Speaker 1: 4:35
Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult children of parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. I'm your host, Torie Wiksell, a therapist and coach with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. Now, let's jump in. Happy Tuesday and welcome back to the podcast this week. I hope your week is off to a great start, and if it's not, I hope that this podcast, the couple of minutes that you are here with me today, can be a bit of a reset for you and the rest of your week goes nice and smooth.
Speaker 1: 5:12
A couple of housekeeping things I'm going to try to power through super fast. I always put all of these links in the show notes as well, so if you're interested in anything I'm talking about, definitely head on over there to find the link, versus trying to scribble something down really quick while I'm talking. So the big exciting news for this week is that, one, I joined Substack. You can find me at You're Not Crazy, You're a Cycle Breaker. I am really excited about that. I am trying to get much more consistent with my writing, and part of that includes my blog as well. So if you're someone like me who likes to read and power through stuff, definitely check out the blog over at ConfidentBoundaries.com and definitely check out my Substack if you're over there as well. I also am setting a goal for myself to get more consistent with a weekly check-in email where I show you what is new on the blog and things like that and give you a few tips and insights into what's going on in my world. If you register for the free boundaries workshop or if you take my mini-course Before Boundaries, you can opt into the email list with either of those, so you won't miss out on anything. I don't have a way for you to just sign up for the email list right now, but, as I'm talking about it, that would be a good thing to add, so I will add that to my list.
Speaker 1: 6:42
I actually had another topic planned for today's podcast. However, on Thursday's group coaching call in the Confident Boundaries Online Community, one of our new members had a really, really good idea for an episode and I am shocked that I haven't already addressed this yet, but I feel like it is so important and pressing that I bumped the thing that I had originally scheduled and I added this to our list. I am going to be dropping another bonus episode of You're Not Crazy all about the dynamics in sibling relationships when you grow up with a BPD or NPD parent, and my thoughts around how to reestablish a healthy relationship with your siblings, if they are also interested in that as an adult, because it is really tricky. So if you're interested in that, click on the bonus episodes link in the show notes and you can get signed up for bonus episodes.
Speaker 1: 7:44
Okay, without further ado, let's hop into the heart of today's episode, which is talking about the enabling parent. Now you might think of your enabling parent as the healthier parent or your healthy parent. In some respects, true. It is oftentimes more true that the enabling parent is less abusive than the other parent. However, the enabling parent definitely contributes to the role, the cycle of dysfunction, the role in which everyone plays in the family.
Speaker 1: 8:24
The enabling parent is not as healthy as they appear to be on the surface, and so I want to really get into that, because it is so important to understand if you are trying to make sense of your childhood and your family relationships and heal from the dysfunction and the abuse, and it is true regardless of whether your parents are still married. If they're still together, maybe they were never married. If they're in a relationship, if they're divorced, if they're separated, if one has passed. This is really, really important for people to understand. Now maybe you're thinking, "What if I don't have an enabling parent?" Maybe, possibly, that might be true. However, I want you to put a pin in that thought, because my guess is that, as you listen to this episode, you're going to start to recognize that your non-abusive parent, the non-toxic parent or the one that appears less toxic, let's say to you probably has some enabling tendencies. This really is true. Even if that parent ended up, you know, separating, divorcing, going through their own therapy, doing a lot of their healing work, maybe they are not an enabling parent anymore.
Speaker 1: 9:46
At one point, though, based on the typical relationship and family dynamics with someone with unmanaged BPD or narcissistic personality disorder, this family dynamic is really extremely common. So is it possible that your family doesn't have an enabling parent? Sure, life is very nuanced. This definitely is not going to hit everyone, but, like so much of what I talk about on the podcast, there are so many parallels in these family dynamics and so let's stop my rambling and just jump in and talk about what it looks like. So I think when I first said the enabling parent, some of you I'm sure were nodding along, thinking, "Oh, I know exactly who that is." Then, when I followed up and said that the enabling parent is often the one that looks like the healthier parent, I think even more of you said, "Oh, hmm, okay, I think I have an idea of which parent you're talking about."
Speaker 1: 10:51
In my personal family dynamic, I know I've talked a lot about my mom being what I believe to be someone with narcissistic personality disorder and a lot of BPD traits. My dad was the enabling parent and my parents divorced. It was a very long, dragged-out, awful divorce for so many irrational reasons before my mom passed away, and my dad is definitely my healthier parent. That is factual, that is correct, that is just an objective thing if you're looking at the emotional and psychological health. However, my dad is also the enabling parent, and so there are a lot of challenges that he and I have had throughout the course of our relationship, aka my entire life, and it is complicated, just like the relationship with your BPD or NPD parent is complicated. The relationship with the enabling parent is complicated as well. I'm going to talk about some really common things that enabling parents do and then I'm going to tell you a little bit about my own situation to hopefully give you some insight into how this actually looks on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 1: 12:14
So one thing that enabling parents do frequently is that they make excuses or they minimize the abusive parent's behavior. They'll say things like, "Well, you know, that's just how they are," or "They love you so much," or "All they've ever wanted was to be a mom," or "You're the most important thing in the world to them," or "You're the most important thing in the world to them." I'm sure at some point you have heard some variation of those things. And that is so gaslighting and toxic.
Speaker 1: 12:54
Enabling parents also prioritize keeping the peace. They are very much conflict-avoidant, so they do not want to trigger your parent. They do not want to engage with your parent once your abusive parent, once the toxic parent, is triggered. They want to maintain the peace at all costs. They are very uncomfortable with conflict, and that gets prioritized over protecting you. They also frequently minimize your experiences by making you feel like you're overly dramatic or you're being too sensitive. They put the blame on you, versus your abusive parent, versus your toxic parent, and they really encourage and push you to make things right. They really put a lot of onus on the child to bridge the disconnect between your BPD or NPD parent and you, which is very inappropriate, but something that I think societally, as we've talked about in the past, happens too right. But they're your parent. You should try harder, you should be softer with them, you should reach out to them and make things right, because one day they won't be here anymore and you'll regret it. That is the same type of concept that we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: 14:35
The enabling parent often acts very passively, or they might act helpless, saying things like, "There's nothing I can do. You know how they get, just try to let it go." And yet they still stay in this dynamic, they still participate in this dynamic. Your enabling parent might guilt-trip you when you try to set healthy boundaries. Again, family sticks together. She's our family, he's our family. We don't always love what our family does, but we still have to love them.
Speaker 1: 15:17
Enabling parents often also turn a blind eye to the most damaging behaviors because if they didn't, then they couldn't rationalize them, continuing with the status quo, and what I mean by that is that when your BPD or NPD parent does something that is truly, objectively egregious, maybe they are screaming at you, maybe they put hands on you, maybe they threaten you, put you in a very dangerous situation, when they do something that is truly egregious, your enabling parent is very likely to do. What I say is my little three monkey statue. I think there's a term for this, but off the top of my head I can't remember what it's called, but it's the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkeys right, that is the enabling parent. That statue in my office is because that is what the enabling parent does. If I pretend like I don't see it, that I'm not hearing it, that I don't talk about it, then I can pretend that none of this is happening. But if I acknowledge it, then I actually have to do something with it because I know it's not okay. All of these things that we're talking about is very gaslighting. It is teaching you that your needs are not that important, that the priority is to protect peace at the expense of your own well-being and your own emotional and mental health. It is teaching you that you shouldn't trust the way that you feel, that you are a problem, that you are too sensitive or too dramatic, or you should be able to let things go more easily.
Speaker 1: 17:12
The enabling parent causes a significant amount of psychological harm, just like the abusive, the actively abusive parent does, and that is very hard to swallow. There are so many parts of growing up with a parent who is narcissistic or a managed BPD that are hard, that are really hard. They're hard to accept. I know we've talked about radical acceptance in the past on this podcast. They are hard to sit with, they are hard to acknowledge, they are hard to learn about and understand and reflect on. There are so many aspects of your relationship with your NPD or BPD parent that are so hard, and something that can be even harder at times is taking a step back from your relationship with your enabling parent and being really honest about the harm that that has contributed to your emotional and mental well-being, to your sense of self, to your identity, to how you view relationships and people who love you.
Speaker 1: 18:36
This one is so tough because growing up, my dad did not do all of these by any means, but he is definitely a conflict-avoidant person. He is definitely not someone. I don't think I've ever heard my dad yell in my entire life. I've never seen him raise his voice. He's very mellow, very, very calm, always, always calm. And the minimization of acknowledging what my mom would do and then making excuses for it and putting pressure on me to bridge that gap and not defending me. All of those things were very, very evident in my relationship with my dad as I was growing up and when my parents separated things with my mom got even worse than they were growing up and so desperately wanted my dad to take custody of my sister and I, my little sister and I, and he didn't, and he didn't disappear from our lives by any means.
Speaker 1: 19:50
He still came to all of our activities and we would get together with him once or twice a week for dinner, and I just couldn't understand why, when my mom was so unhinged, he wouldn't protect us and take custody of us and I talked to him about this relatively recently that she would do something extreme like harm herself. That is what I assumed was the reason, and the fact that my dad and I ever had a conversation about this at all shows the immense amount of growth that we've had in our relationship. But he said that that wasn't the reason, that the reason was he wanted us to stay in the home that we grew up in, and I don't think he was lying to me. I think that he is so disconnected from the gravity and the reality of how abusive and traumatic growing up in the family that I grew up in was that for him, it was that simple. Was that for him it was that simple that, oh, the girls should stay in the house that they've grown up in not? Are they safe? Are they okay? Are they being treated well? Is my soon-to-be ex-spouse mentally and emotionally capable of caring for these girls? And I think that's a really good picture of how disconnected the enabling parent can be.
Speaker 1: 21:52
Now there are enabling parents who separate, who remove themselves from this dynamic. They go to therapy, they work on a lot of their own trauma healing and they no longer are an enabling parent. That is something that does happen. Enabling parents don't lack empathy. Enabling parents have their own trauma history. They just don't know how to protect themselves and they don't know how to protect you either, and so, while it is different, it is still so harmful and traumatizing the result and what that means for you and how that impacts you. And it is just a really, really, really hard dynamic. And it's hard when you so desperately want that healthier parent to save you, when you so desperately want the healthier parent to acknowledge what you've been through because you see them as being more capable than your other parent. When you get that from the enabling parent, if you are that lucky, then I am thrilled for you. That is wonderful.
Speaker 1: 23:15
So many people in the situations that we've grown up in do not get that, because healing is really hard. Right, if your parents are still in a relationship, if they're still married, how can your enabling parent really heal without having to completely reevaluate their entire world, their marriage? If they heal, that means that they can't pretend like abuse that's happening isn't happening anymore, that they have to start acknowledging reality for what it is and making hard decisions versus trying to keep the peace at all costs. And in order to do that, that means that their relationship with your more abusive parent has got to change, that that dynamic has to be confronted, and I think there are just so many people who are not in a place where they are ready or willing to do that work and that is devastating.
Speaker 1: 24:16
It is so hard and it is really, really important to acknowledge and really important to recognize and reflect on when you are trying to heal from a family dynamic like this. Because, just like we need to be really honest with ourselves about what our BPD or NPD parent is capable of when we're thinking about doing things like setting boundaries, we also need to be really honest with ourselves. What is our enabling parent capable of? What are they not only capable of but willing to do? And really, looking at the big picture of what would they have to give up in order to meet me where I want them to meet me, and maybe even trying to have conversations with them about that, I think this one can really hit you in the heart and the gut so much more than your other parent, because our brains don't want to see the complexity of this parent.
Speaker 1: 25:29
It is so hard to see that this healthier person is still so flawed in their own ways, like we all are. It is so hard, like we all are. It is so hard, and we grow up in this black-and-white world right, and so to look at your enabling parent from this perspective requires a lot of gray thinking and a lot of taking a step back from the story that you have told yourself while you're growing up and throughout your life, and so I am sure this will not be the last time we talk about enabling parents. But if you take anything away from today's episode, I want you to know that, in order for you to really protect yourself, in order for you to really heal, to set healthy boundaries, to really break this cycle that you're in, it's important to really reflect on the relationship with your enabling parent and how that impacts you and what, if anything, you want to do differently when you approach your enabling parent in order to protect your own sanity.
Speaker 1: 26:53
It's a tough one. It's a tough one to navigate. It is. All of this is tough, though, right? When you grow up in a dysfunctional family like this, it is all tough. All of the family stuff is tough, and it's hard.
Speaker 1: 27:07
It's hard to talk about, it's hard to find people who get it, and if you are finding that you don't have those spaces in your life where you have people who get it, who understand, who are there to encourage and support and be a sounding board for the things that you're processing, make sure to check out the Confident Boundaries Online Community. We're now doing two coaching sessions a week—Mondays at 2, Thursdays at noon—and we have the community chat feature in there. We have so much support over there. So definitely head over to ConfidentBoundaries.com slash join if you could use a little more support in your own healing journey. And until next week, I'll see you guys then. Bye. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of You're Not Crazy. If you like the podcast, please leave a review and rate us five stars. It helps so much, and make sure to check the show notes for links to bonus podcast episodes and other ways I can help. See you soon.
