And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and this is episode 208. It's titled, Dealing with

Toxic People. And if you're ready, we'll start the show. Looking at all the snow outside

my office window today, it's fair to say that Christmas is coming, folks. But please don't let that stress

you out, though. I know there's a lot of pressure to try and be cheerful this time of year,

and to be everywhere and see everyone, especially when Christmas last year was missing so much

social stuff because of COVID. So, there might be a lot of pressure to try and make up for it this year.

And it might be a good idea to challenge that notion. You might prefer to limit your social

gatherings, not just because of COVID, but for your mental health, for your stress levels.

As we found these last 18 months,

we live in a modern world and we can take advantage of it. We've got Skype,

Zoom and FaceTime, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. And actually, we've also got the choice

to not bother with people as well, you know, even family.

It's worth acknowledging that for some people, family is just a bloodline, a connection with

each other that's by design rather than desire. And it's okay to not love your family.

It's okay to not even like your family.

And the annoying thing is that it's likely that someone will wish us a Merry Christmas and assume that just because they are looking forward to spending time with their family, that you will too.

And this notion that Christmas is always lovely and there's something wrong

with you if it's not isn't helped by the endless TV adverts showing these huge tables with a dozen

people sitting around it, all smiling and laughing and liking each other. And none of them appear to be

toxic. None of them appear to have

...