We All Have Red Flags… Even You

We’ve become VERY good at spotting toxic traits in other people.  But how often do we turn that same curiosity towards ourselves?

In this episode of Psychic Whispers, we’re talking about our own red flags — the defensiveness, people-pleasing, resentment, avoidance, jealousy, stubbornness and other very human behaviours most of us would probably rather pretend we don’t have.

But this isn’t about labelling yourself as toxic or beating yourself up. It’s about learning to look at your own patterns with honesty, humour and a bit of compassion — because having a toxic trait doesn’t make you a toxic person.

Drawing on what I’ve learned from thirty years of conversations about love, relationships and all the complicated stuff in between, we’ll explore what happens when we turn the mirror around and ask: what am I bringing to my relationships too?

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Hello, and welcome to the Psychic Whispers Podcast. Hello, hello, and welcome back to Psychic Whispers. Okay, I'm gonna level with you all. I have been thinking about toxic traits. Which is always a lovely light subject from midweek evening, isn't it? Bino. Specifically, I have been thinking about how incredibly good we have become at identifying them in everyone else. We know all the words now, right? Red flags, toxic behavior, gaslighting, love bombing, narcissism, emotional unavailability, attachment styles, boundaries. I'm not even knocking all of that. That language has been incredibly useful, let's be honest. It's helped people recognize behavior that perhaps they didn't have the words for before. Completely see the benefit of all of that. However, and here's my butt. I think something slightly strange has happened along the way. We become really bloody good at diagnosing everyone else. Your ex is toxic. Perhaps your mother-in-law is toxic. Your friend, toxic. Your boss is definitely a narcissist because you watched three TikToks and now you're qualified. And yet, how often do we turn any of that curiosity back towards ourselves? I'm not here to say that we should beat ourselves up. I'm not even here to say that we should decide that we're secretly terrible people. That's not on the agenda today. But I do think it's very healthy to simply ask: what are my difficult traits? What do I do when I'm hurt? How do I behave when I feel rejected? What happens to me when I'm scared? What do I do when I don't feel heard? Because here's the uncomfortable truth. None of us are the hero in every single version of the story. Somewhere out there, you are probably the person in someone else's story who behaved like an absolute disaster. I know I am. And I actually think that being able to admit that is incredibly healthy. So today I want to talk about our own red flags. Not everyone else's, our own. Now, before we go any further, I want to make this distinction because I think it's really important. Having a toxic trait does not automatically make you a toxic person. I think we've actually become far too comfortable with reducing whole human beings to one word. They're toxic. You know, people are far more complicated than that. Yeah. Sometimes people behave badly. Yeah, sure. We sometimes behave badly. Sometimes we all react from fear or defensiveness. Or sometimes we're jealous, maybe even selfish. There are times when we communicate terribly. Sometimes we project our own shit onto somebody else. There are times we sulk. There are times we expect people to magically know what we need without actually telling them. There are times that we as people say, I'm fine. When what we actually mean is, I am absolutely not fine. And frankly, I'm furious that you haven't somehow psychically worked that out. Now, what's ironic and funny in this situation is that being a psychic for a living, in my relationship with my marriage, my wife Nick, she still sometimes finds herself telling me exactly what it is that she needs because I haven't even psychically worked it out. And this is my profession. So if I don't always see, you know, clearly what's on the cards, the table, um, then I would really say that we should probably be a little more forgiving for other people in our lives too, for not exactly knowing what we need at any given moment. Um, yeah, we still need to communicate. I still need to communicate with my other half. And she definitely communicates with me. And well, that's a great thing, but just saying. But none of this stuff actually makes somebody awful. I mean, it makes them human. The important part is what happens after we recognize it. There is a huge difference between saying, Oh, I am such a terrible person. And oh, I do that, don't I? Those are completely different conversations. The first one just shuts everything down because once you've decided that you're terrible, where do you go from there? But the second one is curious. Oh, I get defensive when somebody criticizes me. Why? Oh, I shut down during arguments. I wonder why I do that. Oh, I need a ridiculous amount of reassurance when I feel insecure. Huh. I wonder why I do that. Wait a minute. I say yes to things I don't want to do and then get annoyed with everybody because I'm doing too much. Why am I doing that? Now, those questions suddenly make it that we're not talking about whether you're good or bad. We're learning about you. And that's far more useful, much more constructive. Now, what happens to you when you're hurt? This is probably the question I'd start with if you're trying to understand your own relationship patterns. Most of us are fairly pleasant when everything is going in the good way, right? Things are going my way, I'm good. That's not really the test, is it? It's when something pokes the bruise. Someone doesn't call or criticizes us or says no. Maybe they don't respond in the way that we expected. Maybe someone disappoints us. Maybe someone puts up a boundary we don't particularly like. What happens then? Do you withdraw? Do you chase? Do you get angry? Do you become sarcastic? Do you need reassurance? Do you punish them by withholding affection? Do you maybe pretend you don't care when actually you care enormously? Or maybe do you start mentally collecting evidence of every other thing they've ever done wrong? Because that one is interesting. You can start an argument about the dishwasher, and suddenly you're discussing something that happened in Lanzarote in 2014. Yes. How the fuck did we get here? Is what I think we find ourselves asking in those moments. But there is usually something underneath the behavior. And understanding what's underneath doesn't excuse the behavior. I need you to understand that that's really important, but it does explain it. Okay. We're not looking for excuses to be stuck in toxicity. We're looking for reasons to grow from recognizing the things that we innately have developed in our behavior patterns. So where the hell did we learn this stuff? Right? You might be asking yourself, where did I learn that? A lot of the behaviors that we carry into relationships didn't start in the relationship we're currently in or dealing with. You know, there's often very old survival mechanisms. Maybe you've learned, you know, that conflict just wasn't safe. So now you avoid it. Maybe, you know, you've learned that people leave. So now the moment you sense distance, you panic and you cling tighter. Maybe nobody listened to you when you were growing up. So now being misunderstood feels enormous. Perhaps vulnerability was seen as weakness. So apologizing feels incredibly uncomfortable. Maybe love was unpredictable. So stability feels strangely unfamiliar. And sometimes there isn't a massive childhood explanation. Yeah, sometimes you're just being a jerk. We've all been there. We've all had our moments when we're just being a jerk. It's just plain and simple. And I think we just need to take a little ownership over that. You know, I don't know. I was just being an asshole. I think that's worth saying too. Not everything needs a 20-year psychological excavation, just be honest. Sometimes we need to simply say, yeah, I handled that pretty badly. One of the most interesting things about doing readings for these years that I have is that I've heard thousands of relationship stories. No joke. Romantic relationships, marriages, divorces, friendships, families, people dating, people separating, people desperately wanting somebody back. And of course, when somebody sits in front of me, I'm hearing their experience of the relationship. I'm not saying that they're lying. That's not what that means. You know, they're being human. We all experience relationships from inside our own perspective. And one of the most useful things I've learned from this work is that two people can experience the exact same relationship in a completely different way. I've had more than my handful of couples that have actually sought me out independently, sometimes aware of each other, sometimes not aware of each other. And it's really interesting because each person comes with their own side of the story. And I'm in the middle recognizing that these two are connected and obviously not telling each other, keeping confidence completely separate, but just noticing the things that each of them talk about, the perspectives that they come from, sometimes they're focused on completely different things. And sometimes people are focused on the same event, the same, you know, connection, the same moment. But their interpretations of that are so vastly different. It is so easy to go, oh, honestly, you're right. Oh my gosh, how dare that person do that? And then listen to the other person and go, oh my gosh, how dare they do that? You know, we all contribute something in moments like that that can be, you know, our own, us, our side. Like we're not perfect people and we shouldn't really expect ourselves to be. You know, you might have one person thinking, I do everything for them, and the other thinking, they never actually listen to what I need. Both of them genuinely believe that they're right. And that's fascinating to me because relationships aren't courtrooms. There isn't always one guilty person and one innocent person. There are simply two humans carrying completely different histories, trying to love one another without accidentally stepping on each other's toes. All right. So, what are your red flags? Let's explore some. Not as a checklist. I'm not diagnosing anybody. Just listen and notice whether anything makes you go, oh, yeah, guilty. So let's have it. Right. Do you struggle to apologize without explaining why you did it? I'm sorry, but is that familiar to you? Okay, or what about? Do you expect people to know what you need without telling them? I mean, are you actually asking all of the people in your life to be super psychic? Because as a psychic, I can tell you it's not even that easy when you are. Maybe you say yes when you mean no and then resent people afterwards. I have so been there. I've got to be honest. That's one that I identify with probably the most. Do you struggle when somebody sets a boundary with you? I mean, we talk a lot about setting boundaries, but we do not talk nearly enough about how we behave when someone else's boundary inconveniences us. And that's interesting. Okay. Do you withdraw when you're angry because you need space? Or because you want the other person to worry? That one you're gonna have to be a little honest with yourself about. Like really dig deep. Because you don't have to answer this out loud. No one's gonna have to know. But just be honest. Because that one I think can hit a little raw. Do you bring old mistakes into new disagreements? Do you keep score? Well, I did this for you. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, next one. We're being honest, guys, right? Really, really, really dig deep. Do you assume someone's intention instead of asking them what they meant? Because it's really easy to, you know, insert your own story than knowing sometimes the truth, right? Do you struggle to admit you're wrong? Or maybe, do you need to win the argument? Do you listen to understand what somebody is saying? Or are you actually sitting there waiting for them to stop talking so you can present your defense? I mean, I'm not gonna lie, defensiveness has been a toxic trait that I have identified in myself. And there are times when I feel like I am ready to be a lawyer. I'm like, right, you tell your side I'm about to unleash mine. Like, I will admit that it's not a it's not a sexy trait. Let's be real. Okay, and lastly, this is a big one. Do you hold other people to standards that you don't consistently meet yourself? Ouch, right? That one kind of stings a little bit when we're real. But you know, sometimes that's where we find ourselves. Okay, so now I'm gonna quickly talk about people pleasing. Having a shadow side, okay, because this I find particularly interesting. We tend to think of people pleasing as this lovely, selfless trait. I just do everything for everybody. Okay, but let's look underneath that. Are you doing things because you genuinely want to? Or are you doing them because you need people to approve of you? And then do you become resentful when they don't reciprocate? Because sometimes we enter into contracts with people that they don't know they've signed. I've done all these things for you, therefore you should do this for me. It's like we feel we've made an investment and we should be able to cash in on that when it suits us. But I mean, did they know that? Did you ask them? Or did you give something with an invisible expectation unattached? I mean, that's uncomfortable, but it is useful information. And again, recognizing it doesn't mean it's, oh my God, I'm manipulative and I'm awful. It just means, oh, you know, maybe I need to communicate what I actually need instead of hoping someone works it out. That's growth, my friends. That's how we evolve out of some of these behaviors that we found ourselves in. This is not about blaming yourself. And I mean, you need to put a very clear boundary around this conversation. Self-reflection does not mean taking responsibility for somebody else's harmful behavior. If somebody is abusing you, controlling you, deliberately manipulating you, or treating you badly, this is not me saying, Well, what did you do? Absolutely not. There are situations where someone else's behavior really is the problem. You are allowed to recognize that. What I'm talking about today is the normal messiness of human relationships, the places where we have agency, the patterns that we repeat, or the things that we just do automatically, the moments where we might be able to say, actually, I contributed to that without taking responsibility for everything. There's a massive difference. This is about having a healthy self-reflection, an admittance to the parts of us that just sometimes make things more complicated than they needed to be, or recognizing experiences that we have had in our past that might be contributing to the here and now. So here's a question for you: a healthy, lighthearted question. Would you want to be in a relationship with you? I think that's fascinating. And I don't only mean romantically. I want to know would you want yourself as a friend, as a partner, as a colleague, as a family member? What would be lovely about knowing you? And what would occasionally make somebody want to put their head through a wall? I have my traits too. I definitely have my traits that I'm sure make my wife want to put her head right into a wall. Bless her soul. She's very patient. I think we should be able to answer those two questions about ourselves and just reflect on the kind of way that we show up for people, our people. Knowing your difficult traits doesn't cancel out your good ones. That's another trap. We can be incredibly loving and defensive. Me, I am so defensive. It's one of my very toxic traits that I've worked really hard to try and move on from and lessen. And yeah, it's not been easy. But we can also be generous and stubborn, you know, compassionate and occasionally jealous, independent and still need reassurance, emotionally intelligent and completely lose your shit sometimes. Human beings contain contradictions. That's what makes us interesting. But your traits are not your identity. And I think this is the bit I really want you all to take away from this episode. If you notice that you become controlling when you're frightened, that does not mean I am a controlling person and therefore I'm terrible. It means when I feel unsafe, I sometimes try to control things. I wonder what that's about. Now you've got somewhere to go. If you realize that you're one of these people that becomes defensive when criticized, you should say, wow, that's interesting. Why does being wrong feel threatening to me? If you realize that you're someone that withdraws when you're hurt, you might ask yourself, what am I actually trying to protect? That's why I don't think exploring our toxic traits needs to be horrible. I actually think it can be incredibly compassionate. You know, you're learning your own operating system. And once you recognize the pattern, you have choices from there. You know, one of the gifts of getting older is becoming slightly less interested in proving that you're right all the time. I mean, at least I hope so. I've noticed that. I'm much more interested now in asking, is there anything in this for me? Even when I don't like the way that somebody has said something, even when I might disagree with a part of it, even when my immediate reaction is, oh my God, that's complete nonsense. Is there 5% that might be true? Because sometimes the people who love us can see our patterns before we can. That doesn't mean that everybody's opinion of you is correct. Oh, God, no. We've already done an entire episode about the fact that not everybody is meant to understand you. And I don't take that back. But being authentic doesn't mean becoming immune to self-reflection. You can know who you are and remain curious about yourself. And those things I think really belong together. That's how we really grow. That's how we really learn lessons that we're here to learn. Now, the big question, Messina, what the hell do we do with all of this? I'm not going to give you a five-step program. I hope you know me better than that. But maybe just over the next week, notice yourself. Especially when you're activated, you know, when you're angry or hurt, jealous, rejected, defensive. Ask, what am I doing right now? Not what's wrong with me. Just what am I doing? Then what am I actually feeling underneath this? And maybe even what do I actually need? You might be surprised by the answer. Because sometimes what looks like anger is hurt. What looks like control is fear. What looks like indifference is self-protection. What looks like people pleasing is a desperate need to be liked. And once you recognize that, you can start responding rather than simply reacting. I don't think the goal of being self-aware is eventually to become a person with absolutely no toxic traits. Good luck with that, by the way. You're human. I'm human. We're going to get things wrong. And we're going to occasionally hurt people or misunderstand each other or react really badly. We're going to have days when we're just not the best version of ourselves. The goal is not perfection. I think the goal is just becoming familiar enough with ourselves that when one of our less attractive traits walks in the room, we recognize it. Ah, there you are. And then we can maybe make a different choice and learn from it and grow with it. So, yes, learn about red flags. Understand toxic behavior. Have boundaries, please. Recognize when somebody isn't treating you well. Absolutely, please do that. But every so often, turn the mirror around. Not because you should be ashamed of what you find, but because knowing yourself and all of yourself is one of the healthiest things that you can do. Your strengths, your vulnerabilities, your patterns, those contradictions that you have. And yes, your red flags. Because maturity isn't being able to identify everyone else's. You know, sometimes it's being brave enough to recognize your own. And there is something really liberating about that. Now, if you enjoyed this conversation and you want to go a little deeper with me, you can find everything that you need on psychicwisperspodcast.com. And if you're looking for a reading with some one-to-one insight, psychic-wispers.com is where you can find all of that with me. Thank you for having this time with me today. I really enjoy these sessions with you guys, and I love hearing how you all digest and respond. So please send in your thoughts, your considerations, all the things that this brought up for you. I'd love to hear about it. Until next time, trust your path, honor your truth, and always keep listening.