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 You're Not Crazy. Today, we're going to talk all about manipulation tactics used by parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. So these are things that you have probably heard of before. Maybe not all of them, but I imagine a lot of these terms are things that you've heard. I'm going to talk about what they really mean. I know that there is so much overuse of some of these terms and some of these terms get so distorted, so we're going to go through a couple of them and yeah, let's jump in. The first one I know is a highly used term right now—gaslighting. You know, what is so funny is that people who are abusive love to accuse you of gaslighting them. So, with that said, what is gaslighting? The term actually comes from this movie, I think it was called Gaslit or something. I don't know. I can't remember, but anyways, the term comes from the movie where this husband was intentionally trying to make his wife think that she was insane. He would act like what was happening wasn't actually happening and make her question her own judgment and sanity. So that, in a nutshell, is what gaslighting is. Gaslighting is when someone denies your reality in an effort to make you feel crazy, and so when people are dealing with people with BPD and narcissistic personality disorder, they often feel like they're the crazy ones at times. Hence the name of this podcast. So, yeah, gaslighting is so common in these relationships.
Torie Wiksell: 2:21
The next term I want to talk about is called triangulation. So triangulation happens when someone tries to team up within a family. So let's say, to make things simple, you have a family with you, a mom, and a dad. Your mom might try to call you and vent about your dad and get you on her side, or your dad might call you and try to get you on his side against your mom. It's really roping in other family members or friends to try to create rivalries, and it is just very, very common in dysfunctional families and so toxic. So the next one is guilt tripping. So that's pretty obvious, right? What is guilt tripping? It's intentionally trying to make someone feel guilty in order to manipulate them into doing what you want. This is so common with so many parent-child dynamics. I think that this one probably doesn't need a ton more explanation.
Torie Wiksell: 3:35
Emotional blackmail, this is a big one. This is when a parent threatens to withdraw their support—that could be emotional or financial—or withdraw their love. They make it very clear that their love is conditional on you following certain rules or wishes that they have. Or, especially with a parent with BPD, they might even blatantly or allude to the idea that they might harm themselves if you don't follow or comply with what they want you to do. So with BPD, one of the major symptoms that is very prevalent oftentimes with people who have borderline personality disorder is self-harming. So they might have even attempted suicide at some point. But what is very common with people with BPD is self-harm and threats of self-harming or threats of suicide. Threats of self-harm are an extreme form of manipulation, they're an extreme form of emotional abuse and they're an extreme form of emotional blackmail.
Torie Wiksell: 4:52
So next one—projection. Projection is like it sounds like it is. It's projecting your feelings, thoughts, or behaviors onto someone else. So in the case of this being your parent, it is them projecting the way they are thinking, what they are feeling, or what they have done onto you, instead of taking personal accountability for their actions. Okay, another one that is so common is the silent treatment, right? Like cut the tension with a knife.
Torie Wiksell: 5:30
You know, the funny thing is, when you're dealing with a parent with either BPD or narcissistic personality disorder, something that is not uncommon is the adult child grows up and does therapy and works on becoming an emotionally healthy person themselves. They're less and less bothered oftentimes by the silent treatment, because, while the silent treatment can be so excruciatingly painful and it's a very, very, very real form of emotional neglect and abandonment and can lead to like extreme anxiety in kids, well, that is all very true when you're an adult and you're really stressed out about having to interact with or deal with an emotionally volatile or an emotionally inconsistent at best parent, them deciding not to talk to you isn't always the worst thing in the world. So it's just very interesting how that kind of evolves. Still dysfunctional, but it's just not always... It doesn't always feel like the worst thing in the world. Okay, let's see what else.
Torie Wiksell: 6:48
Oh, jealousy and competitiveness. So, parents with BPD and especially parents with narcissistic personality disorder, I think this is actually much more common with parents with narcissistic personality disorder than parents with BPD. Jealousy or competitiveness can be a huge thing. This can be true of any parent-child dynamic, but what I see a lot is mother-daughter and father-son issues, where this is really common and arises, and so that's not always true, certainly, and doesn't take into consideration non-binary people, but it is not an uncommon dynamic to present, and I think a lot of that is... You know, people with narcissistic personality disorder really view the world through not only their lens, but they see their children as an extension of themselves. Right? Their child doesn't have their own identity. They are simply something, someone to help them get their needs met, and so if their child starts to see some sort of success or achievement that somehow seems to trump the success, achievement, attention that the parent is getting, that can become the breeding ground for a lot of resentment and jealousy.
Torie Wiksell: 8:24
Okay, so the last one I'm going to talk about is using other people as what is called a flying monkey. So for the longest time I didn't really understand this term and it's very popular on social media and, to be honest, sometimes things become very popular on social media and that in and of itself just turns me off and I refuse to Google what it is. But after a while, I decided to look deeper and figure out what this flying monkey thing is. And what it is is... It's this reference to parents who will enlist other family members or friends to do their bidding for them, right? Involve her sister or her niece or your grandparent to reach out to you and try to put pressure on you and convince you to make amends with your mom or do what she wants you to do. It's inviting these third parties in to argue their case on their behalf. And so, yeah, that is a very, very common dynamic with parents who have both borderline and narcissistic personality disorder, and there isn't really like one's better than the other here.
Torie Wiksell: 9:51
These are all forms of abuse your parent may have demonstrated and they may continue to demonstrate. All of them. You might recognize and be familiar with a handful of them, but maybe not others. I think that it's just really important to recognize. This isn't a thing where, like, if you only recognize three, then it's healthy. This is a thing where, if you recognize any in your relationship with your parent, that's a huge, huge sign that there's some level of abuse going on there. So hopefully that helps you understand these different terms that you might see online or hear people talk about, and let me know, do you have questions? Do you have thoughts on any of these? Are there more terms that you're a little bit confused about or want to hear my thoughts on? Definitely send me a DM.
Torie Wiksell: 10:44
You can follow me on Instagram at Torie Wiksell and I recently got on TikTok and I’ve got to say I'm loving it, which is shocking to me because I was so resistant to get on TikTok for so long. I just hated the idea of having to actually listen to videos that I was watching online. I don't know what my hesitation was there, but I prefer to read things, I guess. But I’m actually really loving TikTok. So if you're on TikTok, definitely follow me over there too and say hey, but otherwise, next time I'll see you guys soon. Just a few quick reminders.
Torie Wiksell: 11:25
If you liked the podcast episode, please, please, subscribe, rate us five stars. It helps so much. If you're interested in learning more about the guide that I talked about, I discounted it down to $39 and then you guys still get another $10 off, so go check that out. ConfidentBoundaries.com/guide. I want to make it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, and if you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to ConfidentBoundaries.com/support-the-podcast. Thanks so much, you guys, and I'll see you next week. Thank you.
