Birthmarks as hallmarks
Birthmarks as hallmarks
How to easily diagnose toxic and healthy people
When I turned on the movie Renfield, I had no idea what the core plot or narrative was. After all, this is just a Nicholas Cage movie. Renfield is either going to be absurd, weird, or awkwardly funny. Surprisingly, the writers crafted a modern Dracula with concepts around toxicity, codependency, and the Nice Guy Syndrome. Dracula doesn’t just live off of people’s blood but is a metaphor for how toxic people suck the life out of healthy people. Toxic people survive by stealing life from others, not just blood but the soul. The lesson from the movie Renfield is that the real power is not in toxicity (Dracula) but in healthy people who choose to end toxic relationships and thwart unhealthy people from sucking their life out (Renfield).
The creators of Renfield gave toxic relationships a persona in Dracula because unhealthy relationships look, act, and follow a pattern. It is recognizable, like how you identify someone on the street. Toxic people walk and talk a certain way. Healthy people walk and talk a certain way. Both have hallmarks of behavior. Both have birthmarks attached to the person we can notice. These traits are easy to spot and come with a long history. We either have birthmarks of health or unhealth.
"What would happen if you stopped focusing on his needs," - Counselor
"He won't grow to full power!" - Renfield
"That's so weird. Why would you phrase it like that?" - Counselor
We primarily interact with “covered” humanity. Covered can be from physical pieces of clothing to mental and emotional walls that people utilize to prevent intimacy and connection. The irony of life is that we will see more articles of clothing than actual people because we all use various strategies to conceal ourselves from reality and connection. We all spend billions a year to hide from one another yet, at the same time, deeply desire for connection. The question arises: how can you tell the difference between good and bad people? How can you decide what relationships are worth your time, energy, resources, and effort?
In light of my viral series on Nice Guys and courage, several readers wanted to know how to tell quickly if someone is healthy or toxic. Trusting your gut in ending and forming new relationships is challenging for a recovering nice guy. There is always a lot of drama once nice guys choose to recover and stop toxic behavior around them. This can be alarming and unsettling to everyone around them, which causes some nice guys to fall back into old patterns. Simple and easy-to-follow rubrics and rules of thumb to indicate a toxic or healthy person do exist.
The best way to tell and to (using an unacceptable phrase) judge a book by its cover is to peel under the masks. Remove the immaterial barriers, both the mental and emotional. Remove the physical walls of clothing and appearance. Look for the birthmark of an individual. By birthmark, I mean the pattern of how they live and treat other people. The hallmark of an individual is the birthmark they show the world. Every person is a subjective history book and isolated reality. Dracula has a long history of destroying lives and victims; look at his past to tell you what he will do in the future. All humans carry this personal history book with them wherever they go. It’s in their story and resides in how they walk and talk. This will tell you all you need to know if you are making a wise bet on a good person and destined to have the life sucked out.
A Straightforward Guide
Based on our current understanding, science hasn’t been able to explain why we have birthmarks and why some don’t. There are many theories, but most assume that birthmarks are formed in the womb near the moment of conception. These marks are planned genetically from the very beginning of our lives and then fully develop as we mature physically, emotionally, and mentally. Birthmarks are unique to every person. The same goes for everyone’s story and the life we live. We all contribute to history, but everyone’s account is different. You and I are snowflakes, but we are all made of water. At the core, we are the equivalent but not identical.
I’ve developed the following birthmarks as hallmarks, like an early detection system for healthy and unhealthy people. You want to look past the vainly physical and reach deeper into the more profound inquiry of character and values as soon as possible. This is where the footing of a healthy and unhealthy person exists. The key to utilizing this early detection system is not looking for the behavior but the surrounding context and meaning the birthmark provides to the individual. It is hard to hide these core character qualities throughout a person’s story. Unveil who a person is, and you can determine if they are Dracula or Reinfeld.
Empathy, first and foremost
Relationships require two people fundamentally; toxic people forget that as a habit. A key ingredient to a healthy relationship is knowing that you are not the only one in the relationship. A healthy birthmark is an ability to understand and comprehend how others feel. This doesn’t mean agreement or acceptance but knowing how someone else can think, feel, or believe something different than your own. This can appear as an ability to acknowledge and repeat how others feel about a situation.