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Torie Wiksell: 0:14 

Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult children of parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. I'm your host, tori Wixel, a therapist and coach with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. Now let's jump in. Hi and welcome back to the podcast this week. So this last week has been really fun and really busy. Let me catch you up a little bit as to what's been going on in my world.

Torie Wiksell: 0:46 

Last Tuesday I did the live boundaries workshop how to set boundaries with a parent with BPD or MPD and we had an awesome turnout. We did run into a couple of technical difficulties just the workshop platform rebooting a few times but everyone had a great sense of humor about it. We were able to get back and going really quickly and it was actually a ton of fun. And I know you might be thinking, tori, how could talking about setting boundaries with a parent with BVD or MPD be anywhere near fun? And I've just got to tell you I don't know. I love talking about this stuff because I know how helpful it is and I like to think that I'm a pretty fun and uplifting and funny person, and so I think that, even though this stuff can be really heavy and feel really overwhelming. I don't know how. I have a good time doing it. It just is so nice to be able to talk to other cycle breakers who are really wanting to learn about their family dynamics. They want to do something differently, and the most awesome thing about working with other adults who have parents with BPD and narcissistic personality disorder is that, honestly, it's like the kindest group of people ever. People who are cycle breakers, people who really don't want to repeat toxic cycles that they've grown up with in their adult life and with their own adult relationships and own families are genuinely like some of the kindest people in the world. And that's you out there.

Torie Wiksell: 2:40 

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but starting this podcast was actually really scary. This is the first time that I've talked so honestly and openly about my relationship with my mom, at least outside of the therapy room, or with people who I have really close relationships with. To record myself talking about things that are so personal and to then just put it out in the world for anyone to listen to has been really scary, and I thought I would get a ton of negative feedback and while I have gotten some, most of it has actually come from social media, not listeners of this podcast. Listeners of this podcast who reach out to me have been lovely. Every single one, at least, I can recall off of the top of my head, which I think really says something. So, yes, these are heavy things that we're talking about. Yes, these can be really hard things to talk about, and I think that having a sense of humor when it's appropriate, I think, finding the humanness and the positivity when it's appropriate and helpful, I think all of these things can make it feel a lot less daunting.

Torie Wiksell: 3:58 

So if you missed out on the last boundaries workshop, I want to let you know that I am doing a round two of it on Tuesday, april 1st, at 5 pm Pacific time. We'll meet again for around an hour. I stayed late last time to answer questions. I'm happy to do that again this time. Head over to confident boundaries dot com slash boundaries workshop and make sure to save your spot. We had 69 people register for the last workshop.

Torie Wiksell: 4:28 

So, and the program that I use that I think every all of the programs that host workshops online have a max amount of people that they allow you to sign up. So make sure, hop on over there, save your spot. Hopefully you can attend live. Sure, hop on over there, save your spot. Hopefully you can attend live. And if you attend live, I'll also be giving out just like I did last time my boundaries cheat sheet with nine actual scripts that you can use for enforcing boundaries with a BPD or MPD parent. So show up live to grab that, even if you can't attend live. And If you need help setting boundaries with parents who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, make sure to sign up because I will send you the replay. So we did our first live boundaries workshop on Tuesday last week and then on Thursday in the Confident Boundaries online community I did another live workshop Boundaries online community.

Torie Wiksell: 5:29 

I did another live workshop and this one was all about guilt tripping, dealing with the guilt that we feel when we go to set boundaries, when we're trying to do something different in our families, in our relationship with our parents. So that one I also had a really, really good time doing. And, just in case you weren't aware, all of the live monthly workshops I do in the Confident Boundaries online community are available to watch on replay. So definitely hop on over to confidentboundariescom slash, join and sign up to check that one out. I also think that I announced, when I was talking about my year of reflection in Confident Boundaries, hitting the annual one year mark. I do think I talked about the recent changes that I've been making over at the Confident Boundaries online community, but just to wrap it up real quick in a nutshell, because there's been a lot of things happening now in the Confident Boundaries online community, If you are a member, you get access to a weekly live training that I do so for one hour every Monday.

Torie Wiksell: 6:46 

I hop in the group live and I am there to answer all of your questions. I'm there to walk you through where you're stuck as far as setting boundaries, thinking about it, trying to implement boundaries, trying to enforce your boundaries, thinking about going low or no contact. I'm there to talk with you and guide you through it. If you don't know what questions to ask, you can still show up to those and you can listen to me, talk other group members through what they're going through and just listen and learn from that experience. We also have a brand new Confident Boundaries on-demand library that is up now with a bunch of worksheets and videos to help you understand the dynamic with a BPD or MPD parent and help you learn things like how to communicate effectively, what to do, what not to do. There's a boundaries checklist up there just a lot of great stuff, and I'm going to continue to add to that on-demand library as the community continues to grow. So, and that's also where you can find all of the workshop recordings. So really fun stuff over there Again. Confidentboundariescom slash join.

Torie Wiksell: 8:02 

And with all of that said, let's hop into the episode this week. This week, I want to talk about learning to make healthy decisions and trusting your own decision-making skills. When we grow up with parents who have borderline or narcissistic personality disorders, we are taught to override that internal intuition and instead do what our parent either explicitly tells us they want from us, or to do what we think will prevent our parent from getting upset or causing a scene. This teaches our brains that our own intuition is either A not to be trusted or not, the most important thing to listen to. And in order to start trusting yourself and trusting your ability to make healthy decisions, it's going to take time. It's going to take time and consistency, just like everything in life. Right? I wish there was like this really easy, you know, secret sauce thing that I could throw at you and be like if you just do this one thing, your life will be perfect starting tomorrow. But unfortunately, that's not how it works. So, with trusting yourself, with learning how to make healthy decisions a couple of things that you can do that will help with this. But before I hop into those talking about them, I just want to share a little tidbit about my own journey learning how to trust myself.

Torie Wiksell: 9:45 

So, as we've talked about, when you have a BPD or MPD parent, you learn to tolerate behaviors that most other people would find unacceptable. This makes you way more susceptible to being taken advantage of, being manipulated by other people, finding yourself in friendships, romantic relationships with other people who exhibit similar behaviors as your parent, because you are far more tolerant of those behaviors than other people would be, and so, unfortunately for me, what this has meant has been a series of really toxic relationships throughout my life and staying in romantic relationships that were very unhealthy for me far too long. Staying in friendships that were very unhealthy. Staying in professional work relationships that were, or work environments that were, very unhealthy for far too long, and, instead of seeing the red flags and saying I'm out of here, trying to make things better in those relationships and trying and trying, and trying and trying and trying for far, far, far, far, far too long.

Torie Wiksell: 11:06 

So a little over a decade ago, when I first met and started dating my husband, I wasn't especially confident in my ability to successfully choose a healthy partner for myself. And although I had done years and years of personal work in personal therapy by that point and I had made a lot of progress in improving my quality of relationships and quality of life, I still had a ways to go and I had enough awareness to recognize that. And I had enough awareness to recognize that, although I was optimistic about this person and this relationship, that historically I was not the best person at picking people to be in my life. So, fortunately, I did have some very good, close friends and so on my husband and my third date, I set up a game night with two couple friends who I trusted and I was very close with, and I asked them to come over and meet my now husband and tell me if this is someone I need to stop dating and dump immediately, or if they felt like this was a moderately, reasonably healthy, emotionally healthy human. And because my friends are so lovely and they understood that I had this track record of not picking the best people to hang out with and be in my life. They obliged and humored me and because my husband is a lovely, emotionally healthy human, he was totally down for meeting my friends at a game night, even though this would be our third date. So, long story short, my friends met my now husband. They gave really positive feedback and all this time later we're married and parents to our sweet angel little daughter and our sweet angel little dog.

Torie Wiksell: 13:16 

But trusting my ability to make healthy decisions in my own life is something that I have been working on for a really long time and I think if I had to put a percentage to it now, I would say I trust most of my decisions, maybe like 95% of the time. I think I have pretty decent decision-making skills, and am I confident 100% of the time? No, but I honestly don't know that anyone who's emotionally healthy is confident in 100% of the decisions that they make right. That number actually might be closer to like 70 or 80% that I feel confident in.

Torie Wiksell: 13:59 

When we grow up in a relationship like the parent-child relationship that you grew up with, that I grew up with, it's really easy to look at trusting ourselves through a black and white lens, just like we grew up looking at so many things through a black and white lens, and the reality is this is also very gray. You don't have to fully trust yourself in your decisions in order to make decisions and keep moving forward. There are things that you can do that will increase your trust in yourself. It'll improve your trust in yourself, it'll increase your confidence in your own decision making skills and you can start making decisions important decisions before you feel like you're entirely ready to, because this isn't a black and white thing and oftentimes we get that confidence by making decisions over time and seeing that overall it's not a total disaster and when we make mistakes there are things that we can learn from and we can move forward. It's all just data that we're taking in. Let's talk about some actionable things that you can do to build that trust within yourself.

Torie Wiksell: 15:16 

One thing that my therapist recommended recommended to me many years ago, which I love and I recommend to lots of my clients as well is she had me take out a piece of paper, just like computer paper, and fold it into four squares, and in one square I wrote down the costs of a decision that I was contemplating and I wrote down in another square the benefits of that decision that I was contemplating. And then, in another square, I wrote down the costs of not making that decision and then, in the final square, I wrote down the benefits of not making that decision. I wrote down the benefits of not making that decision. The reason why this cost-benefit analysis is so helpful when we're talking about increasing our decision-making skills, making healthier decisions and increasing our confidence and our ability to trust our instinct. The reason why this is so important is because it shows that the reality of a decision it's not black and white like a pro con list. Don't do a pro con list. That's not going to help you. Try this cost benefit exercise.

Torie Wiksell: 16:36 

Having a visual representation of what the costs and benefits are of making a decision that you're thinking about making like setting a boundary with your parent and what the cost and the benefit is of not making a decision like setting a boundary with your parent. Having a visual representation of those things makes it so much easier to make a choice. Moving forward. The world is not black and white. There is no perfect decision. That's not going to have any downside. That's not possible. And when you look at your list. You want to look at the list with this mindset, of these options, which is in my best interest, which honors the life that I want to live, which is the most helpful and beneficial to me. Having that visual representation is so helpful and it's really, really helpful to come back to when you're feeling anxious about enforcing a boundary or doubting the reasoning that you had to enforce or set this boundary. It's really helpful to have something concrete to come back to, to look at and remind yourself that, no, this was a well thought out decision that you were making and it's one that is still a good decision for you.

Torie Wiksell: 18:02 

The other thing that I want to recommend that you work on, if you are someone who struggles with your finding your own tuition, that own internal voice, and having confidence in your ability to make healthy decisions for yourself, one thing that I want you, in addition to the cost benefit analysis, to really consider doing, is to write down a list of your top 10 personal values. If you Google values clarification exercise, there's a free worksheet excuse me, there's a free worksheet by therapist aid that comes up. It's great. The reason why this is so beneficial is because your entire life you've been told who you are. Who you are, not what you should think, what you should want, what you should do, and getting in touch with your own value system is really, really important. It's also really important to know what your value system is so that you can practice making decisions that honor your personal values, not those of your parents. So if something that you value a lot is safety and stability, then it's important that you're making decisions through the lens of that being an important thing to you. If you are someone who values financial stability, you want to be making decisions through that lens. It is so important to know what your value system is so that you can make decisions that align with it, because ultimately, at the end of the day, that is key to being an emotionally healthy and happy human is when you are able to live a life that aligns with your personal value system.

Torie Wiksell: 20:01 

So, with all of that said, I know it can be hard to build trust back in yourself. It is a marathon, it is not a sprint. Keep showing up for yourself, keep trying. Just by listening to this podcast every week, you're doing something. Your brain is thinking about considering making a change that is important to you. Don't talk yourself out of doing things that feel small. But if you're ready to do something that feels a little bit bigger, make sure to remember to run on over to confidentboundariescom slash boundaries workshop and sign up for the free workshop. And if you're ready to join me in the Confident Boundaries online community, head on over to confidentboundariescom slash join Until next week. I'll see you guys then. Thanks so much for joining me for another week of You're Not Crazy. If you like the podcast, please make sure to rate us five stars and leave a review. It helps so much. And make sure to check the show notes for discounts and updates of what's going on in my world. Okay, I'll see you next week.