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 for this final episode of the You're Not Crazy Podcast in 2025. I cannot believe that this year is coming to an end. It is wild to think that I've been doing this podcast for a year and a half now. That's just mind-boggling to me. If you're a longtime listener, you probably heard that I switched up the intro a little bit this week. I've been wanting to switch that up for a while now. And life has just been so chaotic and crazy, and there's been so many things going on. I really have felt like I've just like been in a hamster wheel trying to keep up with everything. And so one of my big intentions going into 2026 is to really simplify. And I have been doing a lot of reflecting over the past couple of months and trying to be really mindful and take note of where my time and energy is best spent and what makes me happiest, and what are things that I would like to continue doing long term. And I just really love this podcast. And I think over the past six months or so, I have just been so swamped with things going on that I haven't been able to dedicate the time and energy that I had been dedicating to it. And I want that to change because I really, really enjoy doing this podcast. It really changed my life in so many ways starting the podcast in the summer of 2024. And I think it's been such an incredible way to break some of the misconceptions around growing up with a parent who had a lot of toxic qualities and traits and just how crazy making that is. And I feel so proud of this podcast. And I'm so grateful for all of you who tune in every week to listen to me talk. And whether you're a longtime listener or you're just recently finding the podcast, I know how busy life gets. I know how consuming breaking the cycle can be. And the fact that you make time to tune in each week and listen to what I have to say is something that is not lost on me. And so the new intro today is just one reflection of how I am going to be reprioritizing this show in the list of things that I'm doing because it brings me so much joy. And I know based on the feedback that I get from so many of you, that it's something that's really helpful for you too. That is a long-winded way to lead into our show, which is really going to be a reflective one. Looking at the year as a whole, looking at this podcast, looking at all of the things that I've learned over this past year as a cycle breaker who is out here trying to help other cycle breakers heal. One thing that's been really interesting over this past year that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about and trying to decide what I want to say about it is the conversation around toxic and dysfunctional families. Over the past several months, it's really ramped up. And if you're not familiar with what I'm referring to, it's this whole media emphasis on the quote-unquote no contact trend. It's really infuriating to me. I hate when I see articles posted about it. I hate when I see podcast episodes coming out about it. I hate just the ignorance and all of it. It's really upsetting. A cycle breaker myself, as someone who has been on the receiving end of a lot of trauma and abuse throughout my own life, as someone who helps people that have also been on the receiving end of trauma and abuse from the dysfunction that they grew up in and the parents that they grew up with, it's really, really upsetting. And I think that there are a lot of reasons why it is so upsetting. But one of the things that have has been so difficult for me over these past, let's say, month or two, since these types of articles and podcasts and everything really have ramped up, is that it has made me want to back down from talking about these things. And not because I think I'm incorrect, not because I think the media narrative is true. It's not. It's actually extremely confusing and upsetting to see any mental health professional defend or minimize abuse. And that's what we're really talking about here. If you guys follow me on TikTok, I'm at the boundaries coach, if you're over there, I do a series where I call out things are abusive and dysfunctional and toxic and are also really common and normalized and dysfunctional and toxic families. And the reason for this is that when you grow up with a narcissistic parent, when you grow up with a parent with unmanaged borderline personality disorder or some combination of these disorders, you experience a lot of trauma and a lot of abuse. And yet you are conditioned to believe that you're not experiencing abuse. There's so much gaslighting that goes on in these types of family dynamics. It's so confusing. There can be such a juckle and hide way that your toxic parent presents to the world versus the version of them that you see. There can be moments that feel like you're really loved and supported by your parent, and moments that are immensely confusing because you are very much afraid of your toxic parent, whether that is emotionally afraid, afraid of their punishment, physically afraid. That can look like a lot of different things. But it is so confusing and crazy making and complicated to grow up in these types of family dynamics. And it is really, really, really upsetting for me when I see platforms given to people who should know better. And by that I mean other mental health professionals, they should know better than to minimize abuse and to normalize abuse. So it's really upsetting when I see people minimizing abuse and trauma and dysfunction and gaslighting because those aren't little things. Those are things that dramatically impact the way our brains develop. There are things that make our life so much harder than people who didn't grow up experiencing chronic trauma in their families. It's not a little thing. And it's really upsetting when a platform is given to people who are celebrated for minimizing this and for calling adults who go no contact with a toxic parent. Because the reality is that when you are a cycle breaker, when you are working on healing yourself, when you are trying to understand why everything feels so hard, why life feels so hard, why you can't set healthy boundaries with your parent, when you're trying to peel back the layers of that very, very large onion and you ultimately make a gut-retchied decision to go no contact with your parent, it is as a last resort. It is never impulsive, it is never something that's done lightly. And the reality is that so often it's a push-pull. So often it's similar to ending an abusive romantic relationship where people go no contact with their parent and then they try again and they wonder if maybe they can make something work and maybe they could set different boundaries or have different expectations. It's not something that is done as a throwaway idea. It's not something that's done because someone's having a temper tantrum. An adult child is having a temper tantrum because their parent didn't give them $20. It's a complete deflection, right? It's projecting onto people who are really trying to do the internal work to heal and to not repeat these dysfunctional cycles. It's projecting onto them that they are emotionally immature, that they're weak, that they're selfish, that they're the problem. And it's so frustrating because it, on one hand, is not surprising, right? This is what happens within our families. What's frustrating and surprising is how much attention and praise has been given recently to people who are arguing why abuse is okay in our types of families. If it's your parent that's abusive towards you, as long as it's not quote unquote bad enough abuse, it's it's a crazy argument. It's an insane argument to make that you should just look the other way. You should just forget about it. That's not how this works. If you could, you would. I know that. If I could have, I would have. How many times have we tried internally to make everything okay? It's literally the trauma that we've lived out. I imagine that my feelings about this are probably similar to a lot of yours when you see these things as well and when you hear them. And it's just really disheartening. And the flip side of this is that when you normalize abuse, when you give a platform to people who are abusive or are minimizing abusive behaviors and abusive patterns, when you give someone a platform to argue their side of the situation when their side is abuse, it has a really bad impact globally. It's something that empowers people who are abusive to be more publicly abusive, to be more overtly abusive. When you give a platform to people who are proud of the way that they have approached relationships in their life and who completely reject what we know scientifically about trauma and abuse, it is a big problem. And part of that problem that I've seen personally over the past few months, as these conversations have gotten more and more attention, I notice that I am getting more and more negative feedback from people who are not my intended audience. And while I consider myself a pretty mentally strong person, it is very exhausting and draining and upsetting to be on the receiving end of that. And it has gotten a bit out of control over the past few months with people reaching out to me via my businesses, aside from the horrific comments and DMs that I get on social media. It's just kind of taken on a life of its own in a really negative way. And so I think that over the last few months, I've been really trying to be reflective of how do I want to move forward in this world in which I am talking about things that anger people who are abusive, right? People who are abusive want to continue in their abuse. It is not fun or pleasant to be on the receiving end of their behavior. I know I grew up with a narcissist mom. As I've talked about on this podcast, I've been in other abusive relationships, friendships, romantic relationships. It's not fun to be on the receiving end of that. And it's really not fun to be on the repeated receiving end of that. And it's time consuming and it's draining and it's exhausting. And so I've been trying to be really reflective of how I could move forward doing what I do because I love what I do. I love being a therapist. I think that I am so fortunate to be able to help people, specifically people who have very complicated parent and family relationships. As I've talked about so many times before, the majority of my therapy practice is devoted to supporting adults with parents with either suspected or diagnosed borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. It's something I love to do. It's something I feel very passionate about. It's something that I have a lot of education and training and experience around in this vicinity. I love doing this podcast. This podcast brings me so much joy. I hate doing the YouTube version. I've tried it several times now. There are several episodes of this podcast that are on YouTube. There is something that I hate about video recording this podcast. And maybe one day I will be in the position where I can professionally have support that helps me do so in a way that is not draining and time consuming and frustrating for me. But that is not the reality right now. And so that is another change that I'm making in 2026, is that unless or until I have a team that is able to support me in doing a video version of this podcast in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm about to pull out my hair, I'm just not doing it anymore. I love the audio version of this. When I focus on just doing the audio version, the sound quality is better. I am able to speak more freely. It is easier for me to edit. And that is just going to be the reality moving forward of the podcast for the foreseeable future. But I also feel with the podcast that there's a level that I'm removed from the backlash. Yes, there have been some people who have written some pretty unkind reviews of this podcast. And yet, that is much fewer and far further between than the comments that I get on social media, than the chaotic people that I've had reach out to me directly via my businesses. Those things are much more disturbing and upsetting and time consuming and draining. And so I think that one thing that I have come to the conclusion of is that this podcast is not only something I love doing, but it's a way that I feel more comfortable talking about these things. It just feels like I have more control over it than I do in some other areas. Social media is a really tricky one. As you may or may not know, I went viral on TikTok over the summer. I forget exactly what month, but July or August of this year. And that was a really wild experience. I never thought I would be like on TikTok. It was never in my dream to be a social media person, like therapist. My dream was to help other cycle breakers. My dream was to help adults who grew up with a parent with narcissistic or unmanaged borderline personality disorder. And it was very hard to figure out how to reach those people, how to reach people like us, because we're such a specific niche, right? It's not every single person that can relate to this experience and this life experience. In fact, most people can't. And so I had tried off and on to make social media work out of desperation, necessity, whatever you want to call it, over the past several years of my therapist career. And this summer on a whim, I decided to join TikTok. I had almost instantly a few videos go viral and it was wild. And since then, my TikTok account has blown up a bit, Instagram as well. I feel super fortunate for that. And it's been really challenging navigating the influx of comments, which some are so kind and supportive and encouraging and appreciative. And some are really awful, like really cruel, like criticizing the way that I look and the way that I talk, and that I smile too much, and that I shouldn't smile or laugh when I'm talking about dark things and attacking my education and my experience and criticizing me as a human and criticizing me as a therapist and calling me horrible names and unethical. And the list goes on and on. It's really overwhelming to see all of those messages come in on a regular basis. I have made such immense progress in my own healing journey, navigating those types of things on a personal level. But when you're doing it on a personal level, it's very different than having an onslaught of literally thousands of messages coming in that are all over the place, where some people love you and some people hate you. And none of those people, or at least very few of them, even know you on a personal level. They're seeing this little video that brings up really big feelings for them. So social media, I'm still trying to figure out how to approach that. I have stopped reading a lot of the comments. Frankly, I don't read most of my DMs anymore that come in as a way to protect my own mental health. Occasionally, I will see a DM that is really lovely. And if I do, I will respond to you and thank you for taking the time to write me. But most of them I don't read anymore because I can't mentally go through the ups and downs of bouncing back and forth between people who are so angry at me. And frankly, it's a bit scary when people are that rageful towards you and they don't know you. It's a little upsetting, but it's just a draining thing. And so I'm trying to figure out how can I continue to utilize social media to help call out things that are not okay, that are abusive in these toxic family systems. How can I use it to educate people? How can I use it to provide validation and encouragement for breaking the cycle and to challenge myths around breaking the cycle? I think that ultimately social media provides so much value, right? It's able to help me get in front of people that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get in front of. It allows people to find this podcast because I'm able to talk about the podcast and reach people that don't know about it otherwise. It is so beneficial in so many ways. And it comes with, I know I don't have to tell you this isn't rocket science. I'm not the first person ever talking about this, but it comes with a lot of downsides too. And so I'm trying to really figure out what do healthy boundaries look like for me around social media and moving forward into 2026? How do I protect my mental health while also utilizing these resources and the opportunity that I have to share information that can be helpful with other people? So that is one of my ongoing resolutions that I'm trying to figure out is what does healthy social media use look like for me professionally in 2026? And you'll have to stay tuned, TBD, to figure out what that journey looks like because I'm very much still on it. That leads me to, you know, therapy and coaching. I love working one on one with people. I pulled back from therapy about six months ago and I decided that I didn't want to pull back from therapy. I really love being a therapist. I Tried to pull back and lean more into content creation. And what I found is that I enjoy content creation and I don't want that to be the focus of my schedule and my day. I want to be seeing clients. I want to be working with clients. I want to be supporting my therapy clients. And I think by actively doing therapy, I am able to produce better content too. Not because I produce content about my clients ever. In fact, if you happen to be a therapy client of mine, we very much probably had a conversation where I said something along the lines of, I do have a social media presence, I do have a podcast, I will never talk about you on those things ever. I talk about myself, I talk about my own journey, and I talk globally about trends and things like that. But I will never, ever, ever talk about clients. These things are so sensitive and they're important. And I would never, ever, ever take someone else's story and put it out there for the world. Recently-ish, I decided to start doing phone consultations and filling in some of the therapy spots that I had closed and shifting around some of the ways that I'm spending my time and energy. And so that's a decision that I'm really happy about and I feel really good about and I'm really excited about. And I think that it offers a level of stability in my life because I have been a therapist for so many years now. And it's something that is comfortable to me in the sense of I really enjoy this work and I enjoy doing what I do and I enjoy working with the clients that I work with. And it creates a level of routine in my life that when things have gotten really chaotic with the feedback and being on the receiving end of negative feedback and all of those things, it feels peaceful and comforting and calming to be able to go back to where I feel like I excel and where I feel confident and where I feel happy. And so that brings me to the rest of things, right? So, what does that mean for me moving forward? Moving forward, it means I'm not giving up this podcast. I love doing it. I'm so happy to do that. I am very excited to be putting more time and energy into it in the upcoming year. I really, really love it. If you're part of You're Not Crazy, the private feed, where I have archived episodes where I do two bonus episodes every month. I'm very much excited to spend more time and energy putting those episodes out as well. And I just feel so grateful for all of you that are listening. And it's so cool to just hop on the mic and talk to you, like I would talk to a friend and just share my thoughts. And I'm so grateful and appreciative for this outlet and this ability to share my thoughts and my experience and my education with you. So the podcast is not going anywhere. Although, like I said, the video version of the podcast is not going to be revisited until or unless we get some more support with that in here. I'm calling it a day on that. Social media, TVD. Uh, I don't intend on giving those up. I just need to figure out how to navigate them in a way that is less taxing and emotionally draining and less time consuming. So on the pathway there of figuring that out. I haven't talked a ton about it on the podcast, but I did put together a self-guided online course. It's called Confident Boundaries with Toxic Parents, where I walk you through how to effectively set boundaries with a toxic parent. There are elements of it that speak directly to parents with suspected or diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder, unmanaged borderline personality disorder, as those are my areas of focus. And yet, that course is really relevant for anyone who is dealing with a parent with narcissistic traits, anyone who is dealing with an extremely emotionally immature parent or an otherwise toxic parent who has parentified you, who has really poor or no boundaries, who struggles to regulate their own emotions, who gaslights you, all of those things. So that is available at confidentboundaries.com. You can go at your own pace. It is self-guided and it covers the full picture of why boundaries are so hard with our kinds of parents. And then that brings me to the membership. And I haven't been talking about the membership very much recently, although it is very much still a thing, and there are still very much people in there who are participating, and those people are lovely. The reason why I haven't been talking about the membership lately is because I have been really, really contemplating about moving forward what I want the membership to look like and how I'm going to grow it. A big thing that I have been thinking of is that it is very important to me that the membership stays a safe place for people like us, that it is a safe and supportive community, and that the people in there are truly adults who are seeking support and information on their cycle breaking journey and who are accountable for their own healing work and who are working on regulating themselves and learning all of the skills that we weren't taught growing up. I do not want people coming into that membership community who are unsupportive, who are abusive in their own behaviors. I am very protective of that membership community. It is a really special community. Right now we have about 60 people in there, I believe. And I know that we could grow it to a lot bigger. And I'm trying to think if that's something that I want to do. How big do I want to grow this membership community? How do I keep it safe when there are people who are unsafe discovering me as well, right? How do I protect this community that we're building? What does the structure of the community look like as it grows? I think that adding more cycle breakers to this membership community is beneficial for everyone. I know that a major reason why I started it to begin with was because it is so hard to find other people who really get what you've experienced, who understand what you're going through when you grow up with a narcissistic parent, a parent with unmanaged BPD. It is really hard. People don't get it. They don't understand what it feels like to be gaslit. They don't understand what it feels like to doubt yourself and your own perception of events and your own experiences. That's a major reason why I started this podcast last year, is because I knew that talking about my own journey could be very validating for a lot of people to know that you're not alone, that there's a reason why you feel so crazy sometimes. There's a reason why life is so overwhelmingly chaotic around your family. All of these things make sense in the context of the dysfunction that you grew up in. The tricky part is how do I grow this membership community while keeping it safe? I'm not sure. I have some ideas, I have some thoughts around it. This is by far the area where I feel the most stuck right now. And I think that I've done enough reflecting at this point where I think I have some ideas on moving forward, how to rework a few things at the membership so that I can grow it. Because ultimately I want cycle breakers to come together to support each other, to see that they're not alone, to see that there are other functional adults out there who are really struggling with their families, who are confused, who are self-gaslighting and doubting themselves and wondering, am I the problem? The people in this membership are so kind and supportive and encouraging. And I want to allow other people who are on a similar path into this space so that they can benefit from that too. And I want to be very protective and mindful that I really, to the best of my ability, discourage people who are not on the same path and not on the same journey and who are not positive and encouraging and empathetic, but who are repeating really abusive cycles to stay away from the membership. So I think that at this point it's going to be trial and error. I know that there are, you know, membership communities out there that have thousands and thousands of people in them. I don't know that that is the future of confident boundaries membership. I don't know that I want there to be 20,000 people in there. The interesting thing about me being a cycle breaker myself is that we're all on this journey. I've made so much progress on my own healing journey. I'm so proud of all of the work that I've done. I see the benefits of that on a daily basis in my own life. And this is a lifelong journey. When we have anything that is stressful going on in our lives, it tends to amplify the things that we struggle with internally. If you grow up in a traumatic and dysfunctional family, it can amplify things like the self-gaslighting, the self-doubt, the questioning. Am I really even competent to be talking about these things? Do I have enough education and training and experience? Am I full of shit? Do I even know what I'm talking about? All of these voices in my head amplify, especially with an onslaught of negative feedback because these are all things that I had to overcome myself, right? In my own life. Like I have been trained to keep myself small. I have been trained to feel gratitude towards people who have been abusive towards me. That is what I was conditioned to do and think and believe throughout my life. And so the idea that I am now speaking so loudly and calling out this abuse is not something that was ever okay or normalized in my family. It is not something that is appreciated in a lot of respects by my family. It is not something that is allowed. I am not allowed to take up space. I am not allowed to help other people. How dare I have the audacity to think that I could when I am just such a broken person myself? These are all things that I've had to deal with on my own healing journey, right? These are all things of the inner dialogue that comes up. So with the membership, I am currently in the process of figuring that out. I will keep you guys updated, but I will be allowing people to join right into the membership instead of having to go through the online course. Those are two separate things that I would greatly encourage you if you are struggling with setting boundaries with your own toxic parent. The self-guided online course is a really excellent resource that provides the education that I think every cycle breaker with a parent who they suspect or know has narcissistic or borderline personality disorder really needs that information and that education in order to be successful in setting boundaries with their parent. But soon you will not have to go through that course in order to join the membership. I'm going to be reopening it up where you can join directly because while I think that it is very helpful for everyone in the membership to have the same foundational knowledge around what setting boundaries with a toxic parent actually looks like, I don't want to exclude people from the membership who are already no contact with their parent or who are strongly considering or implementing going no contact with their parent. And those people aren't necessarily going to be taking the confident boundaries with toxic parent course because it's not necessarily relevant to where they are right now. So those are some of my thoughts. Lots of reflection going on, a very different end-of-year podcast than last year. If you were there with me, or if you are part of You're Not Crazy, the Private Feed, you can listen to that show, the year-end show over there. Um, but yeah, just it's been an interesting ride. And I think that I've learned a lot about myself along the way. I've learned a lot about what is within my capacity along the way. I've learned a lot about setting boundaries professionally on the way. I'm still working on that. That is an evolving thing, as I think boundaries are for all of us. It's it's been an interesting ride, but one that I feel really lucky and fortunate and grateful to go down. And if you've hung with me this entire episode, I again just want to thank you so much for allowing me into your life, into your world, allowing me to share my thoughts with you on breaking the cycle. I so greatly hope that these episodes are helpful. I'm so excited for the next year of the show and what is going to come with that. And I'm going to stop rambling for today. So I'll talk to you soon. 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.