Adulting is Hard: Breaking the Cycle & Filling in the Gaps

Growing up with a parent who has borderline personality disorder (BPD) or narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) can have lasting emotional and practical impacts—some of which often go overlooked.

In this episode, we dive into the challenges adult children of BPD/NPD parents face when it comes to "adulting" and why self-compassion is key.

Listen to hear my thoughts about:

✔️ How being raised by a BPD/NPD parent can impact how equipped you are to navigate the adult world
✔️ Why many adult children struggle with adulting tasks—and how to forgive yourself
✔️ Dealing with feelings of shame and embarrassment about feeling behind some of your friends and peers
✔️ Practical strategies for building confidence and filling in the gaps
✔️ PLUS I talk a bit about the role of gaslighting and where most people I work with get stuck

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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

• 0:00 Introduction to the Parent
• 10:00 Understanding Gaslighting and Its Impact
• 20:00 Navigating Adulting Without Guidance

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. Welcome back to the podcast this week. I am so excited to talk to you today. Tons of really fun things happening behind the scenes. Stay tuned, I'm going to be announcing something really, really exciting coming up soon. I can't quite announce it today, but make sure to check out and follow my Instagram account at Tori at Confident Boundaries now. I'll definitely be posting it there when I'm able to, hopefully in the next couple of days. Tbd stay tuned.

Torie Wiksell: 1:04

Also, last week, in the confident boundaries online community, we did our February workshop. That was all about gaslighting what is gaslighting, how do you stop it and what do you do to rebuild your confidence and respond to it when it's happening? It was one of my favorite things that I've talked about in quite a while, because I think it's so helpful. I talked about where so many of my therapy and coaching clients get stuck when it comes to gaslighting. I cannot tell you how many times people have really felt overwhelmed by the fact that they don't know if the person who is gaslighting them is intentionally doing it, and the reality is that doesn't matter, it's irrelevant, it really doesn't, and I know that it feels important. It feels really important, right? If they are intentionally doing it, like, obviously that's horrible and you don't want to have any sort of a relationship with someone who's intentionally trying to make you feel crazy. But the reality is, even if someone's not intentionally trying to make you feel crazy, even if someone's not intentionally trying to make you feel crazy, but the way that they interact with you does make you feel crazy more often than not. That's not good. We don't want you interacting in a way that makes you feel crazy. There are so many aspects of gaslighting that are far more beneficial to look at when you're trying to figure out what's going on, why you feel this way, if it's your fault, if it's not, if you're really being gaslit. If you're interested, hop on over to confidentboundariescom slash, join and check it out. The recording's there and it's available right now and it's jam-packed with really useful information.

Torie Wiksell: 3:04

I want to pivot now and talk about our topic for this week's podcast episode, which is needing to forgive ourselves for not knowing how to do basic adulting things because we were never taught how to do basic adulting things and this one is so tricky. I mean, everything about having a parent with BPD or MPD is tricky, if we're being honest, but this one's really hard and I think so much of it goes back to when the focus is on ourselves, when we're working on self-compassion, self-love. We're working on self-compassion, self-love, kind ways to speak to ourselves, about ourselves. These things are all really really tricky, sitting with our own emotions. They're all really hard because we have been taught our entire life to keep the focus on making sure the people around us, primarily our parent, is fine, is happy, is safe, is calm, is fill in the blank with whatever it is. We are not encouraged to focus on ourselves or focus on what we need or ask for what we need or communicate what we're feeling. Those things are highly discouraged when we're talking about being an adult and recognizing that we lack basic adulting skills and that really includes so much can be practical things like your parents not sitting you down and teaching you how to balance a budget. It can be life skills, like your parents never really teaching you how to cook or how to clean or how to do your own laundry and you just having to kind of like stumble through life and figure it out as you go. There are so many skills that parents with unmanaged borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder lack and therefore they are unable to teach their children. If they don't have these skills themselves, how can they teach them to us?

Torie Wiksell: 5:29

What I know comes up for so many of the clients that I work with in both coaching and therapy, is that they really struggle with allowing space to not know maybe what your peers know, not having the skill set that your peers do or the experience with that skill set that your peers do. I think it can be really hard if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and you are getting together with friends of yours and you're looking around and you're seeing that they know things, that they have experience doing things that you really are still just trying to figure out as you go. It can be embarrassing at times, it could be frustrating, it could be challenging to really focus on and to try to fill those gaps of knowledge. And I think that is really interesting because oftentimes when we talk about BPD and MPD parents, we talk about trauma, we talk about communication styles, we talk about emotions and boundaries and going no contact or maybe low contact. The conversation rarely turns to things like a skill deficit, but that is hugely a part of this dynamic. But that is hugely a part of this dynamic A lot of life things that growing up we just didn't learn, and then as an adult, we're expected to know how to do those things, and that makes it so we don't always ask for the support that we need to fill in those gaps, because, like everything before, it might feel embarrassing.

Torie Wiksell: 7:24

Right, it might feel like something we should already know. And one thing that I am willing to learn that is far more important than what I should or should not have known previously the fact that I want to learn new information. That's the important thing. It's not about the deficit, it's not about being behind in some areas, because the reality is, everyone has their own struggle and their journeys, and when you spend so much of your life just trying to emotionally and sometimes physically survive, recognizing the gaps and then taking the time out of your life to fill those in is a luxury that you just don't have, and so I think the best thing that you can do is when you are in a place in your life where you have a bit more distance from that parent. You are living independently from them. You have your own financial independence, or at least to some extent a financial independence. When you have safer people who you trust, who support you, care about you, who know you and encourage you, then you have the opportunity to start going to some of those places that were much more of a luxury when you were in survival mode. No one in survival mode is going to take the time or energy to learn something, to seek out knowledge about something that is not imperative, that they know in the moment. They're going to do what they can to put out the fire that's in front of them not fireproof for a fire that might happen sometime in the future. That's just not realistic whatsoever. And when we can put these things into perspective like that, I think it allows us to be a little more gentle with ourselves and a little kinder with ourselves and really lower the expectations that we have on ourselves to have everything figured out.

Torie Wiksell: 10:02

Something else that's really relevant about the NPD-BPD parent-adult-child dynamic that really feeds into this is we as children grow up in this world where we are supposed to know things that we were never taught. We're not supposed to cry, we're not supposed to yell, we're not supposed to know things that we were never taught. We're not supposed to cry, we're not supposed to yell, we're not supposed to throw things, we're not supposed to have any means of regulating our emotions except quiet and quiet, not attention grabbing. And we are supposed to know what is going to upset our parent and what is not going to upset our parent. And we are supposed to be able to mind, read and know what our parent expects of us at all times. And we are supposed to anticipate what needs to be done, whether that's taking care of your siblings or cleaning the house or going grocery shopping or cooking for your family. But we're supposed to know all of these things all the time?

Torie Wiksell: 11:06

And it's just impossible, obviously, looking at it through an adult's lens, but that's the same expectation that we hold ourselves to when we look at these areas of our life as adults that we're struggling with and we shame ourselves for not knowing things we weren't taught that, we weren't mentored in, that we weren't allowed to focus on and grow in. And it's the same impact on us as when we were expected to have this knowledge that we could never just instinctually have as a child. Allow space in your life for growth with things that it feels like should be easy for you now and should be in your toolbox already. Allowing space for the reality that you're sad that you were never taught these things, that you feel a bit embarrassed that you feel behind in some ways, and allowing there to be space for those uncomfortable feelings and allowing yourself the permission to seek out knowledge and help and support to fill in those gaps where they are. I think that's a big gift of not only self-compassion but just really working through the trauma that we experienced as kids.

Torie Wiksell: 12:51

It's really saying when I was a kid, I had no control around the expectations of me that were unreasonable. Those were there. It was out of my control. But as an adult, I can choose to be kinder and more gentle with myself. I can choose to allow space for me to be imperfect and to grow and to gain new information and to work on skills that I'm not good at right now, that I struggle with, that are really challenging. I can allow myself to be imperfect and to try and to continue to grow imperfectly and just remind yourself along the way that growth is almost always a two steps forward, eight steps back, five steps forward, four steps back, eight steps forward, two steps back type of thing. Growth is never linear. When it is sustainable, it is very much a bumpy road, but a bumpy road that is meaningful and has purpose and that allows us to move forward in life. And so, with all of that said, I'm going to wrap up the podcast here.

Torie Wiksell: 14:23

For today, I am, for the first time in about six months, taking a few new therapy clients in my private practice. If you're located in Washington, oregon or California and you're interested in working together, head on over to toriwixeltherapycom. Slash schedule and you can request a free phone consultation there. I also have two or three more openings in my coaching membership, so you can learn more about that at confidentboundariescom. Slash coaching. And until next week, take care, you guys. 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 updates of what's going on in my world. Okay, I'll see you next week.