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 this week's episode I am recording this post Father's Day weekend, which, brings up a lot of feels for those of us cycle breakers with complicated family dynamics. Just wanted to say I'm proud of you for surviving it And that is true even if you did so imperfectly because we are all imperfect human beings. So if you are being hard on yourself, if you don't love the versions of yourself that came out this weekend, give yourself a breath to just get grounded again, get on your feet, get some distance from this weekend. And when you are feeling more like yourself and less in your feels, that is a much better time to reflect on this weekend and try to learn from it and make decisions about how you might want to approach things with your family moving forward. It is not usually a helpful time to do that when we are in our feels. So if you are very much in your feels, take care of yourself, eat, drink, sleep, be kind to yourself, be gentle with yourself. That is a challenge in and of itself Do not add on the other layer of trying to have major mental and healing breakthroughs right now. I just recorded another episode of the private feed that will be coming out before the end of this month, probably later this week, perhaps early next week, where I talk a bit more about my own personal experience with Father's Day and my own healing journey, and just some thoughts in general that's a little more personal. So if you are a part of the private feed, look out for that in the next week or so. It is coming towards to you when I have a chance to sit down and edit it And if you're not a member of the private feed, you can always join by going to confidentboundaries.com/private The topic that I want to talk about today, is looking at our emotional capacity, our physical capacity, our financial capacity, just our capacity in every sense of the word when it comes to dealing with our own family dynamics So often when you're the cycle breaker in your family, you can handle a lot. You are capable of a lot. I know that is true for myself, and that is true for so many of the cycle breakers that I have encountered, both personally and professionally throughout the course of my life. Cycle breakers can handle a lot, and we do handle a lot. From the time we are kids, we handle far more than we should have ever had to handle. And something that is so tricky as an adult is redefining how you're gonna make decisions Growing up, you don't have that luxury. It doesn't matter if something is beyond your capacity, you need to do it, right? If you are capable of doing the thing that is going to keep your parent emotionally regulated, you are going to do it. It doesn't matter if it is beyond your capacity. You're going to do as a kid what you can to stay safe in a dynamic that feels very unsafe. That is how we survive We take on adult tasks, we try to manage adult emotions, we try our best to learn how to interact with the adults around us in a way that keeps things from becoming completely unhinged Our capacity doesn't matter growing up. What we are capable of, we really push to the limits because we have to. That's how we survive. And that doesn't just turn off when we're adults. It doesn't just turn off even though we have more physical distance, we have more independence from our families as adults. That isn't a switch that just gets turned off. And so what happens so often is you grow up and you engage with the world, you approach life in general in a way that you take on far more than you should. You pile way too much onto yourself and your plate, and it is exhausting, and it is draining And a couple of things happen here. One, you burn out, but two, there are things that it feels like you're dropping the ball on because you're taking on so much, and you're running on fumes so often that you are doing things imperfectly. Now, that in and of itself is a whole thing we can talk about because this idea of perfection or other people doing things better is oftentimes a fallacy and this fantasy that our brains came up with. But when you're feeling like you've dropped the ball and you've failed and you feel like you're not doing a good job, that in, in and of itself is really taxing. And oftentimes the stories that we tell ourselves is, " I should be able to do this. I know I'm capable of doing this. I should be able to do it, and it shouldn't be so hard for me. I shouldn't have dropped the ball. And the real story there, the more helpful story, the story that allows you to be an emotionally healthy human and adult, is that just because I am capable of something doesn't mean I have the capacity for it. And my capacity is actually far more important as an adult than what I am capable of. I am capable of a lot of things, but I'm going to be miserable if I try to pursue them all. I'm not gonna do them up to the standard or the quality that I would like to do them, and I'm not going to be mentally present to enjoy them because I'm spread so thin Redefining the way we make decisions through the lens of what is my capacity versus what am I capable of is so huge, and it is so important, and it is so hard. Because when you make that shift It can feel like you owe people a novel explanation as to why you're not agreeing to do something. It can feel like you're being lazy or selfish or fill in the blank with some other word with incredibly negative connotation This applies to decisions that we make around our families too. When you're dealing with a dysfunctional family dynamic, there's oftentimes chaos and crises, and it is this emotional rollercoaster where you have periods of smooth sailing and there is inevitably another major dip, and then things calm down, and then there's another chaos. And as a cycle breaker, oftentimes you are the person in your family That is trying to put out the fire every time there is a fire, and there are lots of them. And you know that you're capable of doing that because that's the role you've played in your family for so long. You've had to play it as a little kid, and you end up playing it so often as an adult as well. And you know you can do it, and so therefore it feels like you have to, or you should, or It's not an option for you to not play that role. But when you actually look at trying to make decisions around how involved you're going to be in your family's crises from a perspective of what is my actual capacity right now, it can really change things for you. Because the reality is everyone has a limited capacity. We're human beings. We have limited energy. We have limited time. We have limited resources. And being the person that steps in and intervenes and tries to pick up all the pieces when your family's in crisis or your toxic parent is in crisis is exhausting. It is depleting. It takes a lot of energy and resources. And although you might be capable of doing that, although you might be able to do it successfully nine out of 10 times You don't get additional capacity in order to do that. Your energy, your attention span, your focus Your patience, all of these things go to that place, and it uses a lot of those resources, like a ton of them. And that means that other things in your life, like your chosen family, whether that's your friends, kids, a partner, your career, your hobbies, your pets if you're a pet person, other things in your life no longer get access to those resources of yours. They no longer get that version of you who is more physically and emotionally present because your resources have been drained by your family's crisis. When you look at engaging with your dysfunctional family dynamics through a lens of what do I actually have the capacity for it can allow you to start making honest decisions that are far more reality-based and aligned with where it's going to make you happy to exert your time, energy, and resources. Now, this is not a easy formula where you ask yourself, "What is my actual capacity?" And then it's suddenly easy-peasy to make these decisions. That's not how it works. But it gives you more clarity as to what decisions would actually make you happier, what decisions would actually make you less stressed out, what decisions would actually be more aligned with who you are and what you care about You have to have clarity in order to make a shift. And then you can go about finding the support and resources that you need to get to a place where you can start making decisions that are more aligned with your capacity You're still gonna need support. You're still gonna need guidance. You're still gonna need some help getting there, but you're gonna have more clarity as to where it is that you're trying to go So if I can challenge you to do one thing this week, it is to ask yourself, " What is my actual capacity right now?" Not what am I capable of, but what is my capacity right now if I'm being honest with myself? And how would that capacity best be spent Thank you so much for joining me for another week of the You're Not Crazy podcast. Thank you so much for all of you who have taken the time to leave a five-star review. I so greatly appreciate it And until next week, take care of yourself. I'll see you then. 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