You're Not Crazy: A Podcast for Cycle Breakers with Toxic Parents

When Your Toxic Parent Becomes a Grandparent to Your Kids

• Torie Wiksell • Episode 36

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As the adult children of a parent with narcissistic or borderline personality disorder, becoming parents ourselves brings up a whole new set of challenges—especially when it comes to navigating the grandparent-grandchild relationship. 

In this episode, I dive into the emotional complexities of setting boundaries with toxic parents while trying to break dysfunctional patterns for our kids.

I’ll cover:

→ How to handle difficult conversations with your children about going no contact
→ The impact of a toxic grandparent’s behavior on your kids—and what to watch for
→ Why your parent might not be the amazing grandparent you think they are

And, if you're struggling with setting (and keeping) boundaries, don’t miss my upcoming FREE Workshop! 

Register now at confidentboundaries.com/boundariesworkshop

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.

Torie Wiksell:

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. I am thrilled to be back and talking with you, because today I can finally announce that thing that I was alluding to last week I'm going to be doing a free online workshop. It's coming up in two weeks, on Tuesday, march 18th, 5 pm, pacific Standard Time and in it I'm going to teach you a three-step process for effectively setting boundaries with BPD and MPD parents.

Torie Wiksell:

This is my favorite well, one of my favorite things to talk about. It feels impossible, but I promise you it's not. It's not rocket science, it's not magic. It's not impossible, and I am confident that I can teach you how to do it. That I can teach you how to do it. I'm confident of that because that's what I do on a daily basis and I have done for years. I do this with my therapy clients, I do it with my coaching clients and it works. So if you are sick and tired of being exhausted from the stress of having to walk on eggshells around your parents constantly trying to figure out what you can do to prevent them from losing it or acting out in a way that is destructive to you and your life, then I want you to hop on over to confidentboundariescom slash boundariesworkshop. All one word. In less than an hour.

Torie Wiksell:

I'm going to teach you how to effectively set a boundary with a parent who has borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. I'm going to tell you how to deliver your boundary, what to do and what not to do. Tell you how to deliver your boundary, what to do and what not to do. I'm going to show you how to handle your own feelings of guilt and stress and worry and anxiety that come up around even the thought of setting a boundary with a BPD or MPD parent. And I'm going to teach you how to enforce boundary. Like I said, this is not magic. This is is not rocket science. This is something I can teach you. And as a thank you for spending that time with me again, two weeks, tuesday, march 18th, 5 pm, pacific time as a thank you for showing up, putting on your calendar and giving me this time to show you that it is possible, I'm also going to gift you a boundaries script guide. So, just for showing up. You're going to get my boundaries cheat sheet and in it I have nine really common scripts that you might need to use with a BPD or MPD parent in order to push back and set and hold and enforce your boundary. So these are really common things that come up when we're setting boundaries with BPD and MPD parents, and I'm going to give you exact things that you can say or things that you can tweak a little bit to fit your exact situation. So you literally will be walking away from this workshop with a three-step plan that you can repeat time and time again and a list of nine common boundaries that you can just take and use right with you. Okay, today we're going to be talking about when you have kids and your BPD or MPD parent is a grandparent.

Torie Wiksell:

This dynamic is so tricky and it's so fascinating because, just like basically everything that I talk about on this podcast Basically everything that I talk about on this podcast there are really common aspects of this dynamic around. You might be in the camp of you've already gone no contact with your parents and your children don't have a relationship with your parent. You might be thinking about going no contact and wondering or worrying how to explain that decision to your kids. You might not have kids yet and you might not plan on having kids ever, and in that case, hopefully you can still enjoy this episode of the podcast, since this one is going to be about the grandparent-parent-child dynamic. You might be in the camp this really common camp. My parent is a great grandparent. They're a horrible parent to me. They just homatize me, they drive me crazy. They have no awareness at all over how their behavior negatively impacts me, but they are such a great grandparent to my children. So I want to talk about a few of these dynamics today, because these are all really common.

Torie Wiksell:

I commonly have conversations with people around how to explain to their children that they will no longer have a relationship with their grandparent when they have decided to go no contact. I regularly talk with people about how to explain that their child has never met their grandparent because they've been no contact since before that child was born or since that child was a baby. I regularly talk with people about the belief that their parent is a great grandparent, even though they are a child toxic parent. And that's what I want to start with today, because this is such a common thought. This is such a common belief system and I think it's really complicated and really layered.

Torie Wiksell:

I think that there are societal aspects of where grandparents are supposed to be, this wonderful Grandparents are supposed to be, this wonderful, magical person, and kids benefit from their relationship with their grandparents and the expectations feel a lot lower an emotional support, a teacher, an educator, a mentor, a confident. This parent doesn't have to be all of those things for your child, their grandchild. And at the same time, I think it's really important to go back to what I always say, which is people are who they in one isolated relationship of their life and then in all of the others, they're an emotionally healthy human. That is not how it works. The same is true here. If your parent lacks the skills to be in a healthy parent-child relationship with you, healthy parent-child relationship with you, how are they able to have a healthy grandparent-grandchild relationship with your child? I think that this is so overlooked because on surface level, it can feel like they are a great grandparent. Maybe your kid gets excited when they come to visit or they call. Maybe they do fun things.

Torie Wiksell:

But I want you to ask yourself a few questions here, because it's really important that you're clear on how healthy this relationship really is, before you use their dynamic as a great or healthy or perfect grandparent to justify your need to have a continued relationship with them. I really want to get into this, because a lot of people are debating whether or not to go no contact, are debating whether or not to implement certain boundaries, and a big deciding factor in that process, if you have kids, might be the relationship between your parent and your child. Now your parent might not express any interest in your child, and then that's a different story that we'll get to in one of these other scenarios. However, if your parent is someone who loves the idea of being a grandparent, I want you to ask yourself a few questions.

Torie Wiksell:

One we've talked about the narcissistic parent, the one that is the perfect parent who does everything perfectly and, to the outside world, looks like they are the greatest parent in the world. Are they more concerned with presenting the image of themselves as the perfect grandparent than they are in actually being a grandparent? Are they interested in your child? Are they patient? Are they kind? Are they loving? Are they judgmental? Are they condescending? Are they critical of your child? The stakes are so much lower when it's a grandparent, are so much lower when it's a grandparent. And, at the same time, I really encourage you to reflect and ask yourself are they hitting that bar of acceptable behavior?

Torie Wiksell:

If you're noticing that, although your child is excited to see grandma or grandpa, grandma or grandpa is really critical of them and is not encouraging and has unrealistic expectations for their developmental level, for their physical ability, I think those are indicators that there might be some really helpful boundaries to start setting with your parent, some really helpful boundaries to start setting with your parent. Also, I want you to really ask yourself and reflect on how your parent treats you in front of your child, how they talk about you with your child. That might be in front of you, or it might be if just the two of them are alone. Might be in front of you, or it might be if just the two of them are alone. How are they talking to you and about you to your child? Because that matters and that's really important, and I think these are considerations that are often overlooked when we're trying to navigate the extremely tricky waters of figuring out what an adult relationship looks like with our parents and what our children's relationship, or lack thereof, looks like. So those are questions, food for thought. Only you can answer, but I think they're really important ones to ask yourself if you haven't already.

Torie Wiksell:

So another topic that I had mentioned that I want to talk about today is if your child does have a relationship with your parent, if they know their grandparent, they have some sort of relationship with them and you make the decision to go no contact with your parent. How you talk with your child about that. Going no contact with your parent is a really hard decision to make. Period, it's always the last resort. No one does that. First, it's really layered. It's sad, it's a relief. There's so many emotions that come up around it. And then when you also are concerned about how that might impact your child, how that might impact your child's emotional development, how they experience relationships themselves, it adds so many other complicated layers on top of it. And so I want to say I know if you have made the decision to go no contact or if you are thinking about going no contact with a BPD or MPD parent, I trust that you have put a lot of thought and reflection into that decision and I trust that you are making it in your own best interest, and I know how hard that is, and I want to commend you for doing a really hard thing that you need to do for yourself in order to protect yourself and to keep yourself and your current family healthy and happy.

Torie Wiksell:

With that said, if we're talking about younger kids, talking with them while you're playing or reading a story or something like that is often very helpful, and focusing on behaviors is a really good strategy. You might say I know we haven't seen grandma lately. Do you miss grandma? Yeah, I could definitely see that I miss grandma sometimes too. In our family we have rules around how we're allowed to treat each other. In our family. It's really important that we are kind and respectful to each other. Sometimes, mommy and daddy have to make hard decisions when people aren't willing to follow the rules, and grandma isn't able to follow our rules about kindness right now, and so we're not going to be seeing grit in them.

Torie Wiksell:

Do you have questions for me? I think there is no perfect way to talk to your child about it, but I think keeping it simple, keeping it clear and keeping it really behaviorally focused is very helpful. I think what we don't want to do is gaslight our children. I know you don't want that. I don't want that, certainly, and so if your child is asking questions, it's important to answer those questions at a developmentally appropriate level. We also don't want to emotionally like trauma dump onto our child, and they certainly do not need to know the many complicated layers of our relationships with our parents. And yet giving them enough information so that they know that they're not crazy, that they did at one time have a relationship with this person and they are not going to see this person again, or at least not anytime in the near future, I think is so validating and so important, because we want our kids to grow up thinking that, yeah, I know that grandma used to come around and now she doesn't, and I can go to my mom or dad and I can ask questions about things that I don't understand. When I'm confused, I can trust how that feels in my body. When I'm sad, I can trust how that feels in my body. There's space for me to build that trust with myself and there's space for me to have feelings about too.

Torie Wiksell:

If your child is sad, it's important that we check in with them right and allow them to be sad. They might not have much emotion around it. It depends on your child and the actual relationship that they have with your parent and how often they saw them. It depends on so many different factors there, but I think really being open and transparent in a modified, developmentally appropriate way is the most helpful advice I could give you as far as that goes.

Torie Wiksell:

And then, the last thing that I want to say about the whole grandparent dynamic is that if you are worried about depriving your child of a relationship with their grandparent as so many people that I talk to are I want to say to you that it is very helpful to look at it in the same way as we look at our relationship with our own parent. Your parent lacks skills that would be lovely for your child to have been able to have in a grandparent. Who your parent is is limited in their ability to provide emotional support to anyone, and I think it's more helpful to grieve that than it is to worry about this idea of depriving your child of a relationship with someone who doesn't exist this loving, compassionate, consistent grandparent. We want to have realistic views of what we are deciding between, and no one's's perfect, but thinking about or making the decision to go no contact with a parent again is such a hard decision that comes as a last resort, and so if you are very worried about depriving your child of that grandparent-child relationship, I think reframing it in the same way of asking yourself what makes me feel like I am no longer able to have a parent-child relationship with my parent, because, whatever that answer is probably solidifies the idea that they aren't going to be able to show up for my child in the way my child deserves them to show up for them.

Torie Wiksell:

I know not everyone who listens has kids, so I'm going to try to sprinkle these in here or there, because I know a lot of you who do listen do have kids. So these are things that are so common, they come up so much and, to be completely frank, there are many parents who are toxic, unhealthy parents, who use their grandkids as a form of manipulation with their children, and so this definitely comes up. It comes up often. It is a really tricky one to navigate, and when you are someone who is trying so hard to break the cycle of abuse that you were exposed to growing up within your own family, it totally makes sense that when your kids are involved, it feels extra hard and extra tricky and you want to be so careful that you're making the right decisions for them. So I hope that by listening to this episode, it gives you a little more perspective on how to look at the dynamic between your parent and your child, or your parent and your children, and some things to consider in order to really look at that relationship from a way that benefits both you and your child.

Torie Wiksell:

Quick reminder before we head out I'll be doing that boundaries workshop in two weeks, on Tuesday, march 18th, 5 pm Pacific time. It'll be less than an hour. Head on over to confidentboundariescom slash boundaries workshop. Make sure to save your spot and throw it in your calendar right away so that you don't forget it and completely miss out on this workshop Going to be jam-packed with useful information, and I'm going to send you away with an actual plan that you can replicate for setting boundaries with BPD and MPD. Hop on over there, sign up and I'll see you guys next week. 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.

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