Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for adults with narcissistic, emotionally immature, and otherwise toxic parents. I'm your host, Tori Wicksell, a therapist and boundaries coach with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. I also happen to grow up with a narcissist mom and know a thing or two about how crazy-making these relationships can be. I'm so excited to show you the light at the end of the tunnel and what it actually means to break the cycle of dysfunction that we grew up in. Now, let's jump into the show. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to talk about things that are frequently normalized in dysfunctional families, but are in fact very much not normal. And not only why this happens, but why it is such a big deal. Before we hop into that, I want to mention just two quick things. I am currently taking phone consultations for potential new therapy clients. So if you are located in California, Washington, or Oregon State and you are interested in discussing potentially working together in therapy, please check the show notes for a link to my therapy website where you can schedule a free phone consultation. Please do not schedule that phone consultation if you are residing outside California, Oregon, and Washington, as I can only work with adults who are located in those three states. And I really appreciate you respecting that boundary. Now, the next thing that I want to mention is that if for whatever reason we cannot work together in therapy, there are numerous reasons why that might be, but for whatever reason, even if it's just geographically therapy is not a good fit, then I would love for you to check out the confident boundaries membership. The confident boundaries membership is the other avenue with which we could work together. It is not therapy. Those are two totally separate things. My therapy clients are only my therapy clients. They're not also in the membership. People in the membership are not also in therapy. Those two lines are very separate and distinct. If we cannot work together in therapy, but you are interested in working with me in some capacity, then I really recommend that you check out the Confident Boundaries membership. It is the membership community that I built where I have a ton of educational resources. I do two live 90-minute boundary support slash question-answer sessions in there every month. Our second one is coming up next Thursday. So you still have an opportunity to hit one of those this month if you join now. And I do a live workshop every month in there as well. There are a ton of amazing cycle breakers who are dealing with their own toxic parents. The really cool thing about the membership is that most, if not all, of our members are dealing with a parent who has suspected or diagnosed borderline narcissistic or histrionic personality disorder or some combination of traits of those disorders. So it is a really unique and special space with other people who are doing the work to heal, to break the cycle, to set boundaries, to navigate being no contact with their toxic parents. It's just a really special space for such a unique group of us cycle breakers. So those are the two avenues with which you can work with me if you're interested. You can get my feedback if you're interested. And I just wanted to kind of differentiate those a little bit and let you know that those are the two avenues with which I can help if that is something that you'd like to explore more. Also, if you join the membership in our member library, you get access to the confident boundaries with toxic parents online course too, which is that entire course that I talked about last time where I walk you through how to navigate setting boundaries with the toxic parent. So that's in there. There are lots of other things in the membership. And I would love to see you over there. Okay, so let's talk about things that are commonly normalized in dysfunctional families, but are indeed not normal things. If you follow me on social media, then you have probably seen the posts that I do about calling out these types of things. Dysfunctional families pretend are normal, that toxic parents love to pretend are normal, but are indeed not normal and are not only not normal, but oftentimes include elements of abuse. This is something that I think is really not talked about enough. And I think it's really important that we discuss when it comes to dealing with a toxic parent elements of these dynamics that are abusive. And that is for a few reasons. The first being that a lot of people who are dealing with a toxic parent, a parent who is emotionally dysregulated, who is emotionally immature, who is punishing, who is emotionally volatile, a lot of adults who are dealing with these types of parents don't actually understand that a lot of what they're experiencing is a part of the abuse cycle. And it is a really important thing to understand if you're dealing with a relationship, any sort of intimate relationship with someone who demonstrates repeated abusive behaviors, it is really important that you understand what abuse actually looks like, what the abuse cycle looks like, what things that frequently happen in your relationship are actually abusive and not just unpleasant or upsetting. This is because when you're in any sort of abusive dynamic, it is very confusing, it is very overwhelming. And when you have a parent who is demonstrating abusive behaviors in their relationship with you, and they have done so since you were a little kid, it gets really hard to get perspective around what is reasonable for you to do, what is reasonable for you to ask of your parent, what is reasonable as far as an expectation that you should have for yourself or for your family in general. Everything gets very confusing. It gets very jumbled, it gets very unclear. And that's because of what abuse does. Abuse is all about power and control. And when we're dealing with an abusive parent, an emotionally psychologically abusive parent, that parent came into the relationship with their child as the only person in that relationship with control. If you think about it just from like a literal perspective, when you become a parent, you're the only adult in the room. Hopefully you're an adult. Some people become parents as children. That's a different story. But when you are a parent, when you become an apparent, assuming you become a parent as an adult, you are the only adult in that room. You're the only adult in that relationship for the first 18 years of your child's life. You are the only adult there. And this is so important to call out because that immediately shifts the power in the relationship to the parent. This isn't a dating relationship. This isn't a friendship. This is a parent-child relationship where one specific identified person held the power in the relationship for at least the first 18 years. And this is something that so often gets brushed under the rug when we're talking about the relationships between adult children and parents, because people talk about these relationships as if we're talking about peer-to-peer, because we're now talking about two adults. And that really, really takes out of context the foundation of these relationships. So when you grow up with a parent who frequently uses forms of communication that are manipulative, that are abusive in some way, things like withholding love if they are unhappy with you or if they disapprove of your behaviors, that often shows up as stonewalling, giving you the silent treatment. If you have a parent who frequently shames you, who guilt trips you, who gaslights you, these are things that are not present in all families. When these behaviors are frequently coming up in your dynamic with a parent, these things are really damaging. And they're really damaging for a lot of reasons. But the most insidious thing here is that on the surface, a lot of these manipulative behaviors get really minimized by society in general. I'm sure they're often minimized in our families, but they are definitely minimized in society. People pretend like it's not a big deal when a parent gives you the silent treatment, but it is in fact a very, very big deal. People pretend that it's not a big deal when you have family members who quote unquote joke around with each other, but are really making fun of oftentimes one family member, although that might bounce around a little bit. People pretend like these things aren't a big deal, but they are a really big deal. When you have a family dynamic where you go to your parent with a concern and they immediately defend themselves by criticizing you, by shaming you, by telling you there's something wrong with you, you're too sensitive, you're too dramatic. These things are a really big deal. And these aren't things that happen in every family. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there are perfect families because there is no such thing as a perfect family. But there are families that don't have abusive dynamics at play. There are families where when a parent is confronted by their child, and that sounds like a very intense word, but I just mean when their child comes to them, even as an adolescent or a child, when their child comes to them and brings to their attention that something the parent did, whether intentionally or inadvertently, hurt their child in some way. There are families where the parent regulates their own emotions and responds to their child in a way that is developmentally appropriate, that is trying to repair the relationship where that parent is taking accountability. Those things actually do happen. And those are the types of families that I'm talking about when I'm talking about healthy-ish families, right? This other group of families that are different from the ones that we grew up in, they exist. And they oftentimes, as cycle breakers, those are the families that we're trying so hard to create, right? There's not a perfect family, but there is a type of family where the parents take responsibility for their actions and where parents take responsibility for repairing a relationship with their child when they've done something that is damaging to that relationship with their child. These types of families absolutely do exist. And when we minimize, when we downplay elements of dysfunction and abuse that show up when we're dealing with a toxic parent, it makes it seem like there is no such thing as a healthy-ish family, that all families have elements of abuse in them, which isn't true. It's grossly overexaggerated because not all families are dysfunctional families. Not all families are toxic families. And it also makes it seem like we shouldn't be so impacted or affected by being on the receiving end or being exposed to these types of dysfunctional family dynamics. And that's not true either. This isn't a thing where if you were just mentally strong enough, you wouldn't feel anything. When you feel something, when you have a negative reaction to your parent stonewalling you, to your parent giving you the silent treatment because they're upset with you. You having a negative emotional reaction to that, you being upset, you being sad, you being devastated, fearful, that's appropriate. That is a reaction to an abusive, to a toxic behavior. That is an appropriate response to this behavior that is inappropriate. When you feel upset, when you feel devastated, when you feel shame, when you feel embarrassed by family members, by a toxic parent who makes fun of you, who belittles your feelings, you feeling upset about that, you feeling devastated, you feeling exposed, you feeling embarrassed, that's a normal reaction to really inappropriate behavior. It's really important that we label these things for what they are because it helps people, it helps adults who are really working on breaking the cycle understand that their struggle isn't about a personal defect. It's not this like personal flaw that they have. Their struggle is what it's like to be exposed to abusive dynamics. That struggle, that really confusing and emotionally taxing, emotionally draining journey, that is what it's like for someone who is dealing with these types of dynamics. A lot of what is driving this is the confusion, the manipulation, the downplaying of things that are abusive, that are traumatic, because it is traumatic. It's not something that you could just choose to not be impacted by. That's not how this works. When we start calling out these things for what they are, we can start to have more open conversations around why it is so hard to heal from these dynamics, why it is so hard to navigate these types of relationships with a toxic parent or other family members in our dysfunctional family systems. When we start to actually talk about things for what they are, it helps us realize that we're not alone. It helps us realize that it's a lot bigger than we're being told that it is, that it feels hard because it is hard and it's really complicated and layered and new nuanced. When we really call out abusive dynamics for what they are, we help victims of abuse heal. And that's a really important thing to do. And that's something that really doesn't happen enough in these types of dysfunctional family dynamics. And the only people that it serves to not actually address these things for what they are are the people who benefit from these systems staying how they are. The only people that benefit from us not calling out abuse for what it is, not calling out toxic, repeated behaviors for what they are, are the people who are benefiting from that. So if you find yourself wondering, questioning, doubting whether you had it that bad, and yet you still find yourself being drawn to the types of content like the You're Not Crazy podcast, I'd love for you to challenge yourself to look up the repeated patterns of behavior in your family. And if any of those elements fall under emotional psychological abuse. Why you can't muster up the willpower to quote do the thing you know you need to do. These relationships are so hard because of that abusive dynamic there and everything else that goes along with it, the trauma of it all, the secrecy of it all, that's what really makes this hard. So I think that if you can take away anything from today's episode, it hopefully is that when you find yourself struggling so deeply to navigate a relationship with a toxic parent and you find yourself beating yourself up because the things that have occurred, the repeated patterns of behavior there just shouldn't impact you as much as they do. My hope is that you walk away from this episode thinking about that a little differently and recognizing that they actually are impacting you the way that abusive dynamics impact people who are on the receiving end. Just a quick reminder: if you're interested in chatting about working together in therapy, you can check the show notes for the link to schedule that phone consultation. And completely separately, like I said earlier, if we are not a good fit for therapy for whatever reason, for example, you have your own therapist who you love, but you are looking for some additional support and community and education around navigating your complicated family dynamics. Check the show notes for the link to the Confident Foundries membership. I'd love to see you inside. On that note, take care of yourself and I'll see you next week. Bye. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the Your 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.