10 Essential Steps for Healing from a Narcissistic or Borderline Parent

In this episode of You're Not Crazy, I’m sharing the 10 crucial steps every adult child of a narcissistic or borderline parent needs to take as a part of their healing journey. Whether you're just starting to recognize the impact of your parent’s toxic behavior or you’re well into your healing journey, this episode will guide you through the foundational steps of breaking free from toxic cycles and building a healthier, more authentic life.

We’ll cover:

1. Understanding emotional abuse and its impact on you
2. How to spot healthy vs. toxic relationship dynamics
3. Setting boundaries that protect your peace (including when going no-contact is necessary)
4. Building a circle of people who get it and can support your growth
5. Practicing self-compassion (even when it feels impossible)
6. Getting clear on your values and what matters to you
7. Releasing the guilt of carrying other people’s emotions
8. Learning how to sit with tough feelings without spiraling
9. Diving into self-discovery and creating a life that feels like yours
10. Embracing the fact that healing is a messy, ongoing journey

This episode is packed with practical insights and encouragement to help you navigate your unique path to healing. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure where to start, this is the episode you don’t want to miss!

👉 Tune in now to start reclaiming your identity and creating the life you deserve.

Want to watch the video version of this episode? Click here to watch it on YouTube!

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

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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.

Chapters

• 0:14 Healing Tips for Adult Children
• 7:23 Understanding Healthy Relationships and Setting Boundaries
• 20:35 Navigating Personal Values and Boundaries
• 34:26 Exploring Bonus Podcast Episodes

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 this week's episode of You're Not Crazy. I'm Tori Wixel and I'm so excited because the day has come that we're giving it another go around at doing the video version of this podcast. If you've been with us since I started this podcast last July, you'll know that I did try to do a video podcast one other time and that was a little bit of a disaster. Long story short, it took me a really long time to record and edit the podcast and it just wasn't great because, let's face it, I'm a therapist, I'm not a video editor. So the really great news is this community is growing and with that growth means that I was finally able to hire someone to do the editing up this video podcast. So we're going to give this a whirl this week. We're going to see how it goes. But if you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, definitely hop on over to my YouTube channel. I'll put it in the show notes and check out this video version. Make sure to leave me a comment. Let me know what you think. Are you wanting to see more of the videos? I'd just love to know your thoughts. So, with that said, let's hop into the episode.

Torie Wiksell: 1:56

Today, I want to talk about 10 things that are so important to do when we grow up with a parent who has borderline or narcissistic personality disorder, in order to help ourselves not only heal from that dynamic, but to help ourselves live a healthy life as an adult. It is so easy to get lost in the sea of self-help and personal development, and you might be surprised to know. When I'm talking to my clients, I often say as long as they're not in the middle of a major crisis, it is fine to take a break from therapy, it is OK, it is a good thing. I don't want to see you every week for the rest of your life. That means I'm not doing my job right. We go to therapy or we should go to therapy, in my opinion in order to work through something, in order to build skills to help us be happier or more productive in our day to day. We shouldn't be going to therapy every week for the rest of our lives to ask our therapist how to live our life right. We've got to get out there and live it ourselves.

Torie Wiksell: 3:13

And so I think that going through 10 things that are really fundamental things that we most, if not all of us who grew up with a parent with either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder really need to make sure, that we most, if not all of us who grew up with a parent with either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder really need to make sure that we touch on is as part of our healing journey. I think if we can go through a list of 10 things, then maybe it will feel slightly more doable and like you can focus your energy on doing some of these things and also say, ok, I've already like crossed some of these off my list or I'm already doing, or I'm working on some of these things. So it's not this impossible, overwhelming journey that I'm just too intimidated to start, because the reality is, no matter where you start on this list, you don't need to go in chronological order. Start somewhere. Wherever you start, it's going to have a snowballing effect in other aspects of your life and your healing journey. That's just the way that we work. We're humans and when we start somewhere. We are impacting a pattern that we have or a cycle that we have, so start somewhere. A pattern that we have or a cycle that we have. So start somewhere.

Torie Wiksell: 4:30

Don't get completely paralyzed by thinking that it's just too much to do everything on. Just do something small. Take one small step this week, do one small thing and then just keep going and allow yourself to take a break. We all have to take breaks. If your life is really chaotic and, you know, intense right now, maybe give yourself a break. Give yourself a week or a month, or even a couple of months. Maybe your thing is listening to this podcast and reflecting on the things that I'm going to talk about today. Maybe that is your thing. That is valid, that is good, that is something that you are doing. Don't let your brain convince you that it's not enough, because it is Just keep going. So I'm going to hop on over to my little list that I came up with and let's jump in.

Torie Wiksell: 5:25

So, number one something really, really important to do is to find out, to learn, to go, seek out knowledge about what emotionally abusive relationships look like. What is that cycle that happens in an emotionally abusive relationship? I know I've touched on it in previous episodes, and this is so important to understand because when you grow up with a parent with MPD or BPD, what often happens is that we gaslight ourselves. I do it too. It's so easy to minimize what we've experienced because it's our parent and we have positive memories of them too, and there's just so many complicated factors that go into that. But when you can learn what the cycle of emotional abuse actually looks like and when you can identify that yes, these things were consistently part of the relationship that you had with your parent, that can be helpful when you are starting to doubt your own reality or your perception of what it was really like and why you feel this strongly about the things that have happened between you and this parent. That is so important for healing and oftentimes having something concrete to come back to and just say, wait, no, I'm not overreacting, this is gaslighting, this is shaming, this is blaming, these are abusive things. That is really, really important. So if you're not familiar with it, you can Google the domestic violence wheel. It's not the best explanation of it, but it definitely can break down and give you really easy some very, very common dynamics that are found in abusive relationships.

Torie Wiksell: 7:23

So number two, hopping back over to my notes. Okay, this is kind of the opposite thing Learning what a healthy relationship looks like. This gets so complicated because when we grow up with a parent who has BPD or MPD, they're very black and white. They see the world as people are with them or against them. People are good or bad. This thing that you're thinking about doing is right or wrong.

Torie Wiksell: 7:53

It's so black and white and growing up in a household like that, we learn to think in black and white as well, and we have to unlearn that. As adults, we have to learn that the world is not actually black and white, like, yes, there are some situations where it's like that's not negotiable, that is black and white, but those are much more fewer. Those are much fewer and further between than the majority of life. And so what our brain does is when we start to learn about the abusive dynamics that we've experienced growing up in this family, we think, oh, I want to do the opposite, which totally makes sense, right? I don't want to be the kind of parent that I have I had, so I want to do the opposite.

Torie Wiksell: 8:47

That goes to another extreme and it's not really possible to do the opposite because it's not black and white, right? It's not like all parents with borderline and narcissistic personality disorder treat and interact with their kids exactly the same way. Yes, there are commonalities, which is why we all you know talk about these things and can noddle on and think, oh yeah, I've been there. I relate to that definitely, but it's not a mirror image situation and so doing the opposite isn't really a great frame of reference, because it doesn't to acknowledge the fact that people aren't perfect. Right? You're going to make mistakes.

Torie Wiksell: 9:37

If your idea of doing the opposite, being different from your parent, having healthy relationships is in a black and white lens, you're not going to know how to find healthy relationships. You're not going to know how to identify healthy people, because you're going to look for people who are doing the opposite of your parent and, unfortunately, narcissists are really good at showing this great version of themselves up front that seems like they're the opposite of your parent. So instead, what I want you to really focus on with this number two is to really think about identifying the difference between someone who is an imperfect person but is willing to hear constructive feedback against themselves or from a partner or a friend or a coworker, they're willing to hear and internalize that. They are willing to work on themselves, they are willing to collaborate. They don't see relationships as easy as something that you just they're not romantics about relationships. And if you're a romantic about relationships, I am so sorry but I'm going to crush your bubble because I have like the anti-romantic when it comes to relationships.

Torie Wiksell: 11:07

I think healthy relationships should be, in a lot of ways, easy, and they are hard. They are hard work, and that includes friendships, that includes romantic partners. It is not easy to maintain a long-term relationship with someone and live your life. It takes intention and effort and people are imperfect and so when we have this really romantic view of finding our soulmate or friendship should be so easy, that is another extreme. It's that other extreme right. And who we end up attracting is really people that are like narcissistic and not healthy people, because they show us the version of themselves that we want to see in someone else, that perfect version, and that person doesn't exist. For example, my husband. What if the most wonderful loving people in this world? I do not have a perfect relationship, not by any means, but I have a healthy one, and that's because we're both willing to talk with each other and hear feedback from each other, and we both work on our relationship and we're both invested in our relationship and the longevity of it and each other's happiness and each other's success. Those things are real. So, number one, really identifying what that emotional abuse cycle looks like. Number two, really identifying what healthy, real relationships look like.

Torie Wiksell: 12:45

Okay, popping back over to my list boundaries and identifying situations where you are really going to consider whether or not you need to go no contact. I'm going to say I always tell you guys, I will never tell you you have to go no contact, and that is true. This is not what I'm telling you. I'm not telling you you have to go no contact, and that is true. This is not what I'm telling you. I'm not telling you you have to go no contact. I want you to decide for yourself. If your boundaries are not respected, if your parent cannot tolerate a low contact relationship with you, at what point do you, for your own well-being, need to consider going no contact? And this can be true with any relationship in your life, right? This could be a romantic partner. This could be a friend. This could be a coworker. This could be well. Coworkers get a little bit more complicated just because you can't like not work with them. But you get what I'm saying. This is true for relationships in general.

Torie Wiksell: 13:57

We need to have an idea of what we won't tolerate in our lives and that doesn't mean that we're just going around cutting people off our lives willy-nilly. I know people can get really extreme with this and whatever, but I don't think any of us get really extreme with it. I think it's the perception of this whole it's trendy to go no contact. No, it's not. None of us think that it is. No one back with a parrot like this thinks that it's trendy or a fun thing to do. It's a nightmare and it's literally the last resort. But that's why I'm talking about what is your moment, where you go. I've tried everything else. This is something I really need to figure out if I need to do or not, and that's going to look different for everyone. But you need to know because otherwise there is no bottom to the abuse that you are tolerating. That is the only reason I want you to know. This is because you need to understand for yourself what you are willing to manage and tolerate and what is no longer worth it for you to have a relationship with this person.

Torie Wiksell: 15:19

Number four I want you to really focus on building a healthy support system for yourself who actually gets what you're going through. That could be a friend, that could be a partner, that could be a therapist. That could be, you know, if you're a part of the online community, confident Boundaries it could be people in there. It could be a family member who also is a cycle breaker and on their own journey of healing. It could be so many different people in your life.

Torie Wiksell: 15:52

But you need to connect with people who are going to hear your experiences and say to you that is so fucked up, because you're not crazy and the only way your brain is going to start realizing that is if people you care about people, you respect people, you trust people you like and you admire Listen to what you've experienced and say to you that is not normal, that is not acceptable, that is not okay and I am so sorry that you experienced that. This is such an important part of healing and I hope, on some level, this podcast can be a small part of that for you, just that validation. But when you are gaslit, when you are the scapegoat, when you are blamed and shamed, you feel crazy and you're not, and your brain needs to hear that you're not so many times for you to accept the reality that you are not crazy and so it really isn't something you can just hear like one time and your brain's like oh yeah, that totally makes sense. I must be, you know, I must not be the crazy one. This has been like a lifetime of gaslighting, blaming and shaming that you've experienced, and it's going to take some repetition and consistent feedback from people who care and are healthy people.

Torie Wiksell: 17:32

Okay, number five I want you to learn how to practice self-compassion At the most basic level. What I want you to start doing, if you're not already doing it, is when you notice that you're being very mean to yourself internally, and we all know what that looks like. So I don't need to give you an example. I want you to pause and ask yourself is this my voice saying this, or is this maybe my parent or someone else's voice that I'm hearing? That's all. I just want you to start bringing awareness to the fact that when you think these mean thoughts about yourself, maybe that's not actually your voice saying that. The more you can start to recognize it then, the more you can actually choose to tell yourself something more compassionate, right, like if you catch yourself beating yourself up, you can maybe, you know, choose to say, well, yep, this isn't something I'm proud of, right, and I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep trying and I'm human and my friends still care about me. And perfect isn't real. Whatever you want to say. That is just even a smidge more kind to yourself.

Torie Wiksell: 18:58

But the first step in changing any pattern of behavior is increasing our awareness, and so it's really starting with identifying when you're being mean to yourself and then just asking yourself is this really me who feels this way, or maybe am I repeating back something that someone else has told me or made me feel? Okay? Number seven identifying your personal value system. You might think, oh yeah, I know what my values are. Do you? Because my guess is if you haven't taken the time to intentionally sit down as an adult and define what your own value system is, my guess is you think you know, but you don't really, because you've been told consistently throughout your life who you are, what you think and what you feel, and if you don't take time to really ask yourself who you are, what you think and what you feel you're not going to really know. So one really good way to do this is Google value identification or value clarification worksheets. There are free worksheets online that are so simple. They list just common values you can fill in the blanks if yours aren't on there and you just pick 10 and try to rank them in order of importance to you. That's it.

Torie Wiksell: 20:35

First time, second time, third time, I did this exercise personally. It took me like a bajillion years. It was not easy. It sounds easy. It was not easy. I had the hardest time ranking the order of importance. It felt like so much pressure, and I just want you to know that there's no perfect way to do this. It is just about you, and if you change your mind tomorrow, that's fine. This is simply one tiny, tiny exercise to help you get clarity on your value system. You cannot do it wrong. You can change your mind tomorrow if you need to. So do not take hours and hours to do this. Just use it as one simple tool to help you get more in touch with yourself.

Torie Wiksell: 21:22

Number eight this one's tricky, but I really want you to learn how to stop taking responsibility for making sure that other people are okay. This is what your parent has trained you to do throughout your life. They have put their emotional well-being on you. They have decided that if they are upset, it is up to you to fix it. If they are frustrated, if they are embarrassed, if they are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that is your problem. You are the cause of that and it is your job to make that better. This is not realistic, it is not appropriate, it is not healthy, it is not how people and humans work and it is certainly not an appropriate parent-child dynamic.

Torie Wiksell: 22:14

What happens is that trains you to be a codependent person. It trains you to take responsibility for managing other people's emotions, and we do not want to do that. That is not a road we want to go down, a most of all because it does not work. It just breeds dysfunction. That is what it does. As adults, we all have a responsibility for managing our own emotions and taking care of ourselves and seeking support if we're struggling. That is our responsibility. It is my responsibility to do for me. It is your responsibility to do for you. Your parent does not get to push that off on you. People in your life do not get to push that off on you. People in your life. Do not get to push that off on you. Other adults are responsible for making their own choices and managing their distressing emotions. That is just how healthy people and healthy relationships work.

Torie Wiksell: 23:21

Is it going to be perfect? No, however, I want going to be perfect. No, however, I want you to be very aware of a dynamic that is really easy to get into in adult relationships if you grew up with a family dynamic like we're talking about, with a parent with borderline narcissistic personality disorder. A really common dynamic is that you see something that you don't like in the relationship and you try to address it with the other person and then, when they don't follow through with addressing it, either by reacting poorly or agreeing to do something and then just not doing it you then take the initiative to keep trying to fix it for the both of you as adults. I want you to practice communicating your concerns and your thoughts and your feelings to the other adults in your life and allowing them to decide what they want to do with that information. Their job is to hear you and make a decision for themselves.

Torie Wiksell: 24:32

It is not your job to do the work for both people in the relationship. If your partner hears you say that you're really hurt when they do something you know repeatedly or say something to you repeatedly, and if they continue that behavior, if they don't initiate work to change that, your job at that point is to decide how you want to handle the fact that this is a behavior that they exhibit on the regular. Not try to change them, but to say this is who they are. They are not working, even after I have shared my concerns and how this impacts me. They are not working on bettering themselves. They are not working on trying to come up with ways to no longer do this, because they know that that is hurtful for me. They're not doing any of that, even though they know that I have communicated to them that this is very upsetting to me. That is the reality of the situation.

Torie Wiksell: 25:40

It is now my decision. Am I just going to continue tolerating this behavior or do I need to set some boundaries in this relationship to protect myself, given that they're going to continue to act like this? Or is this such a deal breaker for me that I'm really going to consider taking a step away from this relationship? There's no right or wrong, but it turns the focus back to me. Right Turns the focus back to. I can only control what is within my control. I have communicated what I need to, I have done my part and now I need to accept the reality of what is occurring here.

Torie Wiksell: 26:32

Okay, which brings us to number nine, and this is a really good one. To follow up with that. I want you to learn how to tolerate distressing emotions, because it's really uncomfortable when you are so used to trying to fix the relationship for everyone. That's in the relationship. When you are the peacemaker of your family, when you are the parentified adult, the parentified child, when you are the person who is constantly trying to put everything back together, it is very uncomfortable to see dysfunction, to see things crumbling and not step in to try to fix it. It is so icky feeling, especially when we first start taking that step back. It is really scary, right? It's really scary to give people the autonomy to make their own decisions when that means they might not choose you, they might not choose this relationship. For you to verbalize what your boundaries are, for you to communicate what you need from someone is really vulnerable. It's really scary and if they do not respect those decisions, it doesn't feel good. It's really disappointing and this is part of life. This really is. This is part of life. Life is really of life. This really is. This is part of life.

Torie Wiksell: 28:03

Life is really hard sometimes and, growing up in this family dynamic, we learn as children that when we are upset, stressed, afraid, anxious, it is because something bad is happening aka our parent is mad at us or about to be mad at us or you know whatever, and therefore we need to do something fast to prevent catastrophe. When our challenging emotions kick in, our body automatically wants to take action, to do something to make them stop. But that's not healthy. Sometimes we just need to be uncomfortable for a little bit. We just need to feel sad that someone's let us down, that we thought that they cared about us enough to work on the relationship, or we wanted something to work that isn't, or we feel embarrassed that we don't know something that we feel like we could have known or prepared for. There are so many uncomfortable feelings that are just normal and healthy and we have to practice experiencing those without doing anything, without taking action, without problem solving, without fixing things. We need to learn how to just say like yeah, that is really disappointing. I might need to just like cry for a little bit. Trust me, I don't love this either. It's hard. This one is so hard and you cannot be a healthy adult if you do not work on this. Because we're human, we're all going to experience disappointments and frustrations and grief and sadness, and we're also going to experience really wonderful, amazing emotions. But we need to know how to deal with and tolerate and help ourselves through the more distressing emotions without doing something that, ultimately, is destructive and dysfunctional, like stepping in to do the work for someone else that they're not willing to do.

Torie Wiksell: 30:26

Which brings us to number 10, our final one for today. That is, getting to know yourself, learning what you actually like. This is kind of like a part B to your value system Really getting to know yourself and understanding who you are, what your personality is, what you believe in, what you like, what you don't like, what your strengths are, what you find interesting or exciting or replenishing. Who are you, not who you've been told that you are, but who are you actually. What are things that you want for yourself, what are things that make you feel happy and content and satisfied and accomplished? Really trying to get to know yourself, and the more that you can be curious with this. The more that you can try new things and try to pay attention to what makes you feel good and proud and happy, and all of those lovely emotions that are so much easier to experience the more that you can start to get into touch with who you are as a person, the more you're going to be able to learn how to trust yourself, because you're going to say, yeah, this is a hard decision to make, but it's one that's really important to me. It's one that's really aligned with my own personal value system. It's something that I care about and therefore it's valuable and it's important and it's worth setting a boundary or creating time for, or making sure I have the financial resources or energy to incorporate this into my life.

Torie Wiksell: 32:13

This one's hard, but, like I said, it's a journey. This whole thing is a journey and please, by all means, do not take this list. Please, the perfectionists out there, do not take this list and then decide that, starting today, you're going to do all 10 of these like immediately and all the time. I do not want that for you. I want you to keep living your life while you're healing. I don't want you to put everything in your life on hold in order to get to this finish line of healing, because it doesn't exist. Like we're all works in progress. We all are on this journey. Hopefully that's healthy, right? Like we never get to a place where we're just healed or we're just done with our own healing journey. That's not realistic for a human. What I would love for you to do is just, you know, be mindful of these things, see if you're already doing any of them and if any of them are surprising to you, just be curious with yourself. Why do you think those were surprising? Are these areas where it would be helpful to reach out and seek more support, support or knowledge or information about? So, with that said, we will wrap up this episode for today.

Torie Wiksell: 33:42

Thank you so much for joining me, as always. Remember, you can download my free guide at confidentboundariescom slash guide five tips for dealing with those really overwhelming moments with a BPD or MPD parent. And, if you haven't already, make sure to check out the Confident Boundaries online community at confidentboundariescom slash guide. Everything that you need in there to heal that I talked about today for the most part, everything is in there. There's community, there's education about setting boundaries, there are lists about finding a therapist for you. There are monthly trainings that I do live in. There. You can ask me questions.

Torie Wiksell: 34:26

There are bonus episodes of the podcast. You want it, you need it, you name it. It's probably in there. So confidentboundariescom slash join, check out the Confident Boundaries community and I'll see you guys next week. Bye, 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.