I talk about self-protection as legitimate because it absolutely is. What I'm trying to underscore is that when we self-protect we also understand the situation of the other -- that nobody is toxic but there are only forms of woundedness that interplay with our particular karmic inheritance. We are sometimes the one that harms (even if only unintentionally) and other times we are the ones that are harmed but it's all an interplay of woundedness and when we start to understand this we can move through more gently and with love and forgiveness even for those who have perhaps harmed us. ...