Rosemary Pagliaro - Toxic Relationships, How To Spot Them Personally And Professionally.

Rosemary Pagliaro

[00:00:00] Wendy Manganaro: Hi everyone. My name's Wendy Manganaro and I am the Host of the Wellness and Wealth podcast. I'm so happy to have you find us. And if you could take a moment and hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. This is the podcast where we believe when you show up better for yourself as a woman business owner, you show up better for your business. 

So sit back, relax. And learn from the practical to the woo-hoo, how to best take care of you. Have a great day. Stay blessed. And leave a review when you're done listening to the show, thanks so much. 

[00:00:38] Wendy: Hi everyone. We have another amazing guest today, Rosemary 

Pagliaro. She is the jack of all trades, but to say the least, she has been a survivor engineer and teacher among other things. She's a mother of two wonderful daughters and a wife to an amazing husband. She's a level one certified precision nutritionist and certified 200 hour yoga teacher, currently finalizing her personal training certificate.

She's excited to help those looking for answers on how to change their lifestyles to something more resolute or to help those in need of a body overhaul. Welcome, Rosemary. Thanks for being here with us. 

[00:01:14] Rosemary Pagliaro: Thank you for having me, and I'm enjoying being here. 

[00:01:16] Wendy: I like our topic today because when it comes to entrepreneurs and business, I don't think people realize they can attract toxic relationships in their own business.

But I wanna know from you what your definition of a toxic relationship is. 

[00:01:29] Rosemary Pagliaro: That's a good question and it varies with each individual and each situation of course. I consider toxicity is the me scenario all about me. They don't see the bigger picture. It's like a tunnel vision. For yourself and in a work environment, we did tend to develop that kind of tunnel vision.

Everybody does at some point. But where it becomes toxic to me in this business relationship is when it stays that way. Whenever we don't. Take into account the others around us with a situational awareness around us as well. And we take one track and one minded. And that's, that seems to be and that's in anything, not just business personal friendships, that's another one that is not talked about.

Usually when you do a business and you talk about relationships you become friends. Especially with small businesses, you try to make it like a family and family can be toxic as well. And so can your business family.

[00:02:24] Wendy: I like that you said you it could be from growing up, but the reality is like how we relationship is usually how we relationship whether it's our family, our business, our community. I think that we keep replicating relationships sometimes if we don't know how to break the pattern of the relationship.

 I was talking to somebody, they're like I'm changing jobs because of so and so and and I'm like, They're gonna have the same person there, any job they go to, because I think it's on us to do the changing.

[00:02:56] Rosemary Pagliaro: I completely agree, especially when it comes to, like you said relationships, environment. It could be a mix of both. And you're right humans, anybody tends to take that path of least resistance. If it involves so much change, we don't wanna do it. We innately just don't want to.

Going back to health and wellness, you see these fads of, oh take this pill and you'll lose 20 pounds instantly. Eat this thing for several days and you'll lose the weight like that. I had cabbage soup Diet came up one time and for me I'm going Yeah, you, Okay, So it's cabbage broth, but, and maybe a little protein, but where some of the carbs, I mean your brain needs carbs to function.

It's that same kind of scenario. We tend to find the thing that's the easiest to do and we don't wanna break the habit to make it better. Some people want that because it makes them feel good when other people come together to dote on them. What got me with toxic relationships to begin with was narcissism, that's that seems to be one of the key elements in a toxic relationship is a form of narcissism.

And there's several forms. And that feeling of wanting to be doted on constantly, so always trying to find the worst case scenario to put yourself in. But the nice thing is when there's others involved, you tend to have that support that tells you this is not good. When it's one on one, that's where it prolongs the inevitable.

[00:04:20] Wendy: I was gonna ask you about that too, because when you started your description of toxic relationships, I was like that sounds very familiar to someone who's a narcissist. And if you have not been in a relationship with a narcissist, any type of relationship with a narcissist, sometimes you don't know until you you're in the midst of it, how much.

It is all about them and they never ask how you're doing or if you say anything, they change it back to themselves. And you could even go there to tell them something and like they don't hear it because they spin it on themselves so quickly.

[00:04:57] Rosemary Pagliaro: And that's habitual. So this is something that's developed. This is something that is continuous and the thing that narcissists do or anybody with that's in a relationship with someone that's toxic does is they search out for people that are going to feed their habit.

Think of it like an addiction. They want to find someone. Eventually the people that they use and abuse are going to see it. And it might be a year, two years, or. It will be seen eventually. And then what do they do? They have a tendency to move on to someone else.

And the cycle just starts over and over again. And I think that's what makes this difficult right. Or so interesting and so hard in a nutshell. 

[00:05:41] Wendy: During the pandemic I did a lot of reach outs on LinkedIn, as I don't mind talking to anybody during the pandemic especially. But this person asked me to get on the phone with them about business, which I was like, Oh, cool. That's great. And they literally started insulting me from the moment I got on the phone. It was I can't believe you don't eat in this place to about how much money they had and how lucky I was they were thinking about working with me. By the time the end of the phone call, I had started typing up my response saying this is not a good fit. But that's taken me years of practice cuz at one point in time I would've been like, maybe it was just an off day for him.

I'm like, No, I'm sorry. I'm not getting into a relationship where you let me know you didn't like everything from my last name to where I lived, who I knew. And it was all because it was really about them and their last name and what they knew. And I was like that's wonderful. You go, you with somebody else,

[00:06:42] Rosemary Pagliaro: Exactly. Yeah. And people like that love, live and thrive off of connections, especially online because and that's why I think has spiraled more recently and with Covid is because now they have a mass audience with online, like these Zoom calls and everything. And I'm not saying that these aren't, they're both great and hurtful and that's because now they can put their story out to millions of people and they will get quite a few that will bite. And I tend to call the ones that take it, the kind of motherly syndrome or the father ly syndrome. We want to be there to support, or we have trauma in our past as well from parents that were narcissists possibly that this seems natural, this seems common, anybody else that doesn't fit the mold of a narcissist is unheard of because that's all we've known.

And then let's take that one step further to business, how they treat their family is also good indicator of how they're gonna react in your business, especially small businesses who, what do they do? They try to develop a community. Because they want to get those bonds with people, clients, and if you have workers that's what they thrive off will eventually, you will lose clients due to that fact because clients will come in who have had a good relationships in the past, you know what not to expect. See this, and then it's a complete turnoff and they walk away.

So not only is that hurting your business, but then that's also hurting yourself. That's an good indicator. 

[00:08:19] Wendy: So in what stage of your life did you realize that relationships could be toxic? 

[00:08:25] Rosemary Pagliaro: It took me years. Let's just say as a child, I understood. The relationship that I was in , with my mom. And I tried to break free of it when I was in college. And this was more so this kind of narcissism was control.

I need to control every single environment around me, and that's my daughter's environment. So I tried to break that control and I did get out of it for a while. And it was great. Came back in and was doing good, but then you fall into old patterns, especially if a narcissist is using that parental guidance as the be it all know it all

syndrome, so you fall into old patterns very quickly. And then that led me to my first relationship, which they butter you up, they reel you in, you're like a fish caught on a hook. And then once they catch you, they devour you. And I went to having friends, to, I was isolated and alone, even from my family in my first relationship and to where it became abusive and that was an indicator to me. I had always put up with a lot, but the abuse I would not put up with. And I walked away. And then I went and sought help for my scenario and the the counselor at the time told me that this stems from childhood and didn't think anything of it.

Didn't think it was toxic. The relationships that I had didn't know what that was, let's put it that way. Didn't even know what that was. So I got healed from that trauma and got into a wonderful relationship, which is completely opposite of what I've ever known. And it's beautiful. And then here we go with old habits are hard to kill.

The parental trying to control even my husband, and he was the one that this has gotta stop. This has got to stop. And then had families. And what really set the tone was when that started passing from grandma to granddaughters. That's where everything flooded cause it's different when it's you, but when you start seeing that on another person, on another individual, especially your children it, everything changes. And then the same follows into business cuz what you know, You open a business, you try to develop the same type of relationships, old habits, hard to break.

You invite people into your business. You think they're gonna work just as hard as you and do just as well You, because you're a small business and you really wanna make it work and they tell you, Yeah, but again, that's The engagement stage or the first year anniversary stage of like marriage, except with business, they make it all sound.

They make it all sound like I'm gonna help you. But when it came time to really put forth that effort, put forth that work, excuses, they wanted all the glory, but none of the work. I want all of it. And then when you tried to tell them you need to do this. It was, Oh, you should pity me because I have blah going on.

Oh, you'll understand if I can't, And then excuses becomes non-action. Then you start, what happens? You lose clients because that carries over into their work. And so that's the short of how I know about my, about toxic relationships. 

[00:11:35] Wendy: Yeah. And it's funny how you say you don't know until your eyes open.

I'm back in my home state, which I'm grateful to be here. How I got back into my home state is another whole story is because I had a family member pass away. And when we found, all of the stuff that they had been doing once we came home and started look at the estate, I started to do this research based on another family member mentioning it. This person was such a narcissist and I've always known you can't talk to him and I used to joke about they literally talk about nothing about themselves, and to then see what they had done in their private life afterwards.

The whole estate's a hot mess. Express. And it took me a full year to be like, who was this person that I thought I knew that I didn't know? But when I started to read about narcissism, I started to go oh, now I see it. Now I understand.

Now I get it. And so it was never personal. It was their makeup and they're gonna push and pull. 

And I completely understand because, I had moved for 10 years, so I was completely out of this family stuff, . And for me, I started to learn with my clients first, and then I came back, and you're right, like these old habits of die hard. And then I was like, What am I doing?

I haven't been involved in this for 11 years. I'm good with that. started the backtrack again. And I think there's layers of learning. about toxicity and exactly what you're talking about is protecting your children because you don't want them to grow up in the same.

[00:13:07] Rosemary Pagliaro: No the the habits, like I said, you don't want them picking up those habits to begin with. And we are in the generation of self love, self care, things like that but my main thing when I very talk about that is, Do self-love and self care to where it only affects you and doesn't expand to other people trying to give you more self-love and self-care, it's a two-way street.

Here you have self-love for yourself, you have self-love for others, it should be returned as well. It should be reciprocal. Health and wellness is not just physical. And that's just the thing we need to talk off too.

And that's why toxicity is so important because it's not just physical. When we think health and loss think it's all about your physical appearance, all about, and that's a form of toxicity too. Body image. Even against yourself. But even if people have body image against others, I that's a form of toxicity against yourself and against others.

 Self care, is love. Mentally as well as physically. So when we talk about health and wellness and wellbeing and fitness you can't get right here without getting right what's here and what's here. Your heart and your mind, because when those two are in alignment, the physical will come later and that seems to be the first key.

Along with nutrition I'm whole hardly nutrition, of course, but , but yeah, that and that, that's where. I think that's where health and wellness needs to begin. How can you change old habits? 

[00:14:29] Wendy: I completely agree. I think a lot of people go If I lose the 30 pounds, I'll be happier if they do it this physical thing, but they're not dealing with the mental health thing. And to even to that point when people have the surgery for the weight loss before they'll even do it, they're like, No, you have to go to counseling because if you don't change the habit and the things that have gotten you here, it's not gonna make a difference.

You have the surgery, it's a lot of that mental health has to happen so that they don't repeat it. Cuz otherwise they're going to have the surgery and have the same. 

[00:15:01] Rosemary Pagliaro: Correct. Yeah. The most common issue in health and wellness is nutrition. And the most common issue in nutrition is emotional eating.

 Emotional eating, that is the hardest thing to break with people is that emotional eating cuz you know when you feel sad, you feel, sorry, or you feel emotionally hurt. You wanna go for comfort. And a lot of people, instead of putting comfort into an activity, they use comfort in form of food.

And that has been the hardest thing to break in a lot of people. And and then also time management. Instead of sitting down to meals which I know I'm just, I'm not saying I'm perfect, I do it too. Instead of us sitting down to family meals, sometimes we're so pressed with time that we're throwing two or three different dinners at different times.

Shoveling food in our mouth. To try to just get something in. And that's the second worst thing is just fast eating. Not even enjoying, not even giving our body time to digest. But emotion eating is big because turning that back around to toxicity, if someone is constantly keeping you in that emotional state of sadness or depression or anxiety, What do most people turn to?

It's cheap, it's fast, it's easy food, right? Comfort food. And so that's why you gain the weight when you're in a toxic relationship. And the same with a business, right? Because we deal in the realm of nutrition and health and wellness, the same would apply. That's why you, especially in that, you don't want people that are gonna be bringing that to the forefront with your clients because they're already coming in vulnerable.

They're taking that first step. and by we're just throwing more fuel on the fire if we endorse that. 

[00:16:44] Wendy: So speaking of entrepreneurship, how do we spot a toxic client? And I'll tell you, at least for myself, when I was new in business, I don't know anybody who hasn't taken on that client where they're like, every fiber of their beings going, Don't do this. And it becomes the most toxic, horrendous relationship because A, we didn't listen to ourselves in the first place and I've learned over the years, the ones that overly complain about prices usually want you to jump through hoops that nobody else is gonna do for them. They want all of the focus. Like anytime I've had a client who's can't you, I had to learn to say, No, I don't do that. I don't do discounts and only because from experience, those who have asked for, those are the ones that drain every single minute of my workday.

There's always a drama. There's always a catastrophe. I can tell you right now, there is no social media catastrophe. Even if you get bad reviews, there's very rare social media catastrophes for small businesses.

 And when I deal with people who are toxic, everything is a catastrophe.

[00:17:56] Rosemary Pagliaro: The world is going to, Every day, every minute of the day. And it's hard because when I started out as a small business it's hard for people who are just starting out because we want to please everybody so we can get clients in.

We want to be that person and that community where everybody comes to. But the problem with that is eventually the narcissist ones, or not even narcissist, the toxic ones will drain you dry. They will sit there and they don't even have a second qualm about it. They will drain you dry, and that's how you can spot 'em.

If after a while you've given and given, and they still want more, then you're in a toxic relationship. If you've given and they don't give back or they don't go out and spread your word to the community, or they don't try to make it a community or when they walk in the door and everybody cringes.

Your whole community cringes, that's a, a telltale. And again, yeah, learning it the hard way had to do the same thing, try to please everybody. And I lost sight of who my true client is trying to do that. And and unfortunately that's just the learning curve for anybody starting a business.

[00:19:03] Wendy: Yeah, I agree. I think. And I have seen some people who put themselves in it over and over again, and some people are like, No, that's not okay. One of the things I ask is what is your perfect client? And what is that one client? And then we'll do a survey and they go, But this is everybody I don't wanna work with. And I. You sent it to your client list, let's rethink about who you wanna work with. I think you're right. I think there is a learning growth and I think that is also that idea of moving from this idea of lack, that if I don't say yes to everybody, somebody who I do wanna work with that isn't toxic, isn't going to come.

[00:19:40] Rosemary Pagliaro: Yeah. And the same with clients. Yeah. That's exactly the key, what you said right there is when you're first starting out, you just want anybody, when you're first starting out, you just want anything. And I do recommend, I did it on my own, starting my own. I got someone in that I thought was gonna help, didn't.

And now that I've actually brought on a second to do more with me, it has been. Better, not just from the business standpoint, but also from the client standpoint, because now there's two people. I don't have to take the brunt of that. I don't have to take the brunt of it all. Running the business, managing it, talking to clients, doing the marketing, being the face.

And so I recommend for all businesses, and plus this person helped me spot the toxicity. That I was blind to because I thought loyalty of friendship was more important than, I was trying to do that. But that's not good business, right? Friends, if this person was a good friend, they wouldn't have forced me into that situation of deciding, they would've been there. And that's another that's the other thing, and bringing another set of eyes in another clear set of eyes that trust you, worthy you with, you become, they become, you'll know because they're gonna be out there doing it with you. They're gonna hands in the, in the dirt getting dirty with you to do it.

And that's when you start really reevaluating your relationships with not just your clients, but your employees. 

[00:21:01] Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. If an entrepreneur finds themselves and like they start to look at their clients or team and they start to hear this and go, Wow, I have one or two that are really sucking me dry. What's a good way to start untangling themselves from that? 

[00:21:15] Rosemary Pagliaro: Yeah, it's, how to step away or give an alternative. And there's no easy way, let me put it that way, because if they are a type of toxic relationship where they are in a form of narcissism most narcissists don't want to change because they never see that they're the problem.

Everybody else is the problem. And I think if you can get in a group and get more than one or two people to actually look at this and go, are you seeing this? Are you seeing this? We're all seeing this. And then have a try to have a conversation. But here's the other hard part too, is a narciss on the will know it's coming

and they will do anything in their power to make you the bad guy when it does happen, and it does happen, eventually it comes to head, it comes to a point where you've lost too many clients. They're not showing up for work anymore. They have all the excuses in the book, and they've run out of excuses to give you, let's put it that way.

They have run out of excuses to give you as to why they can't perform to their best capability. The honeymoon period is over and that's when you have the conversation. I will go with you and be willing to change this. Let's work out a better schedule. Let's try. Or we're gonna, or give them a timeframe.

You have so many, so much time to really show me that you're gonna be putting in the effort that I'm putting in and be here and be an active member of the community and the business family. Or maybe this is not the best fit for you. Maybe let's try and find you something else. Or, I really appreciate your time, maybe we should find some that's more suited to your qualifications.

I love the saying I heard recently you cannot be a hero in everyone's story. And I think that right there is the perfect example of there is to make you better and hero to the people that need it. Some people, you just can't be the hero. You just can't. 

[00:23:08] Wendy: That resonates with me because lately I've had this thought of you can't want things more than the person themselves.

[00:23:14] Rosemary Pagliaro: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:23:16] Wendy: It's been on my mind and when we were talking about toxic relationships or even toxic people who are like, even from a little bit from afar, you're like, Oh, I'd like to help.

And they start with a thousand excuses or whatever it is you. Okay, but I can't want this more than you and for your business too, right? Whatever it is you can't want it more than the person wants it themselves. Which I think is a really difficult lesson to learn sometimes, because we're well intentioned people. There's a lot of well intentioned people who want something for somebody. And then they don't have the capability cuz they're not ready for it, because they're just not there yet. And when they're there it'll be fabulous. But until then, it's not a good idea.

[00:23:58] Rosemary Pagliaro: And that's the hardest thing in health and wellness industry is everybody wants health and wellness, but. Most of the time it's the people that they come to like us for health and wellness that are there pushing them to, to strive to be better cuz we know they have it in them to achieve. But again, if they don't want to go past that threshold, if they don't wanna break those bad habits, if they don't want to change to be something different, because the only way you're gonna be different is to change.

Right, just a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, just like humans grow up from children and become the adults that they are, but there's still, as an adult, you still have that capability of change. That's what makes this amazing human beings that makes this profoundly human is the capability to adapt and to change.

[00:24:46] Wendy: I completely agree don't have to be a hero and everybody's story. I think that's so true. This has been a pleasure. I could talk more for hours, especially on this topic. I know you have an offer and I also wanna make sure that you tell everybody how they can find you. And so I'm gonna let you do that now.

[00:25:02] Rosemary Pagliaro: Oh yeah. We are called Yawe Health and Fitness. It's Y H W H Health and Fitness located out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And we also have online classes. So we teach primarily yoga, but there's, I teach a class called Pound. Course we offer nutrition and reiki at our studio, and apparently there is online reiki.

That was something new, but my reiki specialist says, Oh, I can do online reiki. I was like, Oh, that's new. Okay. And we're trying to get a massage therapist in and because our eventual goal. Is to become a one stop shop for health. So I'm really looking forward to where this is going. And we have a code for $5 off of fitness class. You can just message me@yhwh.yoga gmail.com. I'll give you that $5 off for that class. And yeah. So that's how you guess.

Oh, and our website is the same. It's Y H W h health fitness.com. We have fitness schedule, we have specials that are going on Feel free to join.

[00:26:01] Wendy: Yay. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for being here with us today. It's been a real pleasure. 

[00:26:08] Rosemary Pagliaro: Oh, pleasure to join you. Thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it. 

[00:26:11] Wendy: Thank you. I will talk to you all.

In the meantime, have a blessed and abundant week.