A therapist can help individuals to recognize counter-productive behaviors: needless angers, heartless criticism, excessively controlling, mean, narcissisitic, malignant narcissism and, on the receiving end, enabling, co-dependent, and stuck.  I have added my own toxic relationship terminology: dismissive listening and tall man syndrome for the toxic or narcissisitic individual; and wishful thinking, excessive altrusism, and misplaced locus of focus for the recipient of the toxicity.  With these terms I thought I was understanding what my clients have been experiencing. 

Reading however I read a newly-published book of poetry by Nina Palmer, a poet who describes emergence from a toxic relationship with the nuanced understanding that can be attained only by someone who herself has been there and returned.

Palmer's poems depict through natural imagery of rain, sunshine and forests what it is like to live within and then gradually to be able to leave a toxic love relationship.  Palmer's poems radiate wisdom that can guide others along similar routes out of suffering.

The poems in Palmer's Through the Trees are at once immediately accessable and at the same time deeply enliightening.  If you have been or are now involved with someone who has toxic impacts on you, and whether you think of yourself as someone who reads poetry or have never read a poem before, I highly recommend this book.