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 of the You're Not Crazy podcast. Thank you so much for bearing with me last week as I took a week off of the podcast and social media. I have been quite sick and it's really been an opportunity for me to practice what I was talking about a couple of weeks ago on this podcast, which is respecting my actual capacity instead of trying to push through and do what I am capable of If you missed that episode, I really encourage you to go back and listen to it because so many of us cycle breakers, myself included, struggle with the fact that we can do so many things. We are so capable because we had to be. As kids, we had to take on adult roles and tasks and far more than we should have as children. And so we learned how capable we are. But that comes at a major expense to our overall wellbeing and sanity and physical and mental and emotional health. And so what is far more important than what you are capable of and what I am capable of is what our actual capacity is, which changes based on so many things. There are so many variables that affect it. But for me, obviously, getting sick, getting quite sick over these past couple of weeks definitely affected my capacity. And so thank you very much for allowing me to step back from this, to step back and disappear from social media for a while and just focus on taking care of myself and attending to the things that were within my capacity to attend to. I am still quite nasally. I am hoping to be back to 100% next week. Not quite there yet. If you're a part of the private feed, I will have your first of two episodes for the month of July coming to you later this week. Thank you very much for bearing with me as I work to get that episode out to you. I am also getting the guide out this week. So I'll talk more about it next week on the podcast. I'll share a bit more about it, but if you're a part of my email list or if you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, I'll be posting it over there as well when it's ready to go. As I'm sure you could imagine, taking a week and a half off getting back into the swing of things is a little more chaotic than I would like. As someone who grew up in quite emotional chaos, stability and calmness and organization are far more within my comfort zone than trying to juggle and manage stepping away from things when I wasn't intending to and then coming back into them. But that's life. That is part of learning how to be a more flexible person, and this is the journey that we are all on, myself included. So anyways, I just wanted to say thanks so much for bearing with me. We're back. This is our two-year anniversary of the You're Not Crazy podcast. I actually think next week will be technically the anniversary, if I can remember correctly. I wanna say we started the podcast on or around July 28th of 2024 I don't remember exactly the date, but I do know it was in the later half of July. And it's wild to think that this podcast has not only been going strong for the last two years, but has grown into a community of cycle breakers, thousands of cycle breakers who tune in to listen every week. And that is not something I anticipated happening when I started the podcast. It still quite blows my mind when I look and see those download numbers. It's mind-boggling to me. I can't quite comprehend it. I'm just so glad that this podcast has become a resource for you and something that you can add to your toolkit of reminding yourself that you are in fact not crazy, that it is crazy-making to grow up in a family where you have a parent with unmanaged borderline personality disorder or a parent with a bunch of narcissistic traits. These types of families are complicated, they're confusing, they're chaotic, and you are not doomed to a life of chaos for forever either. So thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing the podcast with others, and I look forward to what the next year has in store for us. For today's episode of the podcast, I wanted to talk a bit more about what I just mentioned, the chaos of growing up in this type of family Something that's a huge focus of mine when I'm working with people, when I'm creating content, whether it's this podcast or social media or the guide that I'm working on, or even the Cycle Breakers Vault, is that I want the content that I'm creating, the education and advice and information that I'm putting out there To help move you towards Having more clarity around what's happening in your family dynamic. These families are so chaotic and confusing for so many reasons. Gaslighting is a huge one when your reality is denied, when what you know to be true and have happened Is just being flat out denied by the other people in your family The emotional chaos of walking on eggshells, not knowing what exactly is going to be the next point of chaos or emotional volatility, but knowing that it's going to happen and it's going to happen at some point. All of these things are confusing and a shock to our nervous system and draining and so complicated And I think that there are two things that are really helpful when you're working on breaking the cycle, and one is clarity. What is actually happening here? Why do you feel crazy? What are things that contribute to that? Why don't your boundaries work? What does work? What's really happening versus what does it feel like is happening? Having clarity is so important because otherwise it feels like you're playing this game where the rules are constantly changing, and you think you figure out what the rules are, and then they change again. And that is completely exhausting and draining and defeating, and it's where you, of course, would get stuck because you never get the updated rules. Clarity is so important, and when you have clarity, you can start to make more intentional decisions too that actually can change the way that you move about life, that you interact with your family differently. But clarity can also allow you to make decisions that help you navigate your own personal life differently as well. And when you're clear about the choices that you're making and why you're making those choices, not just because Torie said so. Please don't ever make choices because of that. That's the last thing that I want anyone who encounters me to ever do. I want you to make choices because those are the choices that you want to make. When you make choices because you have clarity around what it is that you want, what it is that you feel, what it is that you need, what aligns with your value system, that's when you start building confidence in yourself and confidence in your decision-making. That's how you get to the point that you start feeling more confident because you're not just throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks. You're not just taking all of this overwhelming information that you've pieced together through books and social media and everything and hoping that something works. You're actually applying information that makes sense to you. It clicks in your brain, and you're applying it in a way that you can replicate. You're applying it in a way that you understand, You're making intentional decisions and you know why you're making those decisions. That is how you build confidence, and that is how you start to move forward in a direction where the self-gaslighting, that self-doubt that creeps in starts to have less of an impact on you, and you start to be able to tolerate it more That's why clarity and confidence are so important in your cycle-breaking journey, and that's why those are two of the main, if not the primary, if not the core things that I try to focus on when I'm working with people is how can I help give them more clarity, and how can that clarity help them build their confidence? What you don't wanna do when you're breaking the cycle Is rely entirely on what someone else is telling you to do, whether that's like a Mel Robbins person. Again, don't do that with me. Hopefully, that is not the takeaway that you get from listening to this podcast. Whether that is even your therapist, right? You don't want to rely on, "I'm doing this because so and so said this is a good idea," or, "They think this is the right thing for me to do." That's not what you wanna do. That's the family dynamic that we grew up in. The family thinks this is right, so therefore, that makes it right, even if it's not right for you. Your parent thinks this is right, or this is what's going to keep your parent regulated and prevent them from exploding, therefore, that's the right decision for me. When you're working on healing, when you're working on breaking the cycle, we don't wanna replicate that dependence on what's right for me is what other people think is right, or what's right for me is this predetermined thing, right?'Cause that gets back into this black and white thinking of there's always a right way and there's always a wrong way, and the reality is far more nuanced. What's right for you is right for you because of so many things. It's right for you because of your capacity. It's right for you because of the things that you value. It's right for you because of the limited resources that you have and where you want to exert those resources. There are so many factors that go into that So yes, it is nuanced, it is complicated, and it is not a one-size-fits-all thing for everyone. Like I've said a million times, if it was, I would tell you, " Just do this. Just go no contact with your parent. Never go no contact with your parent." That's not the reality. It's not that simple. That is such an oversimplified way of looking at this very complicated family dynamic. And even though it's nuanced and even though it's layered and complicated, there are still ways that you can take a step back and reflect and look at this dynamic to allow you to get to the place where you start to have that clarity for yourself There are skills that you can build that will start giving you that confidence for yourself. Those things are the things that I want you to take away from listening to me, I want you to take away from seeing me talk on social media. Those are the things I want you to take away from The Cycle Breaker's Vault, from the guide the skills and education that allow you to get that clarity and to build that confidence in your own life, in your own healing journey, not to do what I think is right for you. Because frankly, the only thing I think is right for you is what you think is right for you. And my caveat, my asterisk on that is what you think is right for you is not the same as what you think is going to make you feel less guilty. Those are two different things. What you think is gonna make you feel less guilty is what other people think is right for you. What you think is right for you is what I care about. Because that's how you get to a life where you have more peace and more emotional freedom and capacity to actually be present for the things that bring you joy, and make you feel happy and good, and give you a sense of purpose, and provide value into your life. So think that's enough rambling for today, especially while I'm recovering from this respiratory illness that has taken me down. So again, thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you so much to the longtime listeners who have been here from day one. Thank you to everyone who's joined along the way. If this is your first week listening to the podcast, I am so excited to have you here. I cannot wait to see what this next year of You're Not Crazy has in store for us. And until next week, take care, you guys. I'll talk to you soon. 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