5 Toxic Traits I Developed Growing Up in an Emotionally Chaotic Home

In this episode of You’re Not Crazy, we’re diving into five toxic traits that I developed from growing up in an emotionally chaotic home—and more importantly, how I'm working on them. If you’ve ever struggled with people-pleasing, overexplaining, or feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotions, this episode is for you.

Here’s what we’ll cover:
✨ Why recognizing and naming your emotions is a game-changer
✨ How to stop taking on responsibilities that aren’t yours and set boundaries instead
✨ Transforming negative self-talk into self-compassion
✨ Learning to trust your own voice instead of seeking constant external validation
✨ Breaking the habit of overexplaining and embracing confident communication

This episode is packed with practical tips and personal insights. Tune in now and take the next step toward living life on your terms. 

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Torie Wiksell is a therapist and coach who specializes in working with the adult children of parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. Torie brings a unique perspective having spent years working with clients with personality disorders and growing up with a mother she suspects had NPD with BPD traits. Torie provides online therapy to clients located in WA, OR, and CA, and online coaching internationally.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy. If you are in mental health crisis, please contact the Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.

You're Not Crazy is a podcast owned and produced by Torie Wiksell and Confident Boundaries, LLC.

Transcript

Torie Wiksell: 0:14

Welcome to. You're Not Crazy a podcast for the adult children of parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. I'm your host, Tori Wixel, a therapist and coach with over a decade of experience in the mental health field.

Torie Wiksell: 0:30

Now let's jump in. Hi guys, welcome back to the podcast this week. So I wanted to say another round of welcomes to everyone who joined the Confident Boundaries online community this week. I'm going to be doing a workshop in there this Thursday. It is all about how to stay true to yourself while prioritizing your safety when you're dealing with a parent with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. So if that's something that interests you, definitely hop on over to confidentboundariescom slash join and sign up for the community. It'll be there live on Thursday or I'll be in there doing the workshop live on Thursday and it will be a recording that's available to anyone who's a Confident Boundaries member. If the time that I'm recording does not work for you, definitely check that out.

Torie Wiksell: 1:22

One thing that I also wanted to just mention at the top of the episode today is my free guide on dealing with the intense moments that always come up when you have a parent with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. If you've recently signed up for my email list, then you probably got this as part of the signing up process, but if you haven't, definitely hop on over to confidentboundariescom slash guide and sign up with your email to get a copy of my free guide. It's called five quick tips for managing intense moments with a BPD or MPD parent, and it walks you through action steps that you can take right now without waiting for any more time or energy to be had, things that you can do to help yourself when your parent freaks out. So definitely go check that out, grab a copy if you haven't already, and let's jump into the episode. Okay, today I thought it would be quote unquote fun sarcasm to talk about five toxic traits that I developed growing up in an emotionally chaotic home. The reason why I want to talk about this today is because A I want to normalize how common these things are when you grow up in an emotionally chaotic home to develop. I wanted to also give hope to anyone who's struggling with these things. You're not a hopeless case. Okay, I am not a hopeless case, and neither are you, so let's talk about them.

Torie Wiksell: 2:58

Number one not knowing how to identify my own emotions. This one was quite jarring. The first time I actually recognized that this was a problem for me, I was a young adult. I was getting therapy for something that I had recently experienced, and I was not able to name the emotions I was feeling. The only thing that I could say was that I was feeling pretty bad, and I had felt pretty bad for a long time, but, as it turns out, pretty bad is actually not a feeling, it's actually not an emotion, and it is really, really hard when you grow up in an environment where, a your parents don't really have a great grasp on their own emotions and, b any challenging emotions that you experience are immediately criticized or condemned or shamed or shot down or denied. It does not foster an environment for really getting in touch with your own emotions and becoming comfortable with them and learning what they feel like and how you carry them in your body, and so this was one that was really hard for me as an adult.

Torie Wiksell: 4:12

It really took me some time to learn how to recognize my own emotions. It's not something that I'm perfect at, but I don't think many of us are, and one thing that was really really helpful for me was using an emotion chart. It's like a chart that has a bunch of emoji pictures of different faces experiencing different emotions. To just reference that and ask myself how am I feeling right now? What are some of these that resonate with me? And just repetition and practicing that over and over and over and, over and over again, and I know it sounds silly, but that is really what made the biggest difference for me getting in touch with my own emotions. It's how I teach therapy clients how to get in touch with their own emotions when they're struggling with emotion identification emotions when they're struggling with emotion identification. It's how I teach my daughter how to identify her own emotions just with you know baby slash, toddler emotion books. But if you are also struggling with really understanding and recognizing the different feelings that you're having, just know you're not alone. I've been there and it's a hard skill to learn, but the good news is it's not really complicated. It just takes a lot of practice. So there's also this how we Feel app, which is a free app, and it does a great job about prompting you to identify how you're feeling throughout the day. So that's totally worth checking out too, if you haven't.

Torie Wiksell: 5:42

Okay, number two the second toxic trait I developed. Growing up in an emotionally chaotic home is taking on way more than I can possibly handle. I had a lot of responsibilities growing up. I was definitely what is considered a parentified child and because of that, I feel an immense amount of responsibility for being a part of identifying what needs to be done, solving problems and keeping things moving. I have always had way more than I can handle on my plate since the time I was a kid, and it is something that is really hard for me as an adult to manage. I've come so far where this is concerned and it is something that is a struggle for me. I genuinely want to help, I genuinely want to be a part of the solution, and sometimes I'm so quick to respond because it is really hard for me to remember to take that breath and take that pause before responding. It still is. That wasn't something that I had the ability to do growing up. Right, I didn't have the ability to say, oh, do I really have the capacity to make sure my sister and I are safe and fed and cared for and I know where she's going and all of these things? No, that was not the reality back then. But now I do have the ability to take a breath and say okay, although I do genuinely want to take this on, is this within my capacity? Like I said, I am not perfect. I am a work in progress, as we all are. This is one that I have made immense progress with and it's one that I still struggle with at times.

Torie Wiksell: 7:37

Number three reinforcing a mean inner dialogue. So my guess is this is one you struggle with too when you have a parent who freely would chew you down and tell you what a piece of shit human being you are, it's going to be nearly impossible to have just positive self-esteem and wonderful self-compassion without working vigorously on that for your life. This does not mean that you cannot get to a place where you are kind to yourself. This does not mean that you cannot get to a place where you have good self-esteem and high self-confidence and self-worth. What it means is that that voice is probably going to chime in. Even if you get to a place where you're feeling pretty good about yourself, even if you get to a place where you can be really compassionate with yourself, that voice is still going to show up occasionally. What happens when we start to heal is that voice sounds more annoying than true and there's more distance between you and the voice right when that critical voice comes up. Now I know that's not my voice, that's someone else's voice. That's not me, that's not what I actually think, that's someone else's voice and the fact that I can put distance between myself and that negativity makes such a profound impact on how much of that voice I actually internalize and how that makes me feel when it does come up.

Torie Wiksell: 9:20

Okay, number four we're trekking along today, placing more value in other people's perspectives than my own. Yep, this one definitely has been a struggle. I would say that, out of this entire list, I am pretty good now on identifying my emotions. I am pretty good on not reinforcing a mean inner dialogue. I am pretty good on no longer placing more value in other people's perspectives than my own. The two that I continue to really, really work on are what we're about to get to in number five and taking on way more than I can handle.

Torie Wiksell: 10:07

This used to be the placing more value in other people's perspectives than my own used to be such a significant issue for me. For me, this is one of those driving forces that led me to find myself in a series of really toxic, really unhealthy relationships friendships, romantic relationships, my relationship with my mom, just this pattern, right when? What is the common denominator here? Me? That's because I really put more value in what other people thought of me than in what I thought of myself, and I put way more value in what other people wanted and expected of me and how they felt entitled to treat me than I put in how I felt I should be treated or what I wanted or what I valued. That was something that I really, really struggled with for a long time.

Torie Wiksell: 11:12

The biggest reason that I struggled with this is because, growing up, I was told that any opinion, any perspective that I had that wasn't appreciated by my mom was wrong. And not only was it wrong, but I only had that perspective to frustrate or irritate her. My opinions were not valued. My thoughts were not valued. I was not encouraged to be an independent thinker. I was not encouraged to be a critical thinker. I was encouraged to have the exact same thoughts, feelings, opinions and desires that my mom had for me, and that is not an upbringing that fosters a sense of independence and self-confidence. That is an upbringing that fosters valuing other people's opinions over your own. All right, our final toxic trait that I developed growing up in an emotionally chaotic home number five, like number two, it is one that I am very much still working on. That I am very much still working on probably much more than number two Overexplaining myself.

Torie Wiksell: 12:28

I have felt so misunderstood throughout the course of my life. Overexplaining myself is an anxiety thing that I do because I am so concerned about coming off the wrong way, being interpreted in a way that I don't intend to be. I am so consumed at times with this idea that I don't have the ability to clearly articulate my thoughts or express myself in a way that makes sense to other people. You might be laughing at yourself because you've been listening to this podcast, where that is all I do, right, and you might be laughing to yourself because I'm a therapist and I have been for nearly 12 years now.

Torie Wiksell: 13:20

These don't seem to align right, and yet this has been something that has been really, really challenging for me, because my brain has misinterpreted the reactions that I got from my mom growing up, the reactions I've gotten throughout other really unhealthy and unproductive relationships in my life. My brain has misinterpreted that as them not understanding me, and that isn't the reality there. It's not that they didn't understand me, it's that they didn't care. That feels icky, so I cannot totally understand why my brain would want it to be something less icky. Right, if I could only explain myself? Well, if I could only explain myself better, then they wouldn't be mad at me, then they would just love me, then they would just see that I mean well and that I'm a good person. But that's not the way that it works. That's the recipe for codependence, and we can talk all about codependency in a future episode, because boy do I have stories for you.

Torie Wiksell: 14:29

Overexplaining myself is a really tough one.

Torie Wiksell: 14:32

It's one that I work really hard to manage and it's one that I am consistently putting myself out of my comfort zone with in my chosen career of being a therapist and a coach. When I speak on social media, when I speak on this podcast, when I write blogs and emails, it is one that I am challenging myself with and exposing myself to negative feedback, to the possibility of being misinterpreted, misunderstood, all the time. What I will say is this I now value my opinion and my perspective most of all. Additionally, I also really value the perspective and opinions of people that I'm really close to and that I care about and who care about me and who are not critical of me, but who are just loving and supportive and encouraging of me, and I now have faith that the people who really know me, that the people who really love me, will give me the benefit of the doubt and they know that I'm human like everyone and my heart is in a good place, and they know my value system system, and they know who I am, and so, over time, working on this, it has gotten so much better and I am so much less fearful of being misinterpreted, and it's one that I continue to work on.

Torie Wiksell: 15:56

So those are my five toxic traits that I developed growing up in an emotionally chaotic home. Let me know what you think. Definitely, send me a DM, send me an email, shout out in the community, let me know what your thoughts are, and I'd love to know what are some of the toxic traits that you've developed growing up in your own emotionally chaotic home. Until next time, see you guys, then, bye.

Torie Wiksell: 16:23

Thanks so much for joining me for another week of You're Not Crazy. If you like the podcast, please make sure to rate us five stars and leave a review. It helps so much. And make sure to check the show notes for discounts and updates of what's going on in my world. Okay, I'll see you next week.