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

One Year of Confident Boundaries: What I've Learned About Coaching, Community, and Growth

• Torie Wiksell • Episode 37

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After a year of running Confident Boundaries alongside my therapy practice, I’m reflecting on the journey—what worked, what didn’t, and how I’ve evolved my approach to supporting adult children of BPD and NPD parents.

Expanding beyond therapy has allowed me to help more people through coaching, community, and this podcast. And, in this episode I share:

 ✔️ Why I created the Confident Boundaries umbrella (way before the online community)
✔️ How I've been able to bridge the gap for those who couldn’t work with me in therapy
 ✔️ My initial resistance to coaching (and what changed my mind)
 ✔️ My decision to eliminate YouTube video recordings and the reason why

If you’re struggling with setting boundaries with a BPD or NPD parent, make sure to join my free workshop by registering at confidentboundaries.com/boundariesworkshop. 

I'll show you how to frame boundaries with BPD and NPD parents effectively, manage guilt and anxiety so they no longer stop you, and enforce boundaries when your parent pushes back (because obviously they will).

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. Hi guys, welcome back to the podcast this week. I am super excited to be back talking with you, although I am a little sleepy. If you are in the US and in one of the states where the time just changed, I am really feeling for you.

Torie Wiksell:

This one really throws me and I feel like that's probably true for most people. It is a tough one. It's not only tough because of the hour lost, but it really throws my entire internal schedule just with the longer days all of a sudden. It's a really weird one for me to adjust to, so I'm definitely feeling really out of it. I'm not necessarily sleep deprived I went to bed fairly early, but I am definitely adjusting.

Torie Wiksell:

So first things first, I wanted to address there not being a YouTube episode today. If you're someone who has started to watch the podcast on YouTube, I apologize, but over the past week I've realized that I don't like doing YouTube. I just don't. I can't really tell you why. I'm not exactly sure myself. I'm on camera all day long, so I don't necessarily think that's the sole reason. I am on camera when I'm doing therapy sessions. I'm on camera when I'm doing coaching sessions or in the community or on social media, so I don't necessarily know that's the reason. However, I have loved doing the podcast up until the past few weeks. The past few weeks I have found myself dreading it, which is really a bummer, because I love this podcast and I don't want to dread it, and I've been trying to figure out what is going on. And the reality is I just really didn't want to film it for YouTube. So I don't know why I apologize if that's something that you're into, but when I kind of made that connection, I was like, well, you know what? We're getting rid of the YouTube. Then, because I love doing this podcast and I'm so appreciative to all of you who have found the podcast and reached out and told me that you love it too, and I am committed to showing up my best self every week and bringing you really quality content that you can depend on. And in order to do that, I have to love what I'm doing. And so, no more YouTube. I am recommitted to the audio only version of the podcast and I'm already feeling much better, even though I'm pretty sleepy today, but I'm still feeling way better. So no more YouTube, not for me. But the podcast shall live on as long as you will allow it to. Don't worry, as I always say, no matter anything else going on in my world. I love doing the podcast and I intend to do it for as long as you'll listen to me talk. So here we are Today.

Torie Wiksell:

I wanted to reflect on this past year. I opened my second company, confident Boundaries, a little over a year ago in February of last year, and before that I had my private practice for several years and I know in the bonus podcast episodes in the community I had my private practice for several years and I know in the bonus podcast episodes in the community I've talked a little bit about starting the podcast and behind the scenes with that, but I don't actually think that I've talked about it on the main show and so I wanted to spend some time today just kind of talking you guys through how this podcast came to be, how I branched out side of therapy, although I'm still very much in therapy and the therapy world and I intend to be for, hopefully, decades and decades to come, but just a little evolution of how I got here, how we got here and what things are looking like moving forward. So I started doing therapy in 2013 as a grad student and it is wild to think that it has been that long. I still envision myself as a very young therapist I relatively am, but not quite as young as I was fresh out of grad school in my 20s. A lot has changed in my career as I've grown professionally and personally and shifted into private practice and really shifted my focus to working with the adult, children and parents with BPD and narcissistic personality disorders, and so, while I have been pretty focused in on working with this particular area for gosh years now, so I think we can probably all agree that this is a very specific niche. It is, it's a very unique family dynamic that I grew up with, that you grew up with, that I work with on a daily basis and because of that, as a therapist, I had a lot of people reaching out who wanted to consult with me or wanted to work with me.

Torie Wiksell:

Because this is such a specific niche that I work with and, unfortunately, because of the way therapy and licensing work, even though I do online therapy, I can only do online therapy with people who are located in the states that I'm licensed in, and so what would end up happening is I would repeatedly get emails or phone calls mostly emails, though from people who found me through Google or through a referral somehow, and they either wanted to consult with me or work together in therapy, and I would have to write them back and say I'm so sorry, I wish I could help. Here's my best advice for finding someone that can and give them a bit of direction to go in, but I wouldn't be able to help, and that felt awful. Every single time I had to turn someone away, it felt horrible, because I know how hard it is to recognize that something is not right, that you are struggling, and to finally get to a place where you have identified what that struggle is and are ready to reach out and seek out support, only to be told that I'm so sorry, but I can't help you. Good luck finding someone else. It just it feels so shitty to have to say that as a therapist, and I know it feels so shitty to have to hear that on the receiving end, and so, after a while of this happening, I really put a lot of thought and energy into how can I help bridge this gap a little bit.

Torie Wiksell:

There are very few therapists who have devoted their practice to this very specific niche and even fewer therapists who have my lived experience, who are openly talking about it publicly, and what I came up with ultimately was that I was going to expand my professional business to open up a coaching company, and that's how Confident Boundaries was born. A year ago I decided that while I can't do therapy, I definitely can do coaching and consulting work, where someone can meet with me for a handful of appointments and I can provide them with education around what it means for someone to have BPD or MPD, what it means to be in a family, parent-child relationship dynamic with someone like that, and strategies for navigating the really complicated layers. I could kind of bridge that gap for someone who maybe had a therapist that they loved, but that therapist didn't necessarily have the experience or the education to really support them in this one area, or someone maybe who's done a lot of work in therapy, or someone who is otherwise functioning pretty well but realizes that they really do need some feedback and support here, and so I was really resistant to doing coaching for a long time and I think I did talk about this actually in the therapy versus coaching episode that I did many, many moons ago when this podcast first started. But during the pandemic there were so many coaches that came up on social media and online and they felt so gimmicky. And a lot of people that I saw online calling themselves coaches were not trained therapists. They didn't have the background to be doing the type of work that they were advertising that they did, and I saw them spreading a lot of misinformation and that really soured me.

Torie Wiksell:

On coaching in general, I was very unhappy with what I was seeing and I was really concerned about the impact that it would have on people and their mental health, especially when we were going through the beginning of the pandemic and people were in a really fragile state. So I was really anti-coaching for a very long time and then I came to the conclusion that you know what, just because some people are out there and they're calling themselves coaches and I have understandable concerns about them, that doesn't mean that me calling myself a coach means that I'm going to do harm as well, and so I had to kind of really move into that gray area of flexible thinking where I could acknowledge that, yeah, there are definitely problems within the coaching community, within the consulting community, especially, being that it is entirely unregulated, unlike therapy, and, at the same time, this is a really important and useful skill set that I have. And for me to just dig my heels in and say I'm not going to do coaching or anything outside of therapy because I don't like the way some other people have approached this doesn't really make a lot of sense either. It's essentially me just having like an adult mini tantrum and not helping anyone, including myself. Adult money tantrum and not helping anyone including myself. And so I processed all of that and I got to the point where I was comfortable clearly defining the differences between what I did in therapy, what I did in coaching. I opened up confident boundaries and really intended for it to be a business where I could do coaching and consulting work and then also provide online courses. I thought that that might be a really helpful way to bridge the gap and help provide information to people who couldn't work with me in therapy, who are interested, who didn't need to work with me. I think you get where I'm going, and so that was really the intention of Confident Boundaries when I was first born.

Torie Wiksell:

And then, as life does evolve and change and I started working with coaching clients and I built my first course, which I've mentioned, I know, here, which is called the Boundaries Roadmap. As all of that started to unfold throughout the year, so much was changing so fast and I was trying to just take in everything and adapt I realized I really love doing coaching and I still do, and I always love doing therapy and I still love doing therapy and I noticed that I was struggling to figure out how to get information to people in a way that was easily digestible, that was accessible, that was helpful, and I have so much information in my brain. And one thing that I struggle with is I am a helper At heart. I am a helper. That is who I am, that is me and my personality, and if I feel like I can help someone, that is what I want to do, that it brings me joy, to feel like I know something that can help someone and I want to share that information with them. And sometimes I get so excited that I want to do everything at once and I bite off a ton and then I get overwhelmed and then it feels like what I'm sharing is overwhelming because I'm trying to share so much information at once. And so I think that part of this was the learning curve of Confident Boundaries throughout the past year was how do I share information that I have that is useful and helpful and people want and people need, in a way that isn't overwhelming and makes sense and they can actually take in and utilize? And what might surprise you is I'm not sure if I've talked about this or not, but if I have.

Torie Wiksell:

I apologize for repeating myself, but when I started the podcast of every business endeavor I've had in my entire therapy career, I did not expect the podcast to take off. I just thought, well, this is one more thing I can try to see if this would be a useful way for me to share information with people that would be helpful. And I was like what's the harm? I'm going to record it myself, I'm going to edit it myself, I'm going to put it out there and just kind of see what happens. And surprise to me, the podcast has really taken off and it is thrilling and it is exciting and it is so wonderful to hear from you and to hear the feedback that it has helped you and that it matters and that it is something that has, in some capacity, changed things for you, whether that's by validating what you've been through or giving you hope or direction.

Torie Wiksell:

Whatever it is that is ultimately at my core, what I want to do, and so the fact that this podcast, which I kind of just did out of I don't know, maybe this will help, maybe this will work, maybe this will be what people want and need, has really been the most exciting surprise of the entire Confident Boundaries journey. It just has been so cool to see how me just showing up here and talking every week is a useful way to digest information about a really complicated and layered dynamic. So I am so grateful to all of you who are listening. I'm so grateful to all of you who are listening to take the time to reach out and write to me. I know sometimes it takes me a couple days to get back to you, but every single email that I see, every single DM that I see I promise you I take it in, and I see every single DM that I see I promise you I take it in, and I really, really appreciate it. And if I haven't gotten back to you, it is because it is lost somewhere the email. I truly value you guys and I am just so happy that this has been a useful way for me to get out all of this information into my head, or that is in my head, in a way that can help other people.

Torie Wiksell:

So, going back to Confident Foundries and the evolution here, I built the boundaries roadmap. I am a therapist. That is what I am trained to do, that is what my education is, and I am not a marketer. I am not a business person at heart. Have I had to learn aspects of these things throughout my career? Yes, has it been graceful and linear? No, no, it has not. Luckily, I am very fortunate to have people in my life who have been supportive and willing to help me because they believe in me and give me guidance and encouragement and those types of things. But it has been a messy road and the whole progression of confident boundaries has really been a learn along the way type of thing which, if you told me 10 years ago that would be the case, I would have laughed in your face, because that is so against that perfectionism part of me that wants to over-prepare and overthink and over-plan and do things right. The first time Confident Boundaries has not been that. It's been. I want to help and I'm just going to try my best and figure it out as we go, and so, with the boundaries roadmap, I have learned a couple of things.

Torie Wiksell:

I think that it feels really overwhelming to digest a ton of information in one sitting. I think when you have a parent with BPD or MPD, you're already stressed, you're already overwhelmed, bpd or MPD you're already stressed, you're already overwhelmed. The thought of doing more and needing more time and energy to take in all of this information and apply. It feels like a lot. And so, although I love the information in that course, I know that that's not the most useful way to deliver it now. And so along comes the Confident Boundaries online community, which I love, and this is like a dream of mine Confident Boundaries, it really is. It's a dream of mine to have a safe space where accurate information about these family dynamics, setting boundaries, going low or no contact healing, can be found and accessed, and where you can connect with other people who just get it. They see what you're saying and they're like nope, you don't need to explain 18 novels, like I get it because I've been in that exact same situation or I could see myself in that exact same situation. That is so hard to find for so many of us, because these relationships are really, really unique. And so Confident Boundaries is really really a dream of mine and I am so grateful for everyone in that community who has been there from the ground up since we opened in December and has really been along for the ride.

Torie Wiksell:

I approached it similarly to how I did starting Confident Boundaries, the umbrella company, last year. I was like I'm gonna put everything in this community. This is going to be a one-stop shop for anything you could ever need related to understanding or healing from your BBD or MPD parent. And what happened was it was a lot, it was overwhelming, it was unclear, it was confusing, it was all of those things and while my intention was so good, it didn't have the impact that I wanted it to because it was just too much all at once. And it was a lot, just like when I first did the Boundaries Roadmap course. It's packed with great information, but if it feels too overwhelming for people to actually jump in and do it, then it's actually not having the intended effect of helping people.

Torie Wiksell:

So because of that, I've been making tweaks to the community here and there as we go along, so that if you are working with a therapist already, that just doesn't have the education and experience that in the background that I do and you need more here in this one area it is some place that you can come to and is something that you can afford. I also want it to be for my coaching clients, a supplement to coaching. That's another thing I've been working on throughout the past year is how can I package coaching in a way that is the most effective and most helpful to people, and what I have been doing as we go along in testing out different dynamics. I've really settled on this idea that change takes time and consistency, and that's not new to me. However, I think it's really important that my coaching packages reflect that, and so now I have two coaching packages, and this is it. This is like a leave it, and when those fill up, they fill up, and when they reopen, they'll reopen, just like in therapy when my therapy practice fills up, it fills up. When I have a spot open, it will reopen, right. That is how these coaching packages will work as well, but they are essentially three-month and six-month coaching packages, so we'll either work together for three months, once a week, for 60 minutes a week, or for six months once a week, 60 minutes a week and you'll also have access to the Confident Boundaries online community when we work together in coaching, because I want to make sure that everyone who is working with me has that level of support and that access to it, and so with that, I'm making shifts in the community too. So, I think, way more exciting shifts, but you be the judge of that.

Torie Wiksell:

So, with a Confident Boundaries online community, I decided we need to simplify, right? Just like everything, everything needs to be simplified. You guys are busy. I understand that it is overwhelming to begin with. You don't need to be more overwhelmed. You need life to be simple and to be easy. To be more overwhelmed, you need life to be simple and to be easy.

Torie Wiksell:

And so now there are four key features of the Confident Boundaries online community. One there is now, starting today at two o'clock Pacific time, there will be a 60 minute group coaching session in the community every single week. So from two to 3 pm every Monday in the Confident Boundaries online community, there's going to be a live group coaching session where you can show up and you can ask me questions about things that you're struggling with right now. You can listen to other people talk through the things that they're struggling and me coach them through it, or you can watch the replays every week. The reason why I feel like this is so important is because it is really really fascinating how many parallels there are to the dynamics when you grow up with a parent like this and you might not know what questions you have right now, you might not exactly understand what you're struggling with, and so to watch me talk someone else through a situation that you can relate to. I think there's so much value there, and it allows people to come in and get feedback from me about their situation in a way that is way more accessible than working one-on-one with me and coaching or therapy too, and so that is something that I'm really, really excited about.

Torie Wiksell:

We're going to continue to have one live monthly training in the community every month. That's on the third Thursday of every month, from 12 to 1 pm Pacific time, and that is on a topic that is voted on within the community. We're also going to do bonus podcast episodes, or I should say, continue to do them. I owe the community one this week. This week was a lot for me and I apologize and I have no excuses. I just have every intention of getting it to you as soon as I can. So there are a backlog of bonus podcast episodes of this podcast You're not crazy but the bonus episodes in the community, if that is something that you are interested in.

Torie Wiksell:

And then there is the community feature itself, which is available to you 24 seven. That doesn't mean people are always gonna be accessible on their 24 seven, but if you are struggling you can go in there and you can post. You can read through people's past posts and see that you are not alone, that there are other people just like you who are struggling with similar things and you are not crazy, even though it feels like you are sometimes. And that is so important because I know not everyone out there has family or friends who get it. They don't necessarily have partners who get it. They don't necessarily have that sounding board, that person that they can go to and say this thing happened and I'm doubting my own sanity, I'm doubting my own beliefs around what is reasonable and what boundaries are healthy or okay to set, and so this community is that foundation for you. Those are the four key components of the Confident Boundaries online community, moving forward To review bonus podcast episodes, the community itself, the monthly trainings and the weekly group coaching sessions with me.

Torie Wiksell:

That, I think, is a huge benefit to getting information out in a way that is accessible and in a way that is not overwhelming and not something that feels like you have to commit to again. And what I'm going to do, and what I'm in the process of doing right now, is breaking down the Boundaries Roadmap online course into smaller chunks of video and smaller worksheet chunks that you can go to if you, let's say, just want to learn more about the dynamics of having a BPD or an NPD parent, what those diagnoses mean, what you need to be mindful of. I have one section in the course that is completely devoted to that, and so I'm going to break that down and separate it out, and then I'm going to have another section around implementing and enforcing boundaries, and so I'm going to start breaking these down into really digestible chunks, because I want you to make the changes that you want to make. I want you to feel empowered to set boundaries that you need to set. I want you to understand what it means to go low contact and I want you to understand what are the questions you should be asking yourself around going no contact, when is that appropriate for you? When is that something that you would benefit from considering? And to know that you're the only person that gets to make that decision, that you're the only person that gets to make that decision. There is no universal rule here, and if you listen to anyone who is telling you you have to go no contact, you have to set boundaries, you have to maintain this relationship Well, they're full of shit, because that's not the case. You can choose the relationship and the life that works for you, as long as you have the knowledge and the education and the understanding of what is realistic and what is possible in your dynamic and what the impact on your mental and emotional health and well-being and other relationships are. That, ultimately, has always been my goal is to empower you to make the decisions for yourself that you want to make and to give you the information and the education, the resources that you need to do that successfully, and so that is one huge reason why I'm running the workshop next week, or, yeah, next week.

Torie Wiksell:

Yes, tuesday, march 18th, 5 pm Pacific time. It'll be about 45 minutes long. You can sign up for free. Confidentboundariescom. Slash boundariesworkshop Again. Confidentboundariescom. Slash boundariesworkshop About 45 minutes.

Torie Wiksell:

I'm going to walk you through exactly how to frame your boundary so your parent is more likely to respect it, how to manage guilt, fear and anxiety so you don't freeze or backtrack, and how to enforce your boundary when your parent pushes back. Because, like I said in the ad you probably listened to before this episode, who are we kidding? They obviously will. Parents with BPD and MPD are going to push back on your boundaries. That is almost guaranteed. They are going to push back, and so that should not be a deterrent for you when setting boundaries. That just has to be part of the equation in how you plan to set your boundary and execute that, because it's a part of it. When you are the initiator of the change, you want the change. Your parent doesn't want the change, and they also have this personality disorder which makes them especially resistant to it, and so that doesn't mean boundaries are impossible they're not but it does mean that the way that you approach them has to be really intentional and clear around what the likely outcomes are going to be and how you're going to cope with it.

Torie Wiksell:

One last thing before we wrap up for today. I really appreciate you guys allowing me to take you on this journey of reflection that has led us here to where we are today with the podcast and Confident Boundaries and everything. I think I've covered pretty much all of it. The one thing that I want to mention is that I shifted the Confident Boundaries membership to align with my coaching memberships. Like I was saying earlier, with my coaching memberships there are three months or six month memberships now, because change takes time. Change takes consistency and time, and the same is true for the community. It takes time to internalize and digest and to go try to set boundaries and come back and get feedback around what went well and what's a struggle and where to go from here, and so that doesn't happen in a week or two. That happens over time, and so the community membership is now set up so that you can join for either three months or six months at a time in order to really see meaningful change in your life. It's important to be consistent and to continue to show up, and I know that you do that by listening to this podcast. Those are the changes that have been unfolding over the past year of me opening confident boundaries, and that is what this evolution has looked like, coming up onto this annual milestone.

Torie Wiksell:

Like I said earlier, I am so grateful for all of you. It has really been such a gift being able to show up every week and talk to you and to be able to share bits about my own personal journey too. It really has been so healing in so many ways for me as well to be able to talk bits about my own personal journey too. It really has been so healing in so many ways for me as well to be able to talk openly about things that have been so secretive for so long in my life, for me to be able to show up on the podcast and talk about these things from a therapeutic level, these things from a therapeutic level, from an educational level and from a personal level. It's really not lost on me how lucky I am to be able to share with you all, and thank you for that, for giving me that opportunity. So I know that this one was a long one and I appreciate you hanging in with me for the length of it, but never hesitate to reach out.

Torie Wiksell:

You can always reach me on Instagram at tori, at confidentboundaries, or you can email me at tori at confidentboundariescom, and don't forget about signing up. You can email me at tori at confidentboundariescom, and don't forget about signing up for that free workshop confidentboundariescom slash boundaries workshop. And until next week I'll see you guys. Then 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.

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