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 another episode of You're Not Crazy. Before we jump into the podcast, I just want to say a couple of things. First of all, thank you so much for everyone who's been reaching out and sharing how much the podcast has resonated with them. I really appreciate the feedback. You guys are so kind, the DMs, the emails I've been getting. Feel free to always shoot me a DM, send me an email. You can reach me at [email protected]. I love to hear your thoughts and please continue to share the podcast with any friends or family members that you think might really appreciate it or that it might resonate with. Helping spread the word about the podcast is truly the biggest gift in the world that you could give me. So thank you guys so much, and thank you again for sharing all of your thoughts and appreciation with me. It just really warms my heart. So the other really big thing that I wanted to share with you guys before we hop into this episode is that last week, I did launch our first online course. It's called the Boundaries Roadmap and I'm so excited about it. So this is something that's been in the works for a really long time and I'm so thrilled that I was finally able to launch it last week.
Torie Wiksell: 2:00
So I am no salesperson. Whenever I have a phone consultation with a new therapy client or a quick email exchange with a potential coaching client, I often share. If they ask why should I work with you? Maybe you shouldn't? That's, honestly my answer a lot of the times. I don't want to sell anyone on anything. I think that you are by far the best person to decide if you're ready for or needing support with anything in your life, and I know that, being the parent or being the child of a parent with either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, you've probably been told your entire life by your parent who you are, what you should think, what you do think, blah, blah, blah, and so I don't want to be an additional voice trying to convince you of something you do or do not need, whether that is working with me in therapy or coaching or purchasing this online course. But what I do want to share is what the online course is, so that if it is something that you're looking for and you feel that it might be helpful for you, you know that it's a resource out there and it's available now.
Torie Wiksell: 3:18
So the online course is a guide where I've walked through, in the chronological order that I tend to take most therapy and coaching clients through how to set boundaries with a parent who has borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder. So we talk about in the course what are some really important things that you understand about having a parent with borderline personality disorder, and then I also go into what are some really important things that you need to understand about having a parent with narcissistic personality disorder as well, and so we go into that. We talk about reasons why boundaries often are unsuccessful, how to approach those situations, strategies for not backing down on your boundaries when your parent pushes back because of course, they will, right? And I give scripts of actual common boundaries that you might need to set that you can obviously just use verbatim if they work for you. It's really an inclusive guide and this course is made up of videos that I've recorded of myself kind of talking through really important topics, as well as a workbook that I put together myself that really helps guide you through certain exercises and activities that are not overwhelming, they're not extremely time-consuming, but they are extremely helpful and they really—In my experience at least personally and working with clients professionally—can make the difference between being able to confidently... Excuse me, it is very early here where I'm recording this and I apologize if that is showing through today, but we're all just doing our best, aren't we?
Torie Wiksell: 5:22
So back to what I was saying the whole purpose of the course is to not only teach you how to set boundaries with a parent who has borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder because we all know that that's a very different situation than setting a boundary with a parent who doesn't have a personality disorder, but the whole purpose of the course is to not only teach you what works and what doesn't and how to troubleshoot the things that don't work or issues that are really common that you may run up into, but it's to give you confidence in approaching boundary setting, because that's the thing that a lot of people are lacking, even when you spend hours and hours Googling these things. How do I set healthy boundaries? What do I do if I have a mom who has narcissistic personality disorder? What do I do if I have a parent who has borderline personality disorder? How do I approach it? Even if you have all of that information at your disposal, it can be really overwhelming and it doesn't necessarily give you like the information. In and of itself, just reading things doesn't always give you the confidence that you are capable of approaching the situation, and so that is my goal with the course is delivering this content in a way that helps you understand that you are quite capable of setting these boundaries and you're allowed to decide what boundaries you want to set, when you want to set them, and you can just repeat this same roadmap over and over and over again anytime you need to set a boundary. So if you're interested in the course, if you just want to check it out a little bit, if you're wanting to get started right now, today, go to ConfidentBoundaries.com/TheBoundariesRoadmap. You can either put the boundaries roadmap all one word or the dash boundaries dash roadmap. Both go to the same location and if you use the code PODCAST10, you get 10% off the course as well. So if you have any questions, again, feel free to reach out to me, [email protected], and I am happy to try to help you decide if that course is a good fit for you or not.
Torie Wiksell: 7:50
So, with all of that said, let's jump into this week's episode, where I want to talk about the fact that if your parent is someone who goes to therapy every week, if your parent is someone who has gone to therapy for years and years and years and yet continues to demonstrate abusive and toxic behavior but loves to talk about how they are doing the work in therapy, I want to validate for you that, yes, as therapists, many of us understand this dynamic. I know so badly that so many of you probably want to reach out to your parents' therapist and say my mom or dad is lying to you like they're full of shit, they're not telling you the truth, this is not helping them. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's super valid, right? Because I know it's very, very frustrating when you are someone who is trying to work on yourself, as I know all of you are, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to me. When you're someone who's trying to work on themselves, when you're someone that recognizes that they have information gaps, that they need to learn how to tap into their emotions in a healthier way. They need to learn how to do things like set boundaries in a healthy way. And you have a parent who is continuously demonstrating toxic behaviors, has been abusive throughout your lifetime, and they are bragging about how they go to therapy and their therapist just says that, you know, they're doing a great job. That is very aggravating. It is so irritating, it is so annoying and I think I've told this story on the podcast but we have a lot of new listeners so I'm going to tell it again and I'm going to try to do so fairly quickly.
Torie Wiksell: 9:53
So I have a super fun story about my mom. When I was probably in my early 20s, maybe late teens, I had been in therapy for a while. I was trying to set some healthy boundaries and that was really not going very well. And there was this time where I was back home from college for I don't even remember vacation, something who knows but I was back home and I was staying with my mom and she had me cornered in a downstairs hallway and was screaming in my face that she has done the work in therapy, that she is good that her therapist told her that she doesn't need therapy anymore. Yes, while screaming in my face and having me backed up against a wall. That is something that I will never forget in my entire life because it was pretty horrific, like and just the irony, right, of someone screaming, saying that they don't need therapy when they are clearly dysregulated and that is so inappropriate. But what I've come to learn many, many years later, after doing so much more work on my own personal therapy and, just, you know, experiencing more life and learning as a therapist, what I have come to realize is that it wouldn't have mattered if I reached out to her therapist and said my mom's full of shit, she's been lying to you, because a few things are going to happen.
Torie Wiksell: 11:47
Right, One, this therapist may truly be incompetent at treating someone with a personality disorder and may not even recognize that. My mom had definite borderline personality disorder and as I continue to process my childhood and early adulthood, you know, honestly, probably narcissistic personality disorder, if not many, many narcissistic traits as well. And so if you are a therapist who doesn't have experience in assessing for personality disorders, treating people with personality disorders, oftentimes therapists don't recognize personality disorders, and I know you might be thinking well, that's crazy, but that's true. So that is very possible, and people with personality disorders are great at finding therapists who want to work with them that don't have the training or competence to work with them, because they are much more capable of getting what they want out of that situation. Right? If someone doesn't actually want to self-reflect and do the work to change, which is hard and not fun and is distressing at times, to acknowledge things about patterns that you've engaged in, that aren't productive, that aren't healthy, doing the work is hard, and so if you're someone who is not interested in doing the work but really wants to pretend or project this image that you are someone who is working on themselves, then you're going to look for a therapist who's going to validate all of your experiences without challenging you at all. And to find a therapist like that, you're going to probably have to test out a few and you're going to quit the ones that do push back on you. Right? That's typically how it goes.
Torie Wiksell: 13:52
I can talk a little bit about my own experience working with clients with personality disorders in another episode, but when you have experience and training and education working with clients with personality disorders, it is a much more delicate dance that you do. So as a therapist, someone who is competent with working with someone with a personality disorder, is going to first build rapport with them, just like as therapists we do with any client. Because if you don't know us, if you don't trust us, if you don't like us, you're not going to listen to anything that we have to say. Right, that's just human nature and relationships. So, you know, building that relationship in the beginning is not when you push back, but when you have a relationship with someone, whether they have a personality disorder or not, you do have to challenge them on some ways of thinking and approaching situations that just really don't seem to align with their overall goals and wants and desires in life. And so I think a therapist who is really skilled at working with clients with personality disorders is going to understand how to do that delicate dance of confronting someone with a personality disorder in a way that could be a bit more productive. And this is typically BPD that I'm talking about when I'm talking about successful therapy. Again, if someone has narcissistic personality disorder, they lack empathy, right. And if someone lacks empathy, they don't care how their actions affect other people, so they're not actually intending to improve their behavior, but that's an aside.
Torie Wiksell: 15:35
So, going back to your parent lying to their therapist, one, they may be lying to their therapist and their therapist just may not get it. They may not see it, they may not get it, they may not, you know, whatever. But they may be lying to their therapist and their therapist may get it, they may get it and they may highly suspect or on some level know, due to inconsistencies in your parents' storytelling or things like that, that your parent is lying and a good therapist is going to do what I just did. Right, they're going to try to challenge your parent, but when you're working with someone with a personality disorder, that challenge is a really delicate dance, and so it can take a lot of time if someone is really not ready to hear things that the therapist is saying to them. So we're on the same page. Your parent may be lying to their therapist.
Torie Wiksell: 16:37
And let's get back to how that impacts you for a second. Obviously, it's annoying, right? It's frustrating. Yes, you need to talk about how frustrating it is, and you need to have people in your life, whether it's a therapist or friends or other family members. Maybe you're close with a sibling or a cousin that you can vent to. You need to be able to vent to someone about it that can validate that you're not crazy because you're not, right. You are not crazy. This is very frustrating, it's irritating and it probably makes it very challenging for you to have a relationship with your parent.
Torie Wiksell: 17:12
But at the same time, I really want you to also work on radical acceptance. I want you to work on accepting that this is part of the personality disorder, right? People with personality disorders are very resistant to changing the aspects of their personality disorder because it's part of their personality. So really accepting that your parent, yeah, they're acting like someone who is struggling with a personality disorder I think can really be liberating and it can really help you move forward in a direction, instead of getting stuck on this wheel of why won't they just actually do the work in therapy. Well, the reason is because they have a personality disorder, right, and it's kind of this like catch 22.
Torie Wiksell: 18:06
I don't even know if I'm using that phrase right. I'm the worst at idioms. Someone please email me and let me know. But, on that note, I'll see you guys next week. 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.
