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, Torie Wiksell, a therapist with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. I also happened 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 the You're Not Crazy podcast. Thanks for joining me for another week talking about dysfunctional family dynamics, And hopefully helping you feel a bit less alone and a bit less crazy on your cycle breaking journey. Next week we're gonna be talking about Father's Day on the podcast, so definitely make sure to circle back for that episode. If my voice is sounding a little raspy today, I have to apologize. I am not sick, knock on wood. But There's a very high pollen count where I live, and I have very intense allergies. While spring is such a beautiful season, I am very much looking forward to getting into the heart of summer, despite the fact that I can't stand the heat, but getting past the peak of allergy season. So thank you for bearing with me. If my voice cracks a time or two, just know that I'm doing my best here Hopping into today's episode. Today we're gonna talk about why I strongly recommend that you stop trying to get your parent to understand your boundary When you are trying to set boundaries with a toxic parent, with a parent who happens to be a narcissist or have a lot of narcissistic traits, a parent with very poor emotional regulation skills, a parent with unmanaged BPD. When you are trying to set a boundary with a parent like this they are often going to push back They don't want the boundary, you want the boundary, and they are going to push back on the boundary And one of the ways that parents like this push back is that they will pretend like they don't understand your boundary, they don't understand the things that you're saying they might respond to you in a way that suggests you need to convince them that this boundary is necessary and valid They may argue with you explaining why you don't need this boundary, why this is inappropriate, why this is not a valid boundary for you to have or to assert. There are so many things that they may do in response to you setting a boundary with a parent like this And it is normal and natural to want your parent to understand where you're coming from, to want them to see that this is something that you're doing so you can maintain your relationship with them so that you're not completely overwhelmed and exhausted and depleted and so you can have a healthier dynamic between the two of you. It is very normal to want them to understand, and I cannot express this enough, but when you are dealing with a parent like this, you are dealing with a person that gets their needs met in very dysfunctional ways your parent lacks healthy coping skills to manage their own disappointment, to assert their own needs in a healthy way They have unrealistic and inappropriate expectations of the role that their children should play in their lives. This is the human that you're dealing with. And so when you're approaching them with your boundary, when you're setting a boundary with a parent like this and You're focused on getting them to understand your boundary What you're doing is you're really asking them to do something that they are likely incapable of doing and or unwilling to do, and so it's not gonna go well. Their pushback is very much aligned with the fact that they have very dysfunctional ways of getting their needs met. They have very dysfunctional ways of communicating, of addressing conflict, of regulating their emotions. Very inappropriate, very unhealthy ways of doing these things. And in order for them to understand your perspective, understand and validate where you're coming from, they would have to have a lot more insight and knowledge and awareness and coping skills than they do Your parent is very likely not capable of stepping outside their own perspective and their own disappointment and their own frustration and their own feelings in order to see your perspective. And even if they can understand it or acknowledge it on some extent, it likely feels very insignificant to them compared to what it is that they're dealing with. In a healthy parent-child relationship, the parent is going to be able to hold two realities at the same time. One, that they have feelings, challenging feelings at times around their interactions with their child, around their relationship with their child, around the behaviors that their child demonstrates. And Putting themselves in their child's shoes and looking at things from their child's perspective and trying to understand their child's perspective and recognizing what their role is in this dynamic and tabling some of their own feelings in order to show up for their child in the way that is relationally appropriate, developmentally appropriate. Your parent can't do that. And so when you try to appeal to your parent's sense of empathy and understanding and get them to see your perspective You are exhausting yourself trying to say things in the right way so that they can finally hear you, and they're not capable of hearing you, or they're unwilling, or a combination of both And so you're gonna become likely more and more frustrated as this goes on, and your parent is likely going to do what they do, which is engage with you in a very dysfunctional and upsetting and invalidating and triggering way And this shifts the focus of the dynamic between the two of you away from the original thing, which was setting the boundary to this new thing which is now getting their approval or getting their, them to cosign on your boundary. And because they're not gonna give that to you, most likely, this interaction typically escalates, and it ends with you feeling completely defeated, feeling completely invalidated, you backing down from your boundary, you beating yourself up, you wondering if your boundary is unreasonable in the first place. It ends in that spiral So the thing that I want you to keep in mind when you're setting boundaries with your parent is that we don't set a boundary until we're clear on what that boundary is. When we're setting a boundary with a parent like this, really with anyone in any relationship, but for the sake of this conversation that we're having, with your parent. When you're setting a boundary with your parent, you're not going in with a plan to collaborate and come up with a boundary that works for both of you. Your boundary isn't about them. It's not telling them what they're going to do differently. Your boundary is about setting limits for yourself and how much you are going to show up and give to this relationship, what your capacity is, what you are willing to do, and what you are unwilling to do. These are things that you have to decide for yourself that you don't collaborate with your parent about. If you had that relationship where you could have a productive, collaborative conversation with your parent, you wouldn't be setting this boundary, you would be having that conversation with them. Setting the boundary is something that you do when you are clear as to what is the boundary that you need in order to try to continue this relationship, in order to try to make this relationship work. Inside the Cycle Breakers Vault There's a workshop called Setting Boundaries That Stick. It's a step-by-step plan to setting boundaries with these types of parents. And if you scroll down inside that, you'll see that attached to that lesson is a worksheet called Clearly Defining Your Boundary. That is a worksheet where I walk you through how to clearly define your boundary, because that is really helpful and really important, again, because you want to come in with, "This is my boundary. This is what I am very clear on that I am going to implement moving forward." It's not that collaborative discussion. It is you asserting your needs and asserting yourself in this relationship And your parent's likely going to push back because again, they don't have healthy coping skills for dealing with disappointment, and frustration, and relationship conflict. And so they're probably going to engage with you in a way that makes you feel like you need to explain your boundary, you need to over-explain, you need to try to explain it in different ways. But when you can really see that this is an attempt to pull you into the dysfunction, and to get you off track, to pull you away from what you're actually trying to do, which is to just be clear about what this boundary is, and engage you in this side quest, if you will, where you're now in a back and forth with them around whether or not this boundary is going to happen And you're seeking their approval, you're seeking from them that they understand it, that they validate it, that they agree that this is appropriate or healthy or necessary, or even that they will respect it. That's not what we're looking for when we're setting boundaries. We're just saying, " This is what it is. This is what I can give. This is what I can't give. This is the boundary." And we're not asking our parent to tell us that they are going to respect it. We're telling them, "This is the boundary," and because this is the boundary, if they choose not to respect it, we're going to enforce it anyways. We hope that they'll respect the boundary. We know that they'll typically push back, at least at first, but we hope that they'll be able to respect it because that would be a sign that they're willing to exert some level of effort into maintaining this relationship with us, and they're willing to maybe not meet us halfway, but meet us somewhere in the middle. So we hope for that, but we're not there to get their approval. We're not there to get their consent. We're not there to convince them why they should be agreeing with respecting our boundary. That's up to them. The ball is in their court. That is their decision to make, and yes, it is disappointing. Yes, it is unacceptable when parents would prefer To further damage in the relationship with your adult children rather than respect your boundary, that's not okay. It's horrible. It's hurtful. It's painful. It's all of these things, and that's not our job to make that decision for them. So In a nutshell, when you are going in to set a boundary, this is not a collaborative conversation. This is you communicating what it is that your parent can expect from you moving forward so that they have the information they need in order to hopefully choose to respect your boundary. And because these types of parents are chaotic and they have dysfunctional ways of getting their needs met, they are likely to respond to your boundary in dysfunctional ways. That does not mean you go down those roads with them. That does not mean that you focus on getting them to understand and validate your boundary. You don't do that. That is a distraction, and that will inevitably end with you feeling completely overwhelmed and defeated and exhausted and all of the bad things. You focus on what it is that you intend to do, which is set the boundary, and you allow your parent to make choices around how they are going to respond to the boundary that you have set Next week we're gonna go into some things related to Father's Day, so make sure to circle back Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast, and I'll talk to 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