The Toxic Relationship Cure, Clearing Traumatic Damage from a Boss, Parent, Lover or Friend book describes homeopathic remedies that can help undo the trauma we do to one another.

The Lovepanky website lists ten types of toxic relationships waiting to happen unless a certain type of friendship can be avoided. Let’s look at these and suggest one or two homeopathic remedies that can help you not become susceptible in the first place. Talk to your homeopath, if any of this applies to you!

#1 The Cheater

Friendships have been crumpled because a best friend has made an overture to a friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend. Avoiding making best friends with sneaky flirts, sweet talkers and flatterers is advisable.

At least three homeopathic remedies come to mind for people who are prone to betrayal. These are Mag Carb and Mag Mur. Here, due to emotionally deprived background like that of an orphan, folks become friendless and have an interesting tendency to be peacemakers. Ignatia is a remedy for someone who has suffered so severe a grief that her resulting mentally unbalanced state places her at risk of turning even good friends against her.

#2 The Competitor

Though competition in a relationship can be healthy, certain individuals can lose touch with the sporting aspect in which competition is secondary to support.

The remedy Drosera comes up for people who tend to inspire jealousy in others who then seek to outcompete and bring them down. Nux Vomica comes up for people who are themselves such competitive Type A sorts that their friends have little choice but to engage with them through over-competition.

#3 The Leech (or as is said in Yiddish, the Schnorrer)

Someone who constantly borrows from or depends too much on you is one is best avoided. Too one-sided a relationship.

As we tend to attract individuals who are a bit like ourselves, the remedy Psorinum might be considered! Psorinum individuals are caught up in over-neediness. They are always keeping track of what they have and what they lack. This kind of poverty-consciousness is contagious and snares lovers and acquaintances in the self-same whiny mindset web.

#4 The Copycat

Though imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, a friend who looks or behaves like your clone is someone verges on being a stalker. Send out signals that this is not welcome pronto!

What attracts this sort of friend would be a personality possessing weak boundaries. Remedies that can solidify interpersonal boundaries so that copycats are less likely to be attracted would be Phosphorus (for folks who are easily affected by impressions but also have personalities that sparkle); and Vernix Caseosa (individuals who because of an unprocessed issue from infancy are overly vulnerable).

#5 The Shrink

What is the point of having a friend if you cannot confide in him or her? But having that in our relationship also puts us at risk of our partner knowing too much. If he or she then picks us apart, or begins to analyze us to death, that’s a serious downer.

If your partner picks on you to death, you might benefit from the remedy Folliculinum (for people who have been treated like a doormat). On the other hand you might find intimacy intrusive despite, as a sensitive individual tending attract secret-information spillers! You might benefit from a grief remedy such as Natrum Muriaticum. It will help you to process your grief and become less susceptible to incursions into your privacy.

#6 The Selfish Friend

An unfortunate example of those needing help first helping themselves, this type of individual places himself at the center of the universe. And then is only passive when you yourself are in need of help.

Some folks are easy marks for this sort of attention. When that’s the case, poor self-esteem is usually to blame. Many homeopathic remedies come up for folks who cannot say no, or are otherwise taken advantage of. These would include Thuja (folks with horrible judgment), Carcinosin (who take on all projects) and Lycopodium (big time people pleasers).

#7 The Wild Child

Dangerous and unstable types can get you into hot water. That can come from your efforts to help them, or from you yourself being drawn into risky activities.

Keeping away may be easier said than done if you yourself are prone to enjoying thrills. There are numerous remedies that can help tame a wild thrill seeker. These include: Medorrhinum (tendency to sexual excess, alcohol and drug addiction); and Lachesis (intense individuals who need to drink just in order to control their urges).

#8 The Whiner

This type of friend takes up a lot of your oxygen. Never satisfied, they whine and grumble about circumstance you yourself can do nothing to help them with. It’s a constant bring down to have to listen.

And yet you have attracted this person and DO listen to her sympathetically! Are you tending to over-commiserate? Not that there’s a lack of unfairness in the world, but folks with a big bone to pick about injustice attract birds of a similar feather. Not to mention they are prone to anxieties, skin and digestive ailments characteristic of remedies made from potassium. If you need one of these, your homeopath might well be prescribing something like Causticum for you.

#9 The Mood Killer

Mood killers seem to find a flaw in anything you do or have, be it your clothes or your love life. Unlike The Shrink though, they cannot be accused of trying to help you. They are just plain toxic — a lone dark cloud hovering. Depressing.

So the deep lesson here could be that maybe we are ourselves depressed; and/or are unconsciously granting permission to others to vent their angst on us. There are a number of remedies that a homeopath must sift through before selecting among in such a case. One remedy that comes up when someone reports feeling they have a dark cloud hovering over their head is Cimicifuga Racemosa made from black cohosh. This remedy state is not uncommon in post-partum depression, when the new mom is likely to experience her perfectly nice husband as a mood killer.

#10 The Jekyll-Hyde

This friend has serious mood swings. He or she can go from friendly to snappy in a New York minute, and with no warning or reason apparently. Most people would not be close to such a person for very long unless unavoidably, he’s a family member. On the other hand,  narcissists can show you their Dr. Jekyll side for quite a long time. Then, after you’ve been friends for a while, suddenly their Mr. Hyde side pops up and you find yourself blindsided.

Again, it is not out of the question that if you are involved with someone like this and not needing something like a Doormat remedy then a) you may need a remedy similar to the one your Jekyll-Hyde needs, just from having absorbed his toxicity; or b) you ARE like that same person which is why you have attracted him.

The primary remedy for Jekyll-Hyde people (there actually are numerous ones) is called Anacardium Orientale. Folks needing Anacardium somewhere along the line have been seriously dominated by a parent, sibling or other intimate individual. They suffer from terrible inner conflict akin to having a good angel and a bad angel at constant odds with one another. Thus, they are prone to being hard and cruel on the outside, weak and helpless on the inside. Taking this remedy promotes a much needed integration of the personality that effectively deletes the Jekyll-Hyde personality division.

As they never quite say in the TV drug commercials: Talk to your homeopath if your toxic friends are ruining your life!