Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult children of parents with narcissistic and unmanaged borderline personality disorder. I'm your host, Tori Wicksell, a therapist with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. I also happen to grow up with a narcissist mom who had a lot of BPD traits, and I know a thing or two about how crazy making these types of relationships can be. I'm so excited to show you what it actually means to break the cycle of dysfunction that we grew up in and help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for joining me. Now let's jump into the show. Welcome back to this week's episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. I am so excited to be back home after a week of traveling to Austin, Texas. I attended a conference there last week and I was lucky enough to be able to see Dr. Becky speak live. So that was a really great experience. I really appreciate Dr. Becky, and I think she has done so much good for our future generation with Good Inside. If you aren't familiar, Dr. Becky is the psychologist behind Good Inside, which is an online membership program for parents of kids of all ages. And she has written a book. It's also called Good Inside. And she has an immense talent for breaking down things that a lot of people carry a lot of shame about in a way that is really destigmatizing and allows us to be imperfect humans who are capable of growth and doing better and learning and supporting our children. So I got to see Dr. Becky speak, and that was a pinch me moment. She was so lovely and thoughtful, and I just really enjoyed listening to what she had to say. So that was very exciting. But I am very happy to be back home and back to my normal routine. Last week was a big episode. I broke down what it means to have a parent with borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. I left off that episode saying this week we are going to talk all about our family systems when we grow up with these types of parents. And that is exactly what we're going to do today. One thing that gets lost in conversation a lot of the times is that when you grow up with a parent who has borderline traits, narcissistic traits, it's not just your parent. It's not just this one relationship. And if it was just that one relationship, that would be hard enough. It would be so hard in and of itself to navigate this one relationship with a parent who is emotionally volatile, emotionally punishing, emotionally inconsistent. That alone is enough for anyone. But when you grow up with this type of parent, it's never just about your relationship with your parent, it's about your entire family system. I often find it's really helpful to start with talking about what a healthy family system looks like. As I like to say, although there is no perfect family, there are definitely healthy families. And I often refer to these types of families as healthy-ish to communicate the point that I do know that there is no perfect family. I know very much that perfect doesn't exist. In fact, when I was listening to Dr. Becky speak last week, she emphasized the point that in her family they say perfect is creepy. And I couldn't love that saying enough because it's true. I oftentimes say perfect isn't real. But perfect is creepy is way better because when someone puts on the air of perfection, it means they're being inauthentic. It means that they are not being real, they are not being honest, and that is in fact creepy. No one's perfect. So healthy-ish families, they have issues, but they don't have repeated patterns of abuse and neglect in them. That is a huge differentiating feature. When you have a healthy-ish family, you are not experiencing patterns of abuse and neglect. That is a big difference. If you take nothing else away from this episode, please take away the fact that there are families where repeated patterns of abuse and neglect are not part of that family dynamic. And that is a massive differentiator. Let's talk about that more because dysfunctional families are great at normalizing abuse. And so oftentimes emotional abuse, emotional neglect get really normalized in these families. So you can grow up in a dysfunctional family that has this outward appearance of being the perfect family, being this great family, being this high-achieving family. And it can be incredibly dysfunctional. So, what does it mean to be in a healthy family system? Healthy families are flexible. That is a huge one. They adapt, they encourage autonomy and independence. Healthy family members realize that people are unique and everyone has their own thoughts and opinions, and they work collaboratively to try to understand each other and navigate life, and they don't put pressure on each other to be very rigid and to stay the same person. In healthy families, healthy-ish families, developmental milestones and norms are more understood than in dysfunctional families. So in healthy-ish families, parents have some level of understanding that this is not a peer-to-peer relationship, that they are the adult and the child is the child. Healthy families, people take responsibility and accountability when they mess up. We all say things that aren't the kindest at times. We all do things that we feel embarrassed or shame or regret about at some point. It's not about being a perfect person. It's about taking accountability and taking ownership of doing the work to grow when you hurt each other, when you mess up, when you say something that isn't kind or supportive or productive. These are aspects of healthy-ish family. Do healthy families do all of these things perfectly? No, but there are repeated efforts and attempts there. Okay, so we've got a kind of idea about what makes up a healthy-ish family. Let's go back to dysfunctional family systems. Dysfunctional family systems are very rigid. Things are very black and white. There is not flexibility. Dysfunctional families do not encourage independence and autonomy. You can see dysfunctional family systems that are really enmeshed where people don't have boundaries. There's not an ability to have your privacy or your own independence. When you grow up with a parent with BPD or narcissistic traits or personality disorders, you're in a dysfunctional family system. So what are some things that are actually common in these types of family systems? You could have two narcissistic parents. You could have two parents with unmanaged borderline personality disorder. Although I don't know if I've actually ever seen that. What I have seen are people who grow up with two narcissistic parents. I've seen people who grow up in a household with a parent with unmanaged BPD and another narcissistic parent. And I've seen people who grow up with a narcissistic parent or a parent with unmanaged BPD and another parent who may not have a personality disorder at all, but likely has a lot of their own trauma, which has not been resolved. And because of that, is oftentimes enabling that other parent. When you grow up in this type of family system and you start to do the work to heal, when you start to do your own cycle breaking work, when you go to therapy, when you start to learn new coping skills, when you start to understand yourself better and set healthy boundaries and all of that, your family is almost certainly going to push back on that. This happens for a reason. Change is very hard. And as a cycle breaker, you are doing hard work. You know that it is not easy to look inward and take accountability for things that we don't like about our behaviors and ourselves and to stretch and to grow and to increase our ability to function in a healthy way as an adult. It is not easy, it is very hard. It is also worth it, in my opinion, and probably yours, but it is hard. It is very different when we consciously make the decision to make a change. That is hard in and of itself. But when you are the person who's decided that you're going to work on yourself, that you're gonna change, that doesn't mean that anyone else in your family is of the same mindset. You deciding to do this work doesn't mean that other people in your family are thinking about this and are in this place where they're ready or willing to do that same work. And so what ends up happening is that you go to therapy, you start learning new skills, you come back into your family and you start trying to implement some of these new things that you're learning. You try to implement your own boundaries, emotional regulation, all of these things, which means that you are relating in a different way to your family. And when you change the way that you relate to your family, it is very unpleasant and uncomfortable for your family. That's because dysfunctional families are very rigid. Everyone plays a role in the family, and you are not allowed to change the role that you play. And this is because it takes everyone playing the role that they play in order to maintain the status quo. And the status quo is oftentimes walking on eggshells, accommodating your parent who is dysregulated, who is punishing, who is behaving inappropriately. It is dancing around them to allow the family to continue and go on without having to actually authentically address the issues there. So you are working on breaking the cycle, you come back, you empt these things, your family is not a fan of them. So what do they do? They amp up what they do, what they've always done to get you to back down. Now, this is not always and oftentimes is not a conscious thing. It's not like you go into your family and you try to set a boundary, you work on your own emotional regulation, and then your family members, your siblings, your parents consciously think, oh, we're gonna amp it up so that they back down and things go back to how they always have been. That is not typically a conscious thought that people have. But because dysfunctional families are so fragile, they're so dependent on people playing the role, that is what happens. Your other family members put the pressure on you to make it uncomfortable for you to change. So that subconsciously you think this is not gonna work. I need to just go back to how things were. That is the purpose there. Because if you go back, if you drop this new thing, if you drop these boundaries, if you go back to your old way of coping, then everything can just go on as it always has been. Nothing has to change. And change is hard. Change is especially hard when you aren't the one that initiates that change. And so for your other family members, they're not the ones that are initiating this change. You are. You're coming in and you're trying to change something, and they don't necessarily want to change or think that there's a need or a reason to change, or they don't want to invest the time or energy or effort into changing, and they want you to stop changing too, so that the dynamic changes so everyone can just keep going on how they've always gone along. That is what happens. And that is especially hard when you are only wanting to be a healthier person. You are not wanting them to do anything other than to try to work towards having a healthier relationship with you. It is extremely disheartening when their behavior might get worse as a result of you bringing in these new tools and behavior. This is a really important thing to keep in mind if you are dealing with a parent like this, if you are on your own healing journey and going back to your family and trying to implement some of the things that you're learning. It's really important to understand that things can feel a lot worse initially. And that is because of this pull towards osmosis. You changing threatens the family's system. Now, this is especially important to understand because it means that you're not necessarily doing anything wrong. It's not like you're necessarily implementing the skills that you're learning incorrectly. It's that your family is doing what dysfunctional families do, and it's trying to keep everything in the place that it needs to be so that no one else has to change. They don't have you to take some of the tension off of the other relationships. So now they all have to figure out how they're going to relate to each other, knowing that none of them have learned additional healthy coping skills, none of them have gone through the process of starting to take more accountability for their role in the situation. No one else there has done any of the work that you've done. It's a really uncomfortable and stressful experience for people to go through. Having this information that dysfunctional families are rigid, that they are inflexible, that they are very fragile, that they want everything to stay the same because that is how they function. This can be helpful for you in a few ways. One, knowing that you're not crazy, you're not the problem when that inevitably happens. When you go in and you try to implement new healthy skills and the pushback feels amplified, it's not that you're necessarily doing it wrong. It's just that it's so uncomfortable for them to have to change and they don't want to change, they want things to stay the same. This is helpful because it is really important when we're setting boundaries, when we're enforcing boundaries, that we don't interpret pushback as a reason to back down on our boundary. So if your family pushes back on that, which is very likely to happen, that is not a sign that your boundary is wrong or bad. That is a sign that you need to enforce your boundary because you are the person in your family who is doing the work and ready and willing to initiate change. No one else is doing that work. You are the person that has to enforce your boundary because you're the only person doing the work to change, right? Now, this is not to say that other people might not decide to do that work at some point, but that is out of your control. When you change the way you interact with your family, everyone else has to scramble and decide how they're going to relate to each other, what they're going to do. This might motivate them to work on themselves. It might. It's possible. Does it always? No, it does not. And again, that is out of your control. It's not your job to motivate the people in your family to do the work to heal. Your job is to understand yourself, to work on your processing your own trauma, to develop the skills that you need to be a healthy adult, to decide what relationship is possible for you to have with your family members, assuming they never change. If they do, one day you can reevaluate what relationship is possible to have with them then. But assuming they are who they are today, what relationship is possible for you to have with them? Is that a relationship that you want to have with them? If not, what would you like to do about that? Are you considering going no contact? Are you considering limiting your relationship to showing up in a very limited capacity? These are all decisions we have to make for ourselves. They're really hard decisions, they're really layered decisions, they're really complicated decisions, but it's really important to understand that when you grow up with a parent with unmanaged borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, you're working with an unhealthy family system. You're working with a family system that enables your parent to misbehave, to be very inappropriate, to not have to be accountable for themselves, to not have to take accountability for the trauma that they're causing with their behaviors. In a healthy family system, adults are accountable. They're responsible for taking responsibility for their actions, they're responsible for growing and for doing the work to be healthy people. But in a dysfunctional family system, that is not the case. And so when you are working on healing, when you are working on growing, when you're doing all of that work, it is so common to want to turn around and pull the people that you care so desperately about with you on that healing journey and to show them look at all of these things that I've learned and I now understand. And can't you see how much better life could be if we just grow and incorporate some healthier things into the way we inter into the way we interact and relate with each other? But it's really complicated and that's not always met with appreciation. And sometimes, oftentimes, it is met with a lot of pushback. And that can be really confusing and that can be really disheartening and discouraging. And while all of those things are still very true, sometimes it can be really helpful to just understand that this isn't a you problem. This is a very standard and typical thing when you're dealing with a dysfunctional family system. Understanding this might allow you to get to the point, too, where you can start to grieve what you were hoping would happen. You can start to grieve what isn't so that you can start to make decisions based on what is. Because that's really where we start to take a lot of our power back in our healing journey is accepting the reality of our situation, really acknowledging it, taking ownership for our part in growing and healing, and to start to make active decisions based on the reality of what actually is today, who our parents are, who they are not, who our siblings are, who they are not, what our family members are willing to do, how much they're willing to stretch and grow. When we start to really accept all of this, we can start to make active decisions that allow us to protect ourselves to the extent that we need to, that allow us to take back some of our time and energy and resources that we've growing into our family chaos in an effort to calm the storm, it allows us to start making changes and to start moving forward in a direction where we actually can find some level of peace. On that note, I want to remind you that if you're looking to go deeper into these things, into radical acceptance, into boundaries with your own parent who has borderline narcissistic traits, your entire family system. You can find all of that information inside the Cycle Breakers vault, and I'll drop the link to that in the show notes. So until next time, take care, you guys, and I'll see you next week. Bye. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. If you like the show, please leave a five star review to help other cycle breakers find it. And make sure to check the show notes for other ways I can help. Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you next week.