About · A note from the founder
Nobody taught us this.So I started writing it down.
I'm Önder. Anti Toxic People is something I run on my own: not a licensed clinical practice, not a law firm, not a funded research institute. I started it because toxic people turn up everywhere: at work, in families, in friendships. And yet no school, no degree, no training course ever teaches us how to recognize them, or how to protect ourselves and the people we love. Most of us walk into them uninformed and defenseless. I did too.
Önder Mutluer, founder
What I kept noticing is how little real empathy these people have, and how easy the last few years have made that to get away with. Morality gets treated like a line item, weighed in profit and loss, and the shame and honor that used to keep this kind of behavior in check have quietly worn away. Today, if something can be justified, it becomes normal.
I don't believe it has to stay that way. It changes when we learn to protect ourselves, learn to name what we're dealing with, and take these people out of our organizations, together rather than alone.
What "anti toxic" means
People sometimes ask me whether the name sounds aggressive. Here's how I actually think about it.
It isn't a label for a type of person. It's what you are, briefly, when you recognize the toxic people around you and do something about it: remove them from a team, a company, a life you're part of. Once they're gone, you go back to being just people again; there's nothing left to be anti to. The goal was never a new identity to belong to. It's for everyone to end up where they actually belong. And that's the other half of it: someone who covets, and quietly resents not having, a place they don't belong in and haven't earned. That's what "toxic" means here.
Who's writing this
I'm Önder Mutluer, a marketing professional based in Munich, with more than 15 years across e-commerce, brand strategy, and performance marketing. I'm not a clinician, and I won't pretend to be one. What I bring is different: years of watching the same patterns repeat across workplaces and teams, the conviction that those patterns deserved names people could actually use, and the reading it took to back every single one with a real source instead of my own opinion. Every pattern in the Field Guide was researched and named by me, and that's exactly why I'm careful about what I claim.
How I handle evidence
- Clinical construct
- Academic research concept
- Descriptive term
Every entry in the Field Guide is labeled by the kind of evidence it rests on: a clinical construct, an academic research concept, or a descriptive term. Every claim that isn't obvious is traced to a named study, book, or legal case you can go and check for yourself. Where I've coined my own name for a pattern the literature hasn't named yet, I say so plainly instead of dressing it up as established research.
My own authority is never the basis for a claim here. The citation is.
Write to me
There's no support team behind this, just me, doing the research and trying to keep it honest. If you're a clinician, a researcher, or you work in HR, and you spot something that should be corrected or better supported, I'd genuinely like to hear it. That kind of feedback shapes what the Field Guide becomes next. You can reach me anytime at onder@ondermutluer.com.