You Need to Be the Villain in Your Toxic Parent's Story in Order to Take Back Control of Your Life and Heal

Being the adult child of a parent with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder often means confronting the painful reality of being cast as the "villain" in their story. That s*cks, but learning to sit with this discomfort can help you take back control over your own life and finally prioritize your needs over their expectations.

In this episode, we’ll unpack the dynamics that keep you stuck in this role and offer actionable insights to help you step into your villain role:

• How conditional love shapes self-worth
• The exhausting cycle of chasing validation and approval
• Recognizing the impact of gaslighting in parent-child relationships
• Breaking free from black-and-white thinking patterns
• Understanding the emotional cost of manipulation
• Why embracing the “villain” role can be freeing
• Building a support system outside of toxic family dynamics
• Reclaiming your identity with self-acceptance and healing
• Letting go of the need to rewrite their version of your story

This episode will give you tools to move forward with clarity and confidence. I'm rooting for you!

Register for my FREE mini-course, Why Your Boundaries Aren't Working With Your Toxic Parent:
confidentboundaries.com/course

Learn more about the Confident Boundaries Membership: confidentboundaries.com/membership

Want more episodes of You're Not Crazy? Sign up for Bonus Episodes:
confidentboundaries.com/bonusepisodes

Follow me on Instagram:
instagram.com/torieatconfidentboundaries

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.

Chapters

• 0:14 Navigating Relationships With Borderline Personality Parents
• 10:41 Embracing the Villain Role

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. Now let's jump in, hi guys. Welcome back to the podcast this week. Today, we're going to talk about something that is really hard and really important. I want you to really embrace this idea that, in order to live a healthy life as an adult when you've grown up with a parent with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, you have to at least tolerate the concept that you're going to be the villain in your parent's story. Maybe not all the time, but you definitely are going to have to step into that role and you're just going to have to let that be. This is so hard because, for those of us that grew up with a parent like this, all we wanted was for our parent to love us, right. All we wanted was to make them happy, to make them see who we really were and that we were lovable, and to want them to want to love us. And the reality is our parents should just love us. That love from a parent to a child is really like the only unconditional love relationship that is actually a healthy one to have. And when you grow up with a parent who has borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, they're not demonstrating unconditional love. They are not consistent in demonstrating their love for you. It is very conditional and it is very inconsistent. And what that does is it fuels us to show them that we're lovable, right? They kind of condition us to want to appease them, to want to behave in a way that they want us to behave, and that is so dysfunctional for so many reasons. But what ends up happening is we get really freaked out and really upset and really overwhelmed with this idea that they could misperceive who we actually are. At our core right, we have these values. We all have our own personalities because we're human. And when you grow up with a parent who has BPD or MPD, what they do is they try to condition you to behave in a way that they want you to behave. And the way that feels growing up is that if they could only understand me more, then they wouldn't be so upset with me, right? If they could only understand why I'm doing this or what I meant or what I need from them, then they wouldn't perceive me to be this bad person and that continues through adulthood.

Torie Wiksell: 3:33

When you're an adult dealing with a parent like this, you probably feel misunderstood a lot of the time. You probably feel like your parent isn't understanding what you're trying to say or who you are. And if you could just explain it better, if you could just approach it differently, if you could just do something differently, then they could see who you really are and what you really mean and then maybe then they could show up for you in the way that you need them to and you want them to. That is so understandable, because that's what's supposed to happen. They're supposed to show up for you. They're supposed to really seek out, trying to understand who you are and what you want and what you believe in and why you think and approach things the way you do. That's supposed to happen.

Torie Wiksell: 4:30

But with a parent like this, that's not what's actually going on. What's going on is it's not about them not understanding you. I think that's actually kind of true, but that's not the whole story. The whole story is they don't really care. They don't really care who you are, because for them it's not about that. They're so focused on their own thoughts or opinions or desires, what they view to be right or wrong or what they feel like they need in the moment. They're so consumed by their own internal world that there is no place to even contemplate the value in understanding who you are. It just doesn't fit how they view the world.

Torie Wiksell: 5:27

When your parent gaslights you, when they shame you, when they say things like you're too sensitive, you don't understand. You're always like this, you're so much drama, you're the problem. When your parent says things like oh, I'm just a horrible mom or I'm the worst father ever, that's not because they misunderstand what you're saying. That's their attempt to get you to do what they want you to do. Whether that's conscious or not, it doesn't really matter. That's what's going on there. They are trying to get their needs met in the way that they know how. That's how they interact with people. That's how they interact with you.

Torie Wiksell: 6:12

It's not about the surface level miscommunication. It's about them not having the ability to ask for what they need in an appropriate way. It's about them not having the emotional intelligence to realize that you don't owe them anything. That of the two of you, they're the ones that are responsible most of all in this relationship, and so why? I want you to really start working towards getting to a place where you can tolerate being the victim in your parent's story is because you have no control over how your parent views you.

Torie Wiksell: 7:02

And if you take a step back and you really look at the totality of your relationship with them, my guess is you're going to see this pattern of the times that you feel loved and supported by your parent are the times that you are appeasing them, that you are complying with what they want, and that is fine when your value system and your goals and your emotional, financial, physical resources align with what they want. But when they don't, that's a big problem. And so having this concept of being the villain in their story is really you saying I choose myself over the fact that my parent wants me to do something else. I choose myself because going down that road of constantly trying not to be the villain in their story not to be misunderstood that is a surefire way to be stressed out feeling crazy, exhausted, overwhelmed, feeling like you're constantly walking on eggshells and trying to prevent something bad from happening in your life, and you're going to feel like that indefinitely if you keep going down that road, because what you're trying to do is control something that is out of your control. You're trying to step in and say, if I just make all of these sacrifices, if I sacrifice myself and my financial resources and my money and my time and my energy and my financial resources and my money and my time and my energy, then maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.

Torie Wiksell: 9:00

And that's not how the world works, but that is how it feels like it works when you grow up with a parent who has borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. They have such a black and white way of looking at the world. You're either with them or you're against them. You're either right or you're wrong. You're either a good person or a bad person, and that's just not the way the world works. The world is very gray. It is very messy and layered, and you are a very messy and layered person, as am I. That's the way the world really works. But when someone has such an extreme black and white view of looking at relationships and life in general, if you're not aligned with them on what they want, then you automatically get put in the bad villain category. Those are the only options. Right, you're either good or you're bad. You're right or you're wrong.

Torie Wiksell: 10:06

Hi guys, tori here, hopping in for just a second to remind you about my free guide 5 Quick Tips for Managing Intense Moments with a BPD or MPD Parent. I know you're tired of feeling overwhelmed, misunderstood and drained by your parent, and I wrote this guide to help you feel more in control in those moments. It's a quick and simple guide that can help you to protect your peace. Download it for free right now at confidentboundariescom guide. Now let's get back to the episode.

Torie Wiksell: 10:41

And so could you continue to go down this road for the rest of your life of trying not to be the villain? Yeah, I'm going to promise you that's going to be a really exhausting road and there is no way that anyone in the world can convince me. I mean, I'm open to it if you have an argument, but I just don't foresee this being a logical argument. I just can't be convinced that there is a healthy road to go down where your approach to handling someone who is abusive and manipulative and shaming and blaming and threatening to you. There's just no way that that road isn't going to be super exhausting and depressing. Frankly, stressful, overwhelming and depressing, and that's the thing when we want to heal from the dysfunction of growing up in a family like we have to do things differently and that is so hard. I mean, I know I have talked a lot about my own personal journey, but as a people pleaser, perfectionist, high anxiety, human being healing was not easy. It's not easy. It's gotten easier, but it's not easy.

Torie Wiksell: 12:22

And that's because, growing up in a family like this, not only was my mom's view of the world so black and white, our entire family viewed the world through a black and white lens. When you have a family like this that enables and tolerates this dysfunctional dynamic, it's a family problem, it's not just a one parent problem. And so I grew up looking at the world through a black and white lens. I grew up looking at the world as if I just never do anything wrong, ever. Then things will be great and that will be fine, and that's not really feasible. So it should come as no surprise that when I didn't always make the best choice for myself, or I did things that I couldn't personally explain or I felt embarrassed by or ashamed by, I didn't have the coping skills to handle that, because I didn't know how to look at things.

Torie Wiksell: 13:32

Through this gray lens, I saw myself as good or bad. I saw myself as right or wrong. I saw the world through the lens with which I had been shown the world growing up, and so by asking you and encouraging you to take on this villain role I know that it probably sounds like I'm an insane person, that I am asking you to do something that is unthinkable, and I get it because it has felt so many times through my own healing journey that it's impossible to do that. It's impossible for me to be vulnerable with my therapist about something that I feel so much shame about. It is impossible for me to be a good person and make bad choices at times. These things can't coexist when you're up in a family like this. They just don't, they can't and they don't.

Torie Wiksell: 14:41

And so really healing from this type of family dynamic is so complicated and layered because it really pushes us to consider the fact that the world might look differently than we thought it did for so much of our life, and the things that we perceive to be right or wrong or good or bad are so much more complicated and layered than that, and you can't control the way other people view you. You can't control that at all, and that's really scary because I imagine that growing up. It felt like you could. It felt like if you did the right thing, if you made the right choice, if you did what your parent wanted and expected of you, then you could control whether or not they were upset with you, whether or not they loved you. But that was just an illusion. Those aren't things that are actually within your control, nor are they really about love. That's not love. Those are behaviors that may feel like love when you're deprived of love, but that's a whole different black hole that will have to go down a different day.

Torie Wiksell: 16:03

The reality is, when you're dealing with someone who is so black and white and who only loves you when you comply with the things that they want you to, you are going to be the villain in their story. If you start making choices for yourself that they don't agree with, that are not aligned with their own wants and desires, you are going to be the villain and they might talk shit about you with other family members. Like I said, these are family issues. It's not just the one parent, it's the entire family dynamic that really is impacted when you have a parent like this growing up, approach your life, how you approach your relationships and if someone is going to be convinced that you are a villain. Let them that's their journey, that's not yours Find people in your world, in your life, that don't view you as a villain, that see you for who you are and care about you and can appreciate that the world is not black and white and it's gray and you can be a good person and you can make bad choices and you can change your mind and you could want something for yourself at one time and change your mind on that.

Torie Wiksell: 17:38

Find people in your life who know you are not the villain and allow there to be a reality that exists where you are very much the villain in other people's stories. Do that for yourself and your own sanity. So, wrapping things up, what I would love for you to take away from this episode today is that being a villain in your parents' story is not about you being a bad person. It is about you saying and acknowledging and embracing the fact that in order for you to be truly happy and healthy, emotionally and otherwise, you need to allow people to have their own thoughts and opinions and views and you need to live a life that is aligned with yours and you need to make choices that are aligned with your personal value system and what you care about and what you believe in, and allow people to go through life. Allow other adults to make their own decisions for themselves, and that includes their view of you, because in order for your parent to consider the fact that you could have different thoughts and opinions and desires than them and you not be a bad person you not being intentionally trying to anger them or frustrate them or embarrass them or insult them In order for them to hold space for this, they would have to have the ability to see things other than through a black and white lens, and they don't, and that's their journey to figure out. It's not yours. So, with that said, embrace the villain role in your life and find people who will never, ever ever, look at you as a villain Until next week.

Torie Wiksell: 19:43

I'll see you guys then. 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.