Boundaries You Set With Yourself

0:05 Welcome to You're Not Crazy, a podcast for the adult children of parents with narcissistic and unmanaged borderline personality disorder. I'm your host, Torie Wiksell, a therapist with over a decade of experience in the mental health field. I also happened to grow up with a narcissist mom who had a lot of BPD traits, and I know a thing or two about how crazy-making these types of relationships can be.

0:30 I'm so excited to show you what it actually means to break the cycle of dysfunction that we grew up in and help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for joining me. Now let's jump into the show Welcome back to this episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast We are officially in fall Which just happens to be my favorite season ever So I'm feeling especially joyful sitting here in my cozy sweater as things are getting a little cooler outside I'm definitely feeling in my zone Now, the flip side of fall being my favorite time of the year is that it seems time really starts flying this time of the year as well And although summer literally just ended, like barely ended, we are a few days from

1:16 October, which is wild to think about And that means that the holidays are going to start happening, and holiday preparation and planning and all of that good stuff that goes with it will start happening soon too. And so over the next few months, I am going to sprinkle in some episodes that have to do specifically with challenges that happen during and leading up to the holidays Because I know that this time of year can be especially tricky and challenging and very, very complicated.

1:51 So just a quick heads up, those episodes are coming and if you need a little more support than a podcast episode can provide, make sure to head over to confidentboundaries.com where you can get access to some of the resources that I created to help you prepare for and navigate those very complicated family interactions.

2:11 Now, hopping into the heart of today's episode I've talked a lot about boundaries here on this podcast. I talk a lot about boundaries in the course. I talk a lot about boundaries on a regular basis. That's because I'm a firm believer that boundaries with challenging parents, boundaries with parents who have narcissistic and borderline traits are oftentimes possible.

2:35 They're just more complicated, and we have to really look at the situation for what it is, and we have to accept reality for what it is, and it's layered, and it's complicated. Parents like this are never going to be as receptive to boundaries as people who are emotionally intelligent and who have healthy emotional regulation skills.

2:56 That's just a fact. But that doesn't mean that boundaries with these types of parents, boundaries in these types of family dynamics are impossible or shouldn't be attempted they're just more complicated. But today I wanna talk about us, and I wanna talk about how we can set boundaries with ourselves.

3:15 Because I think that, this is something that oftentimes gets overlooked, and it's incredibly important. So what do I mean setting boundaries with ourselves? When I'm talking about boundaries, I'm talking about how many of our resources, whether that's time, energy, emotional or physical energy, financial resources How much of our resources we are willing to exert in a given situation or a given relationship And sometimes those boundaries involve us directly communicating our limits to the other person.

3:48 But before we even do that, we have to know what our limits are, right? We have to recognize where we are overextending ourselves, where we are overexerting ourselves, where things are going awry And when we can identify those things, when we can say, " I don't have the emotional energy to be on call for my parent whenever they're in crisis.

4:10 I don't have the physical energy to stop everything that I'm doing and then physically go over to my parents' house and help them without any notice or planning. I don't have the financial resources to support my parent when they're in another financial crisis. Whatever our limits are, that is where our boundaries lie And yes, sometimes we need to communicate those things to our parents, and sometimes we don't.

4:41 Sometimes we recognize where our limitations are, where we're overexerting ourselves, where we're overextending ourselves, and we can adjust our behavior to set some new boundaries in our relationship with our parent and that doesn't necessarily involve us talking to our parent about them When we grow up in these types of family dynamics, it is not uncommon to find that you are an over-explainer, that you frequently feel misunderstood, that you desperately want your parent to understand your perspective, to see that you are a good person at your core And sometimes this trickles into boundaries too.

5:20 Sometimes we think that we have to explain everything that we're doing or anything that we're doing differently. Any change that we're deciding to make, it can feel like you need to verbalize that to your parent, that they must know why it is that you're changing this way of interacting with them, and that's not always the case.

5:41 Sometimes you're allowed to just make changes sometimes you are allowed to just approach life differently, and you don't have to initiate a conversation with your parent to let them know why that is. Sometimes you can just change the way that you interact with them So what would this even look like? Changing the way that you interact with your parent might be that you don't always answer every single time they call.

6:07 You might decide that that isn't productive for you, that it puts you into a panic, that you get emotionally flooded, that it's hard for you to finish your workday, concentrate on what it is that you're doing. And so a boundary that you might set for yourself might be that you let their calls go to voicemail, and you don't call back until you have a chance to listen to that voicemail.

6:34 And maybe another boundary that you set for yourself is that you don't listen to that voicemail as soon as it comes in. You listen to it when you have the capacity to listen to it and the capacity to decide how you wanna respond to that. Look, I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do, right? The changes that we make in these types of family dynamics, they aren't easy.

6:57 There's nothing about this that was easy. There is no magic pill here, and if there was, I promise you, I would package it. I don't want anyone to have to suffer unneedlessly. I don't want that for you. I don't want it for myself. If there was a way to easily, painlessly navigate these types of family dynamics, I would give it to you.

7:18 But they're more complicated than that. There isn't an easy way to navigate this type of relationship. There are ways that we can navigate these types of relationships, and as we get more skilled doing so, it gets less painful. It feels less impossible. We build our confidence and our ability to navigate these types of relationships, but it is hard.

7:41 So yeah, if you are someone who answers any time your parent calls, day or night, no matter what you're doing, because it feels like you have to, it is going to be hard to not answer that call, that doesn't make it impossible, and it's also not this all or nothing thing. Maybe You don't answer, but you immediately check the voicemail.

8:03 Maybe that's step one, right? And then maybe after you do that a bit, maybe you don't answer and you don't check the voicemail for an hour. It's gonna look differently for everyone, but it's not impossible to make these types of changes. These types of boundaries are so, so, so important because we're completely in control of them.

8:24 When we involve the rest of our family, when we involve our parent in the changes that we're going to be making, it gets harder. It gets a lot harder because now we're dealing with our own feelings, and we're dealing with at least one person, our parent, who is emotionally dysregulated, who is emotionally immature, who is emotionally punishing.

8:47 That complicates things. And so when we can focus on ourselves and making changes ourselves, it's not that it's easy, because it's not, it brings up all these tricky, uncomfortable, complicated emotions, but we're not also dealing with all of those other things on top of it. And so When you are looking to shift the dynamics within your own family relationships It is important to recognize where are the boundaries that you are going to set with yourself?

9:17 What are those changes that you can make that don't actually involve your other family members? Now, that doesn't mean that they're not gonna get involved, if you don't answer the phone every time your parent calls, all of a sudden, if that is a change that you make, even if you don't say anything to anyone in your family, that doesn't mean that your sister or your brother aren't gonna call you in a panic, it doesn't mean that people aren't going to notice that you're doing things differently.

9:44 They might have reactions to that, and that's honestly not unexpected because that's kind of how these family dynamics work. But that's also a conversation for a different day So on that note, we'll wrap things up for today's episode. As always, thank you so much for being here with me. If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd so appreciate you leaving a five-star review.

10:07 And if you have a second, a comment just about what you find to be helpful with the podcast. It really helps other cycle breakers to find our show Thanks again for being here, and I'll see you soon Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of the You're Not Crazy podcast. If you like the show, please leave a five-star review to help other cycle breakers find it, and make sure to check the show notes for other ways I can help.

10:36 Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you soon