I was overweight and my father always let me know that. You're not the only one and I'm not the only one. I finally realized that.

The first thing you need to do, if you're in the middle of a situation, you need to diffuse the situation. You need to take out the tension. If you're in the middle of talking with somebody who's making you feel bad, stop doing what you were doing and try something new. I have little tricks that I developed such as when you're in a conversation with someone and they're maybe trying to push their agenda or they're saying something nasty, just say, "You're right," whether you agree with them or not. How can you argue with somebody who's telling you that you're right? Some people might have trouble with that, so in those situations, you can say things like, "I understand,” or “Can you explain that?" The beauty of those phrases is that it shows that you're listening.