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, Torie Wiksell, a therapist and coach with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. Now let's jump in. Hi guys, welcome back to this week's episode of You're Not Crazy. Thanks so much for bearing with me while this episode was also a couple of hours late getting posted today. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw me post earlier today that I got to be a part of my little sister's wedding this weekend, and so that has been personal life-wise, but has kept me so busy this month. So now that that has passed and I am getting back to normal life, future podcast episodes should be arriving bright and early on your Tuesday mornings, but that was a really fun little detour, and because things have been so busy getting prepared for that, I am currently recording this episode on my lunch break. So thanks again for being patient over these last couple of weeks, but things should be resuming back to normal from here on out, at least for the time being.
Torie Wiksell: 1:36
Right, life is like that, curveballs and all. So anyways, today we're going to talk about the one thing that I refuse to help anyone with, whether they be my therapy client or coaching client or just someone else that I'm working with in some capacity. This is something that a lot of people have asked me to help them with throughout the years. So what is it, you ask? People will come to me and they'll say, "I want to be less reactive when, essentially, my parent is a jerk." Right, when my parent does something that is offensive or upsetting or toxic or abusive, I don't want to have the reaction that I have right now, because the reaction that I have had my whole life is very overwhelming, it's very draining, it's exhausting. I feel like I'm the crazy one. And so I totally hear you on that. Right, I get it. I hear you. It makes sense why you would not want to feel that way, not want to feel that way, and let me tell you this: I will never help you do that, because your reaction is very appropriate, given your parents' very inappropriate behavior, and if you are able to become less reactive to people who are abusive and inappropriate towards you, that can have a very detrimental ripple effect in your life.
Torie Wiksell: 3:10
When your tolerance goes up for toxic and abusive behavior, you are programming yourself to be less reactive to other people in your life that are treating you poorly. And so, you know, as human beings, we don't really compartmentalize very well, even if we think we do. And so if we train ourselves to do something in one particular relationship, that tends to have a ripple effect into other areas of our life, which is actually a really cool thing about therapy, and one thing that I talk with a lot of my clients about, is that there's this snowball effect, right, in a positive way. When it comes to therapy, it doesn't really matter where we start, as long as we start with something that is important and bothering you, because therapy has this ripple effect. And so we talk about one thing in one particular area of your life and after a little while you start to notice that this is a theme that's coming up other places too, and so if you work on it in one area of your life, it has this really cool positive ripple effect where it starts to touch these other areas and you start to see your life improve in those other areas as well.
Torie Wiksell: 4:30
And so the reverse can happen, too, when you work on being less reactive to behavior that's inappropriate. The reverse can happen, in that sense of at work, you might tolerate more than you should from toxic coworkers or a toxic boss, or you may stop setting healthy boundaries for yourself. You know, in your romantic life you might not advocate for yourself, you might not verbalize concerns that you're having or speak up when things make you feel poorly or make you feel hurt, and so we do not want that at all, right? And so I think that something that is so important to remind yourself is that if you have a parent with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder or both, having a relationship with them does not mean you ignore those behaviors. It doesn't mean that you accept those behaviors to be appropriate because that is what they're capable of. It just means that, going back to radical acceptance, you accept that these behaviors are a part of who your parent is, right?
Torie Wiksell: 5:51
You accept that this is a pattern of behavior that they have shown throughout your life. You accept that this is probably how they're going to continue to behave, these patterns that are toxic and unhelpful and emotionally manipulative and abusive, and at the same time, you recognize that your boundaries need to protect you because of those toxic behaviors, because of those abusive behaviors. And so boundaries with a parent with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, who you are trying to maintain some sort of relationship with, need to take into consideration that your parent has this pattern of engaging in whether it's manipulating you, gaslighting you, et cetera, et cetera. Whatever it is that your parent demonstrates this toxicity around, your parent has this behavior. This is how your parent has learned to get their needs met. Over time, this is how your parent will continue to try to get their needs met, and so you need to set up these boundaries around your life that allow you to protect yourself.
Torie Wiksell: 7:20
And when you feel really triggered, it's important to think through how you want to handle that, right? It's not impossible to have a boundaried relationship with someone who has borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder, as long as you are very realistic as to who they are and your boundaries aren't dependent on them. Changing your boundaries need to be really dependent upon what you need to do to protect yourself, having this relationship with this person who is who they are. Don't work on being less reactive. Work on identifying boundaries that you can use to protect your peace, protect your sanity, and protect your emotional well-being when your parent inevitably behaves the way that they have a pattern of doing so, when your parent does something that is super inappropriate, offensive, you know, disrespectful, abusive in some regard.
Torie Wiksell: 8:10
What I want you to do, when you feel that emotional reaction, is to validate for yourself, "Yeah, that totally was not okay, the way they just spoke to me, treated me, talked about me." Validate that this is inappropriate behavior and then take care of yourself in the way that you need to. All right, I'll see you guys next week. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of You're Not Crazy. If you like the podcast, please remember to subscribe and rate us five stars, and if you know someone who might like the podcast, please make sure to share it with them. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week.
